Our month of model school has come to an end. The exams are over, grades have been submitted, and report cards have been distributed. And with the end of our training comes a variety of feelings.
First, I have to admit that I was so lucky. In a country here classes of a hundred or more are the norm, the Terminale (senior) class I taught only had a dozen. They were all engaged and attentive, and incredibly respectful. Of course, these were supplementary summer courses, not part of the academic year, but a few of the other trainees had ongoing disciplinary issues, so I still count myself as lucky.
One thing that I hadn't anticipated was how attached the students became... or perhaps they're just very convincing sycophants. After the first week of class, one of the most gifted students (and one of my favorites--that is, if I had favorites), a girl named Ariette, approached me after class to ask me when I was coming back. About a week later, we were learning about comparatives and superlatives. To demonstrate an irregular comparative, I said, "Beyonce is more beautiful than Miss F." Half of the class shouted out in response, "No, Miss F. is more beautiful than Beyonce!" Of course, I melted into a puddle of warm fuzzy feelings.
It's true that model school only lasted a month, but I'm glad that we had this opportunity, and I'm so grateful to the students for being patient with us: We undoubtedly learned more during this last month than they did. Before arriving here, I had only taught adults one-on-one, and one of my greatest apprehensions was not having experience teaching groups or adolescents. Some of those fears have calmed. I wrote previously about feeling somewhat bipolar at times, but I think I was able finally to strike a good balance between encouraging and authoritative. We shall see when I'm confronted with seventy 12-year-olds in a few weeks.
hmm.
ReplyDeleteI know this was from training and I am reading for insight.
But I have a problem with you using the analogy comparing yourself with Beyonce and then, accepting your students for their switch of your analogy of saying you were more pretty. As you must know, Beyonce is a Black Women and a very successful Black Women and you are a White Women... living in a once physically colonized country but this doesnt dismiss the colonization that happens in the mind. When you make this analogy and then accept it, you have exemplified to your students that White is better, than Black... without correction. Or even using the analogy sets it up to your students they their colonized mind would tell you is white is beautiful. Whiteness in Africa has been praised as smart, rich, helping, fun, beautiful although whiteness in Africa is also, exploitive, privileged, erasing, homophobic etc. in Africa. You have a duty in the Peace Corps to show your students the truth about the relationship between Africa and Whitness as well as, at every moment destroying the notions of Whitness is better. If you dont feel that as your duty, then why you are there...you are a current day colonizer who would like to flourish self-hate and step down from their privilege to allow their African counterparts to feel beauty and know truth as an equal.