Since coming to El Seibo, all the trainees have been observing classes and doing applied projects to prepare for our service. For literacy volunteers, this means observing adult literacy classes and giving a few charlas (más o menos “talks”/presentations), as well as developing some kind of applicable tool for literacy. I observed one class a few times to prepare for a charla that I gave last week with two other literacy volunteers. While the teacher, Francia, is a very nice woman, who appears to welcome constructive criticism and wants to help her students, watching her “teach” is pretty infuriating. The class has about 25 students, a mixture of Haitians and Dominicans ranging in age from 10 to 70. It's two hours long (kind of), and from what I’ve seen most of the students are very motivated, despite all the issues they face that impede their learning (ie. almost everything in their lives). Other classes that I’ve tried to observe have often been cancelled or only had 2 or 3 students in attendance, but this one actually has good attendance, so that's cool. How it goes:
5:00 – 5:20: Students (desperate to learn, having come on public transportation from other places, some of them with their kids in tow!) wait for Francia to show up.
5:20 – 6:00ish: She arrives with her hair halfway styled because she's been at the salon. After a quick group prayer, she spends the first 15 minutes of class writing in cursive on the board. When she finishes, the students spend the next 20 minutes copying down what she wrote and practicing letters, struggling a lot with the cursive. Why are they using cursive when they can barely read print?
6:00 – 7:00: Francia calls students up to the board one by one to read the words and sentences that she wrote. Everyone is clearly nervous and embarrassed to approach the board, but by the end they have mostly memorized the words by listening to all the other students read it over and over again. One particularly infuriating moment: an older man (whose voice is shaking) is taking his turn at the board when Francia gets a phone call. Instead of silencing her phone, she takes the call, and instead of leaving the room or talking quietly, she actually talks louder to drown out the sound of this poor man struggling to read off the board! Class ends with another group prayer.
Y ya, two hours wasted. This is a pretty common class structure, from what I’ve seen and heard.
Step one: After starting late, the teacher spends a chunk of the class writing something on the board in cursive.
Step two: Students spend a chunk of the class copying down what the teacher wrote.
Step three: Something else happens that doesn’t seem to be very constructive. (Example: everyone standing up and reading the exact same thing over and over for a full hour.)
There is nothing quite so humbling as watching an old man struggle to read a simple word from the board, in front of the whole class, while his teacher barely pays attention to him, and still go back to his seat smiling because he tried.
So anyway, that was frustrating, but we gave our charla to this class and they LOVED it. At the end, the teacher was like “Can you guys give another charla next week and we’ll put you on TV so everyone can see how you teach?” On TV! What? All we did was talk about nutrition using “popular education” methods (ie. actually using interactive activities and having discussion instead of just standing there and talking at them or making them copy things down). They thought it was great.
Our Spanish teachers who were observing our presentation looked concerned about the whole TV thing, and later told us that it was probably a political scam to make this literacy program (which is run through the Senator’s Office) look good. Basically: “Vote for us! We have American Peace Corps volunteers teaching our literacy students cool things!”
Another thing about education in this country: it’s all politics.
And about politics: it’s all money.
And when you consider the lack of critical thinking here... ay Dios, what a mess.
No comments:
Post a Comment