22 of March, 2017
(Featured in this photo are some of my 8th grade students at my house)
It’s blog
time again for Senhor Professor Daniel! In this issue, I will talk about how Namuno
has and continues to become my home, some details about the state of my
students and myself, and some tid bits of reflection thrown in between.
This past weekend I traveled to another Peace Corps site
(Alto Malocue, Province of Zambezia). My roommate and I traveled together from
our site leaving after classes and a site visit by Peace Corps Staff on
Thursday. We left Friday morning at 4 AM from Montepuez and arrived in Alto
Malocue at roughly 4 PM. We enjoyed the company of other Peace Corps volunteers
the rest of Friday & Saturday and made our journey home on Sunday. Sadly,
due to public transportation issues we were unable to return to site until
Monday because we got stuck in the town 60 km north of Namuno. And to make
matters worse, it took 8 hours to cover the last 60 km on Monday. However, it
was worth it. In the states I would have never even considered traveling 16
hours one way just to spend one full day and two nights with some friends. We
spent more time traveling than we did spending time in Alto Malocue – but I would do it all over again.
All in all, Mozambique and my Peace Corps experience is
giving me the practice needed to shift my mentality and approach to various
aspects of life. I used to be like “Oh I
want to make pasta with some Italian sausage tonight. Dang, no sausage in the
house? Be right back, I’m
headed to the store”. Now it’s more like “Yo Curtis, what does the market have? Ohhh doooope we have
green peppers tonight? We could make chili, pasta salad, bean burgers, …”. Whether it’s travel or food, I find myself counting what I do have
instead of counting what we lack. Every since I was a wee young lad I remember
the phrase “Count your blessings! Don’t take what you have for granted! Be
grateful for what you have!”, which
is all great advice but I was TERRIBLE at actually doing it. Not to say that I’m a professional now, but I’m getting better. Living a more
simple life allows me to take into account what I do have. Right now my kitchen
is stocked with beans, rice, peanut butter, oatmeal, sugar, flour, yeast,
onions, pickles (we made pickles!!), cucumbers, and various spices. If our
market has green peppers we’ll pick
some up today, if not maybe tomorrow or maybe next week. There was a 3-week
period where our town had no potatoes and when that happens you just roll with
it. Life would be pretty rough if we decided to get frustrated every time our
market ran out of a certain food.
Overall, I would say that I have enough challenges on my
plate. I have no need or want to stress about food or travel – so I don’t. We’ll get
there when we get there. If we get stuck in another town we’ll figure it out. When immigration
asks us to get off the bus so they can check our IDs we’ll do it without resistance. When the police officer
attempts to check our IDs but doesn’t know
how to read Portuguese, we become invigorated in our teaching efforts. He may
not know how to read, but the next generation might.
I’ve taken
a similar approach to my teaching and my students. After the first round of
tests I reflected upon what I want to get out of my teaching experience and
what I want my students to learn from our class periods together. A handful of
my students will hopefully finish 12th grade, but many will not. A
few of my students might continue their education after high school, the
majority will not. In Mozambique, if you have a college degree they address you
as Doctor (aka I am often called Doctor Daniel). A high school degree is a big
deal here, probably about the equivalent on a social sphere of completing a
college degree in the US. For my students, acing an 8th grade math
class or even developing a mastery of the content from 8th grade
will be of little use.
One of the most important skills I began to develop during
high school was the ability, willingness, and passion for learning. On my high
school’s planner was the phrase “learning to learn, learning to live,
learning to love”. Equipped with a drive to
learn and the ability to learn, I graduated college in 4 years with two
Bachelors, one from Arts & Science and another from Engineering in addition
to a minor in Business. I have been fortunate to have support throughout my
life enabling me to take full advantage of the opportunities placed in front of
me.
I aim to teach my students how to learn. I shared this brief
anecdote in a previous blog but here it is again: On my first day of classes I
had a discussion with my students about education. How does one learn? How does
one learn well? They responded by telling me a teacher gives the students
knowledge/information. Learning and the ability to learn is not about natural
ability, being given information, or memorizing information. These are all
aspects of learning. But there is a process to learning and it is this process
I will engrain in my 8th and 11th grade students.
