5 February 2015: School slump

I am in a bit of a slump today, you see, so I will take advantage of this nice empty space to explain the slumpiness that is my life. School’s novelty has worn off. Yesterday I was losing my voice and it was nearly impossible to teach, then the day before, one of the other teachers was asking me why I wasn’t further along in the material with the Form As. I think it’s better to stay on one topic until they understand rather than moving on just because I got through that chunk of the syllabus, leaving 95% in the dust. Plus I’m indirectly teaching them English too because I can’t explain math in Sesotho, so that’s also why it takes more time to teach them. So in some way, I’m filling a small chunk of their English class as well. Does this make me an accidental English teacher? Anyway, I usually get frustrated with the slow pace of learning when I’m grading homework or quizzes and the results are not as I’d hoped. Passing here is 40%, and I’m lucky if half my students do pass. When I get frustrated like this, sometimes I fall into the habit that the Basotho teachers do, and start to blame it on the students’ base intelligence. But they’re not dumb kids, really; their country’s school system has just not been up to par so far. When I asked another teacher what kinds of things they learn in primary, she just said “bana ba bapala.” The kids play. It’s hard to look at the bigger picture and realize that progress takes time, and that my impact as a teacher may not even be felt by a student until years after I’m gone. That’s what people tell me, at least.

                Also, at school, there’s a weird dynamic. I am of the mindset that you should put 100% into what you are doing, even if it does make you slumpy, and the other teachers are always like, “oh, you have so much energy” when I’m just going about as normal. I don’t, contrary to popular opinion, like to just sit in the staff room and do nothing. The other teachers make students do everything for them- take stacks of graded notebooks back to the classroom, fill up their water bottles at the tap, go to the shop to buy them things like food or airtime, even giving a student the keys to their home to fetch something. Really? And maybe it’s just my American view here that everyone, regardless of age, should be respected, but they don’t even say thank you, even after they have completed one of these tasks or after the students bring the teachers their plates of food for lunch. Also, a lot of the other teachers treat me like a child, probably because I’m a lot younger than most of them. They are always telling me things like that I’m holding my pen wrong or that I shouldn’t sit on the concrete outside or whatever. I am, by definition of age at least, an adult. If I didn’t want to sit on the concrete, I would have gotten a chair. Let me do what I want. Psh.