Little Differences

I realized while talking on the phone with my mom the other day just how different a Rwandan school is. And although I’m sure people at home realize that fundamentally here’s a little breakdown of how my school works on a daily basis so you can picture it better. My school is six classrooms in a row, strip-mall style, and each class has its own room like an American homeroom. Except, the students stay in these classes all day, while the teachers move from classroom to classroom to teach. The schedule, also , doesn’t include passing time I suppose on the theory that it doesn’t take any time to walk the 100 or so feet between classroom doors. Except that you do need time for teachers who don’t believe in time management to finish up, or students to finish taking notes, or me to get prepared so I lose probably 10 minutes from every 50 minute class period. All the students wear uniforms, even in public schools, so all the children are in white polos and tan skirts – my particular school has orange sweaters to go with that. The teachers have a uniform too, to cut down on distractions we all wear long white lab coats like scientists over our clothing. Sidenote: all the smocks are far too large for  me and I continually look like a clown or a ghost. My students have no textbooks, there is a small assortment of English and other subject books in the library but the students only use them to study after class. I assume if I wanted I could bring them into a classroom to use during class time but I have yet to do that. Instead the students each have two notebooks per class one for notes and one for exercises. When I write grammar rules on the board they meticulously copy them into the “notes” notebook because that is their textbook and they keep them for years. Anything that might be messier and for practice they put in the other notebook. I also have no access to copy makers or printers, if I want to do an exercise I hand write it on the board and they copy it down and complete it. If I need to give a quiz or test I have to send them out of the classroom while I write it on the board so that they can’t cheat and then they take the test by copying it down. So these are just a few differences in how my teaching goes but honestly other than that my kids are a lot like American 8^th graders. They think they’re gangsters, they have little attitudes, they’re shy, I have a jokester, and a troublemaker and one girl who I’m pretty sure doesn’t understand a word I say. So despite all the differences its really the same.