2/26/2017 (I
started writing this on the 26th and finished on the 27th)
Well, I’ve been meaning to write this post
for a while now. It’s been a busy
start to the school and I am constantly learning so much about how to best do
my job. I will be diving into some of the education problems I face in my town
and as I have been promising for the past few months now, I will also include
some prices and such to paint a picture of the lifestyle.
Starting
things off with the current moment, I am flying back from Maputo to Pemba right
now. I will be helping my province, Cabo Delgado, with our provincial science
fair. Science Fairs in Mozambique were started by a peace corps volunteer over
a decade ago and to my knowledge is the only national competition for high
school students. The rounds for competition go: districts, provincials, and
then nationals. I was in Maputo for a National Science Conference put on by the
Ministry of Education and partly led/directed by Peace Corps Volunteers. I’m a bit tired – I got to bed and fell asleep around
1am and was up at 4am to catch our 4:30 am bus to the airport. Once I land, I
have 8 hours of travel ahead of me to finish my journey to my site. Tomorrow
morning I teach at 6:30 am.
The
conference had its hitches, but it was the first national science conference so
overall it was a fantastic start to a program that continues to build and
provide opportunities to develop youth. I remember being at a conference in
late October of last year and being so concerned about my Portuguese language
skills. I could not follow anything at that conference! If I wanted to know
what someone said, I’d nudge my
buddy “Hey what’d my director just say?” Here I am, just a few months later
and able to understand what my fellow PCVs were saying in Portuguese as well as
the Mozambiquen counterparts. My Portuguese is by no means perfect, but my
sentences come together more fluidly. I’m no longer phrasing what I want to
say in English and in my head before I say something. Anyway, the conference
went well and it was in Maputo so I got to go to a store that’s similar to Walmart!! It blew my
mind.
I’ve just finished grading and
recording the first round of tests for all ~350 of my students which includes
both 8th and 11th graders. To start things off, a passing
grade in Mozambique is a 10/20 so 50%. In order to pass the grade (aka pass 8th
grade into 9th grade) you are allowed to fail one class as long as
you get above an 8/20 so above a 40%. So as to the results of my 8th
graders – 18 of ~240
passed with above a 50%. The high score was 72.5% and the average score was a
25%. For my 11th graders, 3 of ~110 students passed with a high
score of 55%. Out of my ~350 students only 21 passed with a 50%. I know I know,
clearly something must have gone wrong right? I wrote a terrible test or failed
my students as a teacher or their was a miscommunication with what I was
expecting or they ran out of time to finish or something right? How could so
few students pass when passing is set at a 50%?
To describe
my test, every problem was either taken from homework, exercises we did in class,
or problems I demonstrated during class. For my 8th graders, I gave
every student a number line with numbers from -10 to 10 so that they would have
a correct number line. During my first week of classes I had students who could
not make a number line. Some students put -10 right by 0 so the number line would
read like -1,-2,-3,…,-10,0,1,2,3,…,10. So during the test I made sure
every student had a proper number line by making them myself. The number line
was the only tool I allowed them to use during the test. I required my students
to leave their backpacks in the front and only bring their pencil, pen, and
paper with them to their desk. I informed them that anyone using a cellphone
would immediately receive a 0 – no warnings. I
would deduct 2 points from anyone caught talking to a neighbor. As to the
caliper of problems, I thought I had designed the test so that any student who
showed up to class and paid attention would be able to correctly answer the
first 5 questions.
All that
said, clearly there has been a disconnect along the lines. In total, I gave two
students 0s who attempted to use cellphones as calculators (sadly the second
student had almost finished the test but even with his phone he had 1 correct
answer….). For my 8th
grade test the first problems were of this sort: |-8-1|, -2 – 3, 4x5, 4x-5, 3 – 5, 3 + 6 x 2, 9 – (4 – 5) + 3. My 11th grader
test also had 10 problems, two of which were taken from my 8th grade
test. Two problems were True/False with 4 parts each, and then 6 problems
around what we have been learning the past 4/5 weeks.
From my
understanding, the education system in the cities is better but not amazing. My
experience seems to parallel most other peace corps volunteers as well as
fellow colleagues. One of my fellow PCVs in my province visited a primary
school and had the opportunity to watch their school function for the day. He
said he watched a quiz – the teacher
wrote the problems AND answers on the board and the students were graded on how
well they could copy the questions and answers… At the high school level, teaching
is considered when a teacher writes something on the board and the students
copy into their notebooks. The first day of class I asked my students “how do you learn something?” My students replied that the
teacher gives the students knowledge… To which I had a mental freakout and am still trying to wake my
students up. They’re accustomed
to being asleep in the classroom. They’re there and they’re awake, but
their minds are constantly anywhere but the classroom. Before making my test, I
took a look at my school’s repository of
old tests and most math teachers stick to multiple choice and true/false
questions. I suppose that way students at least have a random chance to earn
points.
Having
spent the past month in the classroom with my students, it honestly feels like
they’ve never done
math before. I believe they’ve seen math on
a chalk board before and watched teachers solve problems, but it feels like
they’ve never been
asked to solver math problems themselves. The second week of school I realized
my students didn’t now order of
operations. As I finish my blogpost (it’s now Monday), I just realized many
of my 11th graders also do not know order of operations (think back
to PEMDAS – parentheses,
exponents, multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction).
Complicating
the struggle for my 8th graders, about half of my students do not
know Portuguese well enough to be learning in Portuguese. I’ve been learning Makua and with each
day/week my Makua improves but I am required by Mozambique to teach in
Portuguese. My students know that if they want help outside the classroom, I
have office hours and they are welcome to arrange a time to meet with me. I
make myself almost 100% available Monday through Thursday. I’ve also informed my students that if
we work outside the classroom, I will do my best to explain things in both
Makua and Portuguese.
To some
extent I feel like I’ve let my
students down. To some extent I feel like the system here does not care for
them. For my students who received less than 8 points, they have make up
opportunities to earn up to 8/20. For students who have less than 10 and 8 or
more, they can earn up to 10. Lastly, the students who passed may earn 1 extra
point if they do the make-up work. Today after class I had a student come up to
me and say “I got a 0 on
the test, how can I get a better grade?”. I told him he can do the make-up
work and if he wants my help we can arrange a time before/after school or
something. He asked again so I told him there will only be one way to earn a
higher grade in my class – WHEN we have
make-up work, do the make-up work. And if you want credit for the make-up work
you need a 15/20 or higher on the make-up work. I think he was hoping I was
going to tell him he could “buy me a soda” which is code for “bribe me”. Unfortunately, oftentimes students
pay for grades. Making matters devastating, some teachers sleep with their
students in exchange for higher grades. On my travels back to my site I was
talking about the results of my first round of tests with a fellow passenger.
The person asked me how my students gain points back and I told him through
make-up work. He then continued to ask “do you now have any other ways? You
don’t let them pay
you?”. In as calm a
manner as I could muster, I explained that any student who works at learning
and takes advantage of me as a resource will never have to do make-up work. And
the only way to pass my class will be to learn the content (or 50% of the
content in this case) no ands, ifs, ors, buts, or bribes.
Looking
back on these past few paragraphs I’ve written, it definitely feels like a ramble so I hope it seems mildly
coherent. I’m trying
everything I can think of to get my students thinking again – each and every one of them. After
handing back the tests I told my students I am extremely scared when they don’t ask me questions because it means
1 of 2 things. Either they know the material we are learning, or they are
afraid to ask questions. In one of my classes of 8th grade, a
student in the front said – “we are afraid to ask teachers
questions”. I kid you
not. I’m fighting to
get my students asking questions. Today was extremely exciting because I was
ranting again about how I want questions and a student asked me – “what is math professor Daniel?” To which the other students began
to laugh and my passion went through the rough. I went on a 15 minute tangent
about math and all of the wonderful aspects of arithmetic and we spent those 15
minutes talking about bread & bagias (a bagia is a fried bean thingy). My
classes are slowly but surely beginning to trust me (they knew from day 1 that
I was unlike the normal teacher at the school because I showed pictures of my
family and we played math games together).
So all in all,
the start to the school year has come with its struggles. It is quite evident
why I’m here. As I
told my colleagues yesterday who decided to stay in Pemba an extra day before
returning to their respective homes (to break up the travel), as long as I have
students who walk 90 minutes to and from school and get to school almost on
time, I too will show up on time, every time possible. As long as I have a
single student showing up on time, I too will prepare myself to teach with
passion and fury – on time. Sunday
my travels home started at 4:30 AM and I got home at 8:30 PM. I’m still a bit tired and need to
finish some more lesson planning for this week
Wrapping
things up I’m always
promising to give an overview of prices so here it goes! The current exchange
rate is 1 USD = 70 mets and all prices below are in mets:
1kg of
potatoes – has ranged from
40 mets to 80 mets since I’ve started
living here. For the month of January it was 80 mets and just today I bought
1kg for 45 mets.
1 kg of
onions – 35 to 70 mets
depending on the type of onions.
1kg of rice
– 45-60 mets depending on the type
1kg of
beans - 50-70 mets depending on the type
1 egg – 10 mets
2 litters
of cooking oil – 270 mets
A good
glove of garlic – 40-50 mets
Green peppers
– 5 to 10 mets depending on the size.
They’re all tiny
compared to US sized peppers
A can of
soda – 30 mets
A 2-litter
thing of soda – 100 mets
A chicken – 200 mets
1kg of beef
~500 mets (I’ve seen the
prices in other towns. I’ve never bought
beef and my town does not have it. I also can’t afford it)
1 Jar of mayonnaise
– 130 mets
1 jar of
peanut butter (not available in my site) – 300 to 400 mets
1 bag of
coffee beans – 400 to 500
mets (not available in my site)
1 thing of
bread – 5 mets (think equivalent
of one serving of bread)
1 litter of
milk – 150 mets (I don’t buy this ever)
1 head of
cabbage – 100 mets at
best
1 pineapple
– 80 mets
1 avocado
(when in season) – 30 mets
1 mango
(when in season) – 2 to 5 mets
depending on the type
1 thing of
bananas – 20 to 30 mets
1 small
pile of tomatoes (about the same as 2 US tomatoes) – 20 mets
1 apple – 30 mets
1 “head” of lettuce – 30 mets
1 ear of
corn – 10 mets
Overall,
that’s about all the
things I have ever bought or ever considered/wanted to buy. As far as my
income, I’m allotted about
7000 mets per month on food by Peace Corps. Based on my personal budgeting, I
spend less than 4000 mets per month on food (I have a separate category for
eating out/ vacationing where I put 1-2000 mets per month into and use while
traveling).
Thank you
for taking the time to stay up to date with my story, experience, and
adventure. And mad props to those people who read all the way to the very end!
With all my
heart,
Daniel
“You can always
lose what you have, but you can never lose that which you are” – Eckhart Tole
