“Nothing is
easy.”
It’s not the
most inspiring of slogans, nor is it one that Peace Corps would ever endorse,
but it’s one that I personally use on a weekly basis. I’m not sure who coined
it, but they were spot on, and somehow reminding myself that nothing is easy
here helps to keep me from being discouraged when things go wrong or take three
times as long as I think they should. Take, for example, my model classroom.
The Ethiopian
Ministry of Education, USAID, and Peace Corps all encourage us Education PCVs
to get the schools we work in to work with us to create a model classroom. The
model classroom would be in good structural condition, be visually attractive, have
desks arranged in a way that facilitates group work and teacher circulation, and
have a number of teaching aids on the walls. The room would serve as a model
for how classrooms can be a teaching tool themselves when used properly, and
the idea is that the PCV would teach model lessons in the room and would train
teachers on how to use desk arrangements and visual aids to their advantage.
My school has
known since before I arrived in Fincha that giving me a classroom was something
they were expected to do, but I just got the key to the room a week ago, almost
seven months after I arrived, and it’s still far from being something I would
label a model classroom. So what took so long?
One major
roadblock has been the shifting of leadership and contact points in the school.
My first counterpart left the school to go work in the county-equivalent
administration office just before I arrived in Fincha, making it so that I had
no known contact in the school from the start. I slowly got to know the school
director, but he was transferred to the high school about two months into the
school year. Right about that time I finally found a new counterpart, and felt
like I had gainful working relationships with him and the new school director.
Another major
roadblock was finding a room that would work for me. We went through three
different plans in as many months, because my school is in very poor shape,
structurally. Most of the buildings are made of mud and sticks, and are nearing
the end of their expected lifetime. Finally we found a solution: there’s one
building that was built only a couple years ago, out of cement blocks, and is
in good shape structurally. It was full, of course, but they decided to shift
one class of students to a mud room, to give me the nice room. So after all
that, the solution is one that comes with not a little guilt.
 |
| The exterior of my new classroom |
 |
| Inside my new classroom, breaking it in with our English club! |
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| A more typical example of the classrooms at my school |
So now, I have
this classroom. Victory! But as you can see, I have some work to do, to make
this classroom worthy of its purpose. And this brings us to the third major
roadblock: money. I told them that I needed to paint the walls, but the answer
was that there aren’t sufficient funds for paint this year. I asked them for
real desks, the same as are present in all the classrooms, and luckily they say
they can find money for them, but it will be at least a month before they’re
finished being built, and I haven’t yet gotten a straight answer about whether
they’ve even been ordered. At this point I’m planning to foot the bill for the
paint myself, because my patience is starting to wear thin. I want this
classroom finished by the end of the school year, so that I can use it in
earnest next year.
Through it all,
there are the minor obstacles that contribute to the usefulness of our
unofficial slogan. For example, when I first toured my new classroom, there
were a number of desks and benches in it, but a few days later, they had all
disappeared. I asked the director if I could have some benches for my
classroom, and the answer was yes, but the man with the key to the storage room
wouldn’t be present until next week. I returned the next Monday and camped out
in the director’s office until he had called the man, the man had arrived, and
a horde of students had been found to carry the benches into my room. Phew!
Nothing is easy,
but knowing that going into each meeting or request helps me adjust my
expectations and keep my cool when yet another roadblock appears. I hope in a
month or two to be able to write a follow-up post, showing pictures of a
beautifully painted classroom, full of real desks and with teaching aids
covering the walls, and I hope to be able to say that I’m tackling arranging
some trainings to teach the teachers and administrators about how the
classroom, used properly, can make the teacher’s job easier and can help the
students learn more effectively.
