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. 

Starting to Work

I realized recently that I haven’t explained very much about my job, and that that might be rather confusing for everyone back home. As you’ve probably already gathered from this blog, a large portion of being a Peace Corps Volunteer takes places outside of the workplace. The lessons, experiences, and mutual giving are most definitely not confined to the workplace. We’re Americans though, so it comes back around to the job eventually: “But what is she doing over there??” Well, I’ll tell you:

My official job title as an Education PCV in Ethiopia is English Teacher Trainer. This means that unlike most Education PCVs in most countries, we don’t have a class of our own. Instead, we’re in more of a consulting and training position. Our first goal is to help English teachers in primary schools (grades 1-8) improve their English and adopt more interactive/communicative teaching techniques. Our second goal is to help students via extracurriculars  which means that it falls within our job scope if we start an English club for students.

This past month I’ve finally started making headway on both of those goals. Now, the key word there is started. What I’ve accomplished with the teachers would hardly be considered an accomplishment in America, but bear with me.

As part of our teacher-focused goal, we’re encouraged to establish a model classroom that would be spruced up with visual aids, to be used for teaching model lessons and training teachers on how to better use the classroom space itself. My school is struggling financially, so finding an appropriate space was quite difficult, but one day a storage room happened to be open, and I saw that if renovated, it would be the perfect space for such a classroom. And after a two hour meeting, my school director and his supervisor agreed with me! So the room is slowly being cleared out for me, and I hope to begin using it in the next month. Renovating it will be another story, since they don’t have funding for such an endeavor. My one funding option would be to post my project on the Peace Corps website and ask all of you wonderful people to donate to my cause… so stay tuned, I may be asking for your help!

In addition to the classroom quest, last week I taught a model lesson for 8^th graders on how to read for understanding, and I think the teacher really like the ideas I presented, and will be asking me to help him continue to help students with reading comprehension. I also observed the 6^th grade English teacher and gave him some constructive feedback afterwards, which he took gracefully, saying he’d try to implement my suggestion in the future. I’m hoping to repeat that process with him maybe next week. So I’m taking baby steps toward working directly with the teachers, and I hope beyond hope that it will continue to build as I go. In the meantime, I’ve committed to being at the school for a minimum of an hour each day, during which I chat with the teachers in English, to help them with their own conversation skills, and to build rapport.  

With the students, I have a weekly English club that my site mate and I co-started. She’s traveling in India this month though, so it’s just me. Last week we did Christmas, and before that we did parts of the body and weather. Mixed in with these fun lesson topics we’ll be inserting mini lessons on English instruction words, so that they’ll start to be able to follow along better in their classes. The students we’ve chosen are about 30 4^th – 6^th graders, most of whom are known to be OVCs – orphans or vulnerable children. They’re a very rewarding group to work with. They’re eager to learn and energetic, despite our meeting taking place after the school day.

It’s slow going, to be sure. The amount of time that I’ve been here and the amount of work I’ve been able to do that can be quantified and reported is a frustrating comparison, but Peace Corps isn’t solely about the measurable outcomes or the quick successes. They say that most PCVs don’t feel that they really get a lot of work done until the second year, and I’m starting to understand not only why that is, but why that’s good. Every day that I go to school and chat with the teachers, I piece together another bit of the puzzle of the way things work here, and understanding how things work is key to doing work that will actually fit their needs. For instance, only a few weeks ago I learned that the teachers are required to cover every single page of the textbook. For me, that means that any teaching methods I encourage have to be able to jive with the textbook lessons,and can’t significantly take time away from time they would have spent teaching from the book, so that they don’t fall behind.

I’m starting to feel like I really am learning the virtue of patience, and I’m happy that we’re encouraged to work with students while we slowly, ever so slowly try to work with teachers. And of course, there’s always everything outside of work to keep me on my toes.

Fincha Elementary School - the buildings on the right house the offices,
the buildings on the left are classrooms.

Two teachers working on their lesson plans during a free period.

The gazebo of sorts where teachers can enjoy tea and bread during the breaks.