Teaching

To teachers of foreign languages the world over, I would like to express a new found appreciation for the difficulty of your task. For the past two weeks, I’ve been engaged in the practicum portion of my pre-service training, and it’s been an eye-opening experience to say the least.

The practicum took place during our weekday afternoons at one of Huruta’s primary schools. Since it’s summer break and school is out, we taught classes of students who had volunteered (or been volun-told) to give up two weeks of their summers. We taught grades 2-5, and each class had between 35 and 50 students, depending on the class and the day. For the first week, we taught in pairs, although I taught in a trio, because we had an odd number. The second week we taught individually, one 45 minute class per day.  Each class was observed by a mix of our fellow trainees, current/veteran Education PCVs, and our own language teachers (we call them LCFs – Language and Culture Facilitators), and we would receive feedback from them after we finished.

The challenge is the same for any teacher of a foreign language, although perhaps compounded for us. The students are at varying stages of just beginning to learn English, because it is taught as a subject here in Ethiopia until the students get to 9^th grade (much as French, German, or Spanish is taught in the U.S.). At the second grade level, they don’t even know instruction words, such as “listen,” “write,” “read,” or “repeat.” Where the problem gets compounded is that we are at the beginning stages of learning their languages, and we don’t even know those words in Amharic or Oromiffa. Then there’s the problem of our accents. We pronounce things differently, so even if they know a word, they might not recognize it when we speak. How did we manage to teach a class? Yep, you guessed it – charades.

The wonderful aspect of the experience was the students themselves. They are incredibly eager. They raise their hands to be called on before I’ve even finished explaining (miming) the instructions, and they listen and watch intently, as long as it’s not too long into the lesson. They are children, after all. It was a joy to work with them, despite the obvious roadblocks. I taught “Prepositions of Location” the second week, which is a fancy term for words like near, far, in, out, on, under, behind, and in front of. I had a blast with the younger two grades, playing a form of Simon Says to get them to associate the word with a physical action: “Teacher says put your hands under the desk; Teacher says put your hand near your face; Teacher says put your hands on your shoulders.” Luckily, a fellow trainee had taught body parts the week before!

A side effect of the practicum is that now roughly 130 kids in Huruta know my name. It is such a nice improvement to walk through town and hear my name called by the kids, as they come running up to shake my hand, instead of hearing, “Ferenje! Ferenje!” (Foreigner! Foreigner!) I can take that knowledge with me to Fincha, to help with integrating.  

The best aspect of the practicum though is the self-confidence it gave me. I have had some experience with varying levels of teaching before, but never with teaching English on my own to more than 40 children. I had my doubts, about whether I could keep control of the classroom, develop lesson plans that actually taught the kids what I wanted them to learn, and whether I could stand in front of the classroom without simply panicking and freezing. But, lo and behold, I could do all of those things! I was even praised for my slow and clear instructions, for developing activities that both engaged and taught the students, and for my general composure (once I told them I was super nervous). Thus, even though those two weeks completely stressed me out and exhausted me, I’m very glad the Peace Corps added it to our training.

The next two weeks we’re back to the usual schedule. Monday through Wednesday of both weeks, we’ll be in Assella for big group training sessions on health, safety/security, and techniques and theories behind teaching English in Ethiopia. Then Thursday and Friday of both weeks will be 8-5 of Afan Oromo language class. After the next two weeks, we begin reviewing and studying for our big language exam, and that Wednesday we travel back to Addis to finish up training and make the transition to becoming real Volunteers. It’s hard to believe that I’ve both already and only been here for 7 weeks, and that we’re entering the final leg of training.