Week 2: Better or Worse, Who Really Knows

It is amazing how different it is to be the one in front of the classroom, rather than the one behind the desk. To be honest it is terrifying. Being the one in charge of fifty learners who are watching every move is more pressure than I think I have ever experienced. Even as an athlete all I was ever responsible was my individual performance. If I screwed up coming off the blocks, or had a bad day keeping pace the only one that ever suffered for it was me. When I walk into that class it’s no longer just about me, it’s about the fifty kids looking up at me expectantly. Unfortunately for them I still have no idea what I am doing. Two weeks in and I have broken up two different fights in my class, and watched a 16 year old boy grab a 12 year old by the back of the head and shove his face into a chalkboard all because he lost at a simple math question. I’ve laughed, cried, yelled, and wanted to rip my hair out. There have been good days, and days that I ask what on earth I got myself into, and this is only week two!!!

Every morning, as I wake with the sun and the evil roosters that sit below my windows and crow, I have to remind myself that today I am at least showing up, which is more than a lot of teachers give them. For at least two hours every day I am there and I try to work with them, and that is something. I have a feeling that this job is going to be about the little things, the little victories that happen every day, and for now most of those victories have to do with me making it to my classes and getting through them. I had no idea what it meant to have control of a classroom until I came here. Kids are sneaky and I feel like they are just waiting for me to misstep. They watch my every move and are ready to go wild the minute I make a mistake. Sometimes I look around my room and all I can see is scenes from Lord of the Flies. It is like I am the last adult alive trying to reign them in, and they are just biding their time until I fall and they can take full control. To be honest it probably isn’t really that bad, but that will be my reoccurring nightmare for the next 19 months.

This week I tried to introduce two different activities into my class. I did my first group assignment, and my first game day. I have no idea if my learners learned anything from these lessons, but I learned three valuable lessons.  Lesson 1, the minute students can’t understand what is happening is when they start acting out and disrupting the rest of the class. I have six boys in my class that have obviously been pushed through the system because no one wants to deal with them. They have serious behavior issues, they are older than the rest of my learners by at least two years, and everyone else in the school has completely given up on them. I discovered this week during my group activity that some of them don’t even know how to spell their own names, let alone how to write numbers correctly. While trying to help some of them through the assignment I watched the way other students interacted with them. They all spoke Xhosa when explaining directions, but when it came to starting on the actual numbers they just stopped trying to explain anything. From primary school on up, numbers are only taught in English, because numbers in the home languages are ridiculously hard. 30 translated to Xhosa is amashumi amathathu, and it only gets worse from there. No one uses numbers in home language, but the learners who can hardly speak any English are completely lost still when it comes to the numbers. Somehow these kids made it all the way to 6^th grade and can’t read any numbers bigger than 100. It’s both shocking and heart breaking, and for someone who has never taught in a classroom before it is extremely overwhelming. Especially when you realize that these kids start talking and messing around when they can’t understand what is happening, which is basically all the time. I can’t even really talk to them about it because they can’t understand what I am saying when we sit down one on one. I totally get it too, because I start doodling when I can’t understand what is being said at staff meetings. I understand where they are coming from, but at the same time I don’t have time to start from the beginning with them, or allow them to disrupt the whole class or cause harm to other learners. It is a vicious cycle!

Lesson 2, competition in this country is taken way too seriously. On Fridays I have decided that I want to play an educational game with the learners. It will allow them the chance to win some prizes, which is a very new concept for them at school, and for them to review and practice some basic math skills that they were never really taught correctly. I divided that classes into four teams based on their seating rows. Each row had to come up with a team name, and then we played Around the World with basic addition flashcards, sent to me by my wonderful mother. The game was played where one learner from team one and two would come to the board. I would show them a card and they would have to write the equation and the correct answer on the board. The first person with everything correct would win a point for their team and remain at the board. Then a player from the next team would come up and the process would continue. You would think that at a grade 5 and 6 level this would be fairly simple and would go pretty quick. Unfortunately 90% of my learners still need to count on their fingers things like 4+5 or 10+2. They were also never taught to add down, so that was interesting to watch. I have never heard so much smack talk and insults during a simple math game in my entire life. Kids were mean! It got to the point where in my grade 6 class they are no longer aloud to talk (yell) during game day. They can now only snap their fingers, or do jazz hands to cheer for their team. It got so out of control that the teacher next door came over to check on me to make sure they weren’t rioting in my class. I have never been so embarrassed in my life. One the bright side, the fact that another teacher came over it gave enough of a pause in the chaos to communicate that what they were doing was unacceptable. It was a learning moment for both me and my learners I think. But I guess we won’t really see how much they really understood of that discussion until this Friday when I try again.

Lesson 3, every day is a new day. It doesn’t seem to matter if Monday went awesome, because Tuesday is a new day, and it might go great or it might be horrible. One day my learners might act like the perfect students and not act out at all, and the next day someone’s face might be shoved into the chalkboard. Some learners are easy to predict, while others are like out of control wildfires, you just never know what way they might turn. One day you might think you’re the best teacher in the world, and the next you just want to wander off and die somewhere. Every day is a battle, I just have to keep reminding myself that this is a battle I chose to fight, and even if I don’t see it, every day might be the day I make an impact on one of the kids sitting in my class. Who knows, maybe that day will be tomorrow.