Getting a Classroom: A Case Example of How Nothing is Easy

“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!

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.