The Rollercoaster Week of Teaching

Anyone who has attempted to teach another human being anything can attest to how difficult a task it can be. Even if you don’t hold the formal title of teacher, and even if you do not hold a paycheck from the profession, it can be a challenging and frustrating thing, especially when your student is not willing to learn what you are demonstrating for them. Even one thing can ruin a day when it comes to teaching someone else, but when you are responsible for more than one lesson or student, the emotions attached with teaching become even more amplified- both the good and the bad. There are many times that teaching makes you want to give up and throw in the towel, let the students fend for themselves. But those times are matched by the happiness of success on the part of your student, and by association, yourself.

Teachers weeks are counted by morning bells (or flag ceremonies), periods attended, lessons taught, students praised, students reprimanded, voices heard, hands raised, sentences written, exercise books checked, and smiles collected (among many others). Teachers measure success differently than other professions. In other jobs, numbers are what matter. That’s still true with teachers. How our students show on tests and on paper is what the school cares about. Our measurement goes deeper than that though, our measurement goes into how our students use the knowledge we gave them, it goes into their confidence and ability to treat others with respect, and it goes into their future and their outlook on the rest of their life.

The fact that we hold such a big part of these kids lives in our hands means that as a teacher we have more emotions invested in our day-to-day doings than other jobs may have. Amplify being in a foreign country and different environment for my emotions to run high every day. I regularly describe my Peace Corps service with a couple of different nouns, adventure if it’s been a good few days, journey if it’s had it’s ups and downs, rollercoaster if it’s had more downs than ups, and learning experience if it’s been mostly down. This week in class reminded me not only of how tough being both a teacher and a volunteer can be, but also how rewarding and amazing it can be.

Luckily, it started off rough and ended on a high note. I have always struggled with classroom management and consistency, even in the states. When I was student teaching, the biggest critique I got from my observer and my master teacher was that I needed to be more consistent with my praise and punishment. We had a system in place, but I was never very good at spreading that out evenly. I did improve throughout the year, but it’s still (and probably always will be) my biggest struggle in the classroom. Coming to Ethiopia, that’s also been the toughest challenge in teaching. I could get away with being lax when I had 20 students in a class and a clear discipline system in the classroom and school. With 70 students and no sense of order, it’s been more of a challenge.

I had a hard time last year with how to handle talking, cheating, phones, copying for other classes, and sleeping in class (yes, these are all major problems). I gave my classes rules, tried to enforce them, and follow through. But I didn’t do the best job, and I fully acknowledge that. I was looking forward this year to starting over with a new group of students, taking what I learned from last year, and improving my classroom management, but then I showed up the first day to find out I was teaching my same students- I was following them to 10^th grade.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my students and I’m excited to see how they will grow in the next year. But I was also terrified- don’t even get me started on the National Exam, I was thinking just daily routines and how much we all slacked off them at the end of last year. Sure enough, I showed up the first day with my students still acting as rough as they did at the end of last year, because I hadn’t gotten control when I should have.

One of my students was a troublemaker last year, and after he lied to my face multiple times about having a cell phone in class I gave up trying to deal with it in my own class, and I turned him into the office. Turns out I was not the first teacher to have a problem with him, and my Vice Director almost kicked him out of school. He told me to choose whether to give him one more chance or not. This is of course not a position I envy anyone with, but I decided to give him one more chance. He drove me and the other teacher’s crazy, but I would rather have him in school than sitting outside it. He walked into my class this year with the same air of not really caring. However, he started answering questions and participating. I was excited that maybe he realized how valuable education can be.

On Tuesday his class was awful. They were talking the entire class and didn’t even try to participate. I got really upset and I was on the verge of tears. I yelled at them, and they got silent. Most didn’t know what I was saying, but they could tell I was upset and decided to listen. He was in the back of the class with his hand over his ear. I knew he was listening to music, and I was already riled up. I went back and luckily he didn’t argue, he just gave me the phone and earbuds because he remembered what happened last year. He thought I would just give it back to him at the end of class, like I did last year. But this time I took it with me when I left class and went to see the Vice Director. Turns out it was another student’s phone, he was borrowing it. They both followed me out, begging for it to be given back to them with the promise of “Sorry, teacher” (the Ethiopian students have perfected this saying).

Wednesday I had my other not paying attention because they were all doing homework (a crossword puzzle) for Biology. I took textbooks and exercise books, but they somehow all continued to not pay attention to English. When I got upset with their class, they all said the same thing “Sorry, teacher” with puppy dog eyes that would have made me melt the first week, but by now just drive me crazy. I taught my lesson to the few students who were actually paying attention, which are the ones who generally already have a command of the language.

