Exams and Reflections

During our last week in Rwentutu, the students sat their final exams.  I remember taking tests in high school and having water and snacks available at every break.  During my teaching practicum in a third grade class at Marquette Elementary School in Madison, the students were offered veggies and Rice Krispy bars between sections of their tests.  Going into exams during that last week, the students at Rwentutu were expected to sit multiple two-plus hour exams each day, with a lunch of posho (ground maize cooked to a mashed-potato-like consistency) and beans, and with the possibility of no breakfast and/or dinner for some.  For these students, school is the ultimate opportunity to better themselves and their lives.  And as always, in spite of everything,the students almost never complained or even lost their positive, joyful outlook.  What an incredible bunch of students I have been blessed to work with. 

We stayed to help administer and mark exams before spending our last weekend in Kampala and Jinja (including a white-water rafting trip on the Nile River!), then heading home.  The exam process was at once challenging, frustrating, and enlightening, as I was struck anew at how many gaps there are in the understanding of the students.  I was also struck again by the poor quality of the tests themselves:  I arrived on Monday as P4 was finishing up social studies.  One of the questions on the exam read “Which light tells drivers to get ready?”  As I read it, all I could think was, I haven’t seen one stoplight in the whole of Uganda…In the first hour of their English exams alone, I wrote three corrections to questions on the board because of mistakes on the exam papers.  Through it all the students worked diligently, without complaint.

As I sit at home on my front porch, typing away and watching University students moving in and out of apartments down the street, my time in Uganda begins to take on a bit of dream-like quality in the face of the return to life in Madison.  But as I look back and reflect on the very real, sometimes challenging but always enlightening experiences I had over the past two months, I am reminded again of some very important take-aways from my time spent teaching in Uganda:

1)      Always make time for greeting people.  People are what life is about.  Students are what teaching is about.  Not curriculum or exams, but the students themselves are