As a result, I will be using the math curriculum as my
median. My students will learn the curriculum, or at least the parts I deem
important enough to cover. There is some really random stuff that I will not
cover. For example, my 11th graders curriculum encompasses some
information I did not cover until Fundamentals of Mathematics in College, a 300-level
course. I am becoming “that
teacher” who acts as if their class
is the only one that matters. That one teacher who consists of 75% of your
homework. When you have 210 8th graders and 300 students overall,
this significantly increases the amount of work for the teacher, aka me. But
this is what I want for my students – to leave
my classroom feeling like they know more than when they entered, feeling
empowered to be responsible for their own learning, and knowing that they can
learn whatever it is they want to learn.
So here is what I have done since my last post – I give homework as often as I can.
Usually I try to give two days for homework. I collect and grade all homework.
I give classwork as often as I can and grade for completion to take attendance.
I give bonus opportunities to encourage my students who are ahead of the curve
so that they too can be challenged and engaged. I cover less content and we
practice, practice, practice. In my last post I mentioned that it seems my
students had never done math before – as in
they had never solved math problems before (or at least a large majority of
them). If you ask my students how we learn in my class they will laugh and
chant “Practica! Practica! Practica!
Practica!” until they are out of breath.
But hey, I have 8 years of math education to catch them up
on right?
My roommate and I have a solid selection of sports balls and
games. When my gate is open students are allowed to come over and play. However
there’s a BUT. They must finish a
set of math problems before playing any games or reading any of the Portuguese
children books we have. (Side note – I have
students who ask to borrow my math/physics text books because they are in
Portuguese and they just want something in Portuguese to read). While my
students are at my house, they have no notebook so I get to work with them 1-1
and I get a feel for where they are at and what I need to cover in class. The
highlighted picture in this post comes from one of these busy days where my yard
became a youth center. I had nearly 40-8th grade students practicing
math, reading, coloring, and playing games (yes of course they did their math
problems before playing any games). Additionally, I had about 10-15 kids 4-7
years old drawing and coloring.
This past month I found out why so many of my students said
4 x -5 = -1. My 11th graders on a homework assignment gave me the
same thing, so how in the world is 4 times -5 equal to -1? Turns out many of my
students do not understand the significance of a minus sign. They thought it
always meant subtraction. Growing up in the states we learnt that a minus sign
is either for subtraction or a negative number, but here the same word is used:
“Minus”. So, 4
– 5 would read “Four minus 5”. And 4
x – 5 would read “Four times minus 5”. As
such I dedicated a class period for all of my 8th & 11th
graders to clarify this mishap.
All in all, it’s been
a bit of work on my end and I can only assume that I’ll be staying plenty busy. Tests are not always the best
way to track results but I want to share the results from my 2nd
test. Of my three 8th grade classes, two did exceedingly well on the
2nd test. Over half of the students had above a 10/20, which is
passing and is a HUGE improvement from the 1st test. The average
score was a 9.7/20 and one-quarter of my students had at or above a 15/20. To
me, this is HUGE progress. Today I told my classes that I had a dream last
night about their grades. I dreamed of a day where I handed everyone back a
15/20 or better. I dream about handing back homework and tests where everyone’s assignment has a sticker on it.
They partly think it’s funny
but they also want it to be true. To further encourage learning, I give a
sticker to any student who gets a 15 or better on any HW/Classwork/Test. And I
give a massive trophy sticker to students who get a 20/20.
I still have a fair number of students between the 0 & 5
range so I’ll have to try something
different to lift them up to. With one of my 8th grade classes, I
asked them “estamos juntos?” aka “are we
together?” It’s the beautiful motto of Mozambique that is overused in
the classroom setting significantly devaluing the significance of the phrase.
Of course, they respond in unison, “estamos
juntos senhor professor”. To which I told them, we’re not. We still have half of our
class below a 10. But, we could be. It would take extreme dedication from each
and every student, but we could “estamos
juntos” aka “be together”.
Together, we’ve come a long way in a short
amount of time. We’ve still got a long way to
go, but it’s a start. It’s possible.
One way or another, my students will know how to learn by
the end of this year (note that we are still in our first trimester). They will
be empowered to learn and empowered to take responsibility for their own
education.
Once more, thank you for the continued support and for
taking the time to read through my entire blog post!
With all my heart,
~Daniel Bladow
"Mathematics is not about numbers, equations, computations, or algorithms: it is about understanding." - William Paul Thurston"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn" - Benjamin Franklin