I was felling really down with these 2 days. Between kids not paying attention, not caring that I’m upset, and just not caring about school I was beginning to wonder why I came to school every day. I have even told them before that I am here to try to teach them, why should I come to teach them if they don’t want to be taught. The kids who understand me look so guilty, and I feel bad after I say things like that, but in the heat of the moment I am not always the calmest person. I was realizing how difficult this job can be and how un thanked it can be.

However (this is the up part of the rollercoaster), Thursday was an incredible day that reminded me why in fact those hard days are worth it. The troublemaker class still wasn’t the best, but a few kids participated. I was doing a lesson on verb conjugations. We were going over present, past, future, present perfect, and present perfect continuous. My kids have seen these all before and know how to conjugate them, but we were doing a review lesson with filling in a chart after talking about when each one is used. A boring grammar lesson that this year will be filled with.

I started a new participation system this week to try to get more than the like 5 kids up front to answer questions. I want everyone participating, even if they get the answer completely wrong. I gave every student a piece of paper where they wrote their name and their section. They keep it and bring it to class every day. When they answer a question, read a sentence, or participate in another way, I take their cards home and record them. I then bring them back the next day. This might sound silly, but it’s worked really well this week. The students like handing me their cards and knowing they are actually being recognized for their work in class. They are used to only having the “gobez” kids answer, so I’m forcing them to try.

My section T-13 on Thursday blew me away. Every single kid participated in class that day. It was review and grammar, not the hardest of things (they love grammar). It wasn’t truly testing their English skills, but the fact that even the kids who never talk in class were able answer how to conjugate the verbs I put up on the board made me smile the biggest goofy smile I have had since coming to country.

In my next class I didn’t have as many students participate, but I did have a few who don’t normally talk in class. A few of my less gobez students, who try but don’t normally get things right, were getting them more right than some of the gobez students who are normally the confident ones. There was a group of 3 girls in the back who are gobez but normally don’t participate, I just see their smarts on tests. They answered every single conjugation correctly. I could feel a shift in the room as the kids who are used to always being right and called on were over shadowed for possibly the first time by the rest of their class. I want every student to feel confident and participate, but it was a nice change to see other students realizing their potential.

I am not sure if this participation system will hold up the whole year. I don’t know how I will make a full semester of participation into 5% of their final grade. I don’t know how long they will be able to keep their slips of paper without losing or tearing them (a lot have already had to ask me for a 2^nd one and some are already tearing—no such thing as lamination here, sadly). But, the idea that more students are taking action to answer questions and pay attention in class through positive reinforcement is really exciting to me.

We have flag ceremony in the mornings, and I stand to the side while they walk into the school compound to their lines in front of the flag. I continue to stand there as they pass to go to their classes. I let them drag desks and talk before I come into start class (they end flag ceremony about 10 minutes before class starts). I will be with other teachers sometimes and they never get acknowledged or at least their names are not said. However, when my students walk by they all say “Hi Ms. Kelsey” or at least “Hi”. I even get talked to by students not in my classes, ones I have never seen before. That makes me feel great, that I am close enough to my students to have them talk to me as more than a teacher. I know it’s because I am the firenji, but that sense of connection that my fellow teachers don’t necessarily have with them makes me happy that I care enough about them that they care about me as well.

So that was my roller coaster of a teaching week. I started off on the ground with poorly behaved students, frustrating classes, and bad lessons. I ended on a high note with participation, excitement, and the realization that my students are learning something from me. It might be boring verb conjugations, but they remember from my last lesson on the subject, all wanted to answer questions, and I saw many of them grow in their self confidence, in one day.

I might have extreme difficulties and frustrations with everything over here. My anger may be amplified, and I may have a hard time dealing with classroom management. I have students who drive me crazy and are the reason I want to drink a beer after a hard teaching day. I may have those moments where I want to give up, change careers, move back home and just sit in my bed all day. But then I have those days where I realize it’s all worth it. Where I smile from ear to ear because a student who has never gotten an answer right suddenly answers 6 in a row right. I have those days where every single kid in a class of 50 (we are still getting all kids to school) gives an answer, where the girls who don’t like to answer before the boys are suddenly the ones whose hands shoot up to get to the answer first. That confidence and ability, that moment when my students realize who they are and who they can be, that moment when I’m greeted as more than the crazy firenji teacher, the moment when my classroom becomes an inspiration. That’s why I teach.