The Gambia or Bust!

My School's Sign

'What Boys Can Do Girls Can Do Better'

Oh Gambia, your heart's in the right place but...

So what exactly am I doing here? Well my official title is ‘teacher trainer’. I have been posted in a medium sized village in the middle of the country. It takes about 15 minutes to walk from one end of my village to the other (that's with a lot of greeting going on along the way). There is one school here and it is called a Basic Cycle School. It includes a nursery school (pre-K) and grades one through nine, oddly no kindergarten. If students wish to further their education after grade nine then they need to travel to another village and attend a Senior Secondary School (grades ten through twelve) of which there are only a handful. There is one class for each grade here and each one has approximately thirty to forty students in it.

Classrooms

(There was an art teacher here who painted all these murals.

They are really cool looking.)

All right, I’m just going to say it. Gambian schools are a mess. There are some really well intentioned people here and some very industrious ones as well but a lot of what goes on here is just ridiculous; the beginning of the school year for example. School officially begins in the beginning of September. Approximately fifty percent of the teachers and about seventy percent of the students show up around three weeks after that. Then they all sit around for a couple of days waiting for the Ramadan break to start and then they all take off for another two weeks. When everyone eventually finds their way back by early October classes begin although on paper they’ve been going on for a month now.

The inside of a typical classroom.

Okay! We’re all here now, let’s get started! Take out your notebook and copy the two pages worth of ‘notes’ that have been taken directly from the textbook (we’re talking paragraphs here) and are written on the chalkboard. You don’t speak English so all of these notes are complete gobbley gook? Be quiet and write them down before I get the stick out. Done? Good. Let’s ‘read’. I’m going to read a story line by line and you are going to repeat it back to me at a high volume. Now to be fair there is a teaching strategy called ‘echo reading’ in which students basically do this exact thing. It’s supposed to help with fluency and expression BUT it is just one of many strategies that a teacher should be using (look at me acting like an actual teacher, lol). When it’s the only strategy being used we call it memorizing, not reading. These kids’ memorization skills are pretty impressive since they’ve been trained to do this from day one of their school careers. It is not uncommon for me to show a kid who is in grade six a story they ‘read’ in grade two and for them to be able to repeat it to me while barely looking at the words. Unfortunately they can’t read the word ‘in’ when it’s isolated though. Time for math? Okay, let me write more ‘notes’ on the board that include the word ‘set’ about fifty times. When you’re done copying that I’ll bark questions at you and then bark praise (Very Good!) to the person who randomly guesses the correct answer. Then when you are in grade nine we’re going to give you nation wide test filled with obscure questions about obscure facts that you are unable to read. When you do poorly we are going to berate you and tell you that you are not working hard enough. We are trained teachers so clearly the problem lies with you. Yeah, so I’m here to try and turn some of these things around.
My Office

(Lol over the computer. Apparently the first time they plugged it into a generator it blew the whole thing. Peace Corps is always looking for IT volunteers by the way.)

#1: Gambian teachers have been taught in Gambian schools so their language skills are incredibly sketchy and their critical thinking skills are pretty much nil. They are great when it comes to practical things like planting the garden or getting the gigantic bags of rice from World Food Program from the road to the school but it gets dicey when we dive into the world of academics. This sounds bad and I really do enjoy these people but when it comes to working alongside them within the school it’s often like trying to teach a third grader how to be a be an effective instructor. It’s really tempting to just do everything yourself but that’s not going to create any lasting change so I’m going to have to really try to include them in the process. Needless to say that is easier said than done.
Problem #2: There are literally NO teaching materials here. Okay I take that back, the president has actually put quite a bit of money into education and is very supportive of it. ‘Quite a bit’ being a relative term considering the level of poverty here. The children have textbooks that are great, much better than the ridiculous tomes we used at my American school. Unfortunately the natural elements here are not conducive to books having a long life. Rain, heat and mud huts aren’t really ideal conditions for book preservation. On top of that, the books are soft covers. All of this equates to the books having a life of one to two years, tops. After that they completely fall apart and there are no replacements. The books were adopted a year and a half ago. When it comes to teaching materials it’s pretty much the textbook and chalk. There is a big push by the Ministry of Education for the creation of teaching aids by teachers but that’s kind of hard to do when the school is given very few, if any, markers, scissors, or paper. No seriously, the school where I am received ZERO supplies for the school year. Teachers’ salaries are also really low here (it’s a much lower status job than it is in America which I’m sure some of you will chuckle at that but I stand by my belief that teaching is a pretty good job back home) so there is no way anyone is paying for anything out of their own pocket.

Things that Gambian schools need:

Scissors: (The art teacher borrows my pair almost every day. I’d give them to him but then I’d have nothing to cut with.)

Markers: (You really can’t make many effective teaching aids without markers. I let everyone use mine and they are all duly impressed by the scented ones.)

Clear Packing Tape: (Who needs a laminating machine? I actually even used this in America when I didn’t want to wait for the week turn around to laminate something. The difference being that the classrooms here have windows without shutters/doors. If it’s not covered in some sort of plastic it’s not going to last more than a month.)
Books: (Other than the text books there are literally no books available to the children, neither in the schools nor in the community. Some of the headmasters (principals) have a smattering of donated books in their offices, because there’s nowhere else to house them, but they are often way too advanced for the students (I wouldn’t give the 9th grade students anything over a 4th grade level, at MOST. No, seriously, these kids can not read). One of the things that I will be working on while I’m here is developing libraries for the schools. At this point a ‘library’ will probably consist of a box of books in the classrooms that the children can read when they are finished with their work. Depending on what sort of support I can get I might be able to get actual library rooms set up in at least a couple schools. Sustainability is a big problem when it comes to libraries here because the Gambian teachers often let them languish once volunteers leave, something to do with a lack of ‘reading culture’, but I’m still motivated to try because when I read books with my kids at home they are riveted and they try really hard. And anyway there isn’t any developing of a country without literacy and that’s pretty much what I’m here for.)

Oreos :)

Problem #3: It’s a lot easier to write a bunch of things on the board and have your class silently write them down then it is to actually teach. And if you drill them enough they’ll have it memorized so you’ll get the added satisfaction of having ‘taught’ them something. Actual teaching involves planning, research and an investment of time and energy in creating activities (there I go acting like an actual teacher again). It can also go awry, just ask my fourth grade class about the ‘Frog’ game we attempted to play during a division lesson. Hmm, I wonder which method an underpaid, undereducated teacher is going to be more comfortable with? Slowly, slowly (‘domonding, domonding’ as we say in Mandinka. Hey, that’s one of the six things I know how to say!).

So there you have it, the Gambian school system in a nutshell.

Hope my people (Americans) are gearing up for a nice Thanksgiving. I’m having it with some Peace Corps volunteers near my site which should be nice even though I’m a little sad that I won’t be spending it at home. Alicia Silverstone just came out with this awesome looking book called ‘The Kind Life’ and when I come home it’s one of the top thirty things I’m doing/getting. This year I’m just going to have to settle for trying to concoct animal-free stuffing from the local bread, maggi , and an herb or two that I’ll pick up at the toubob shop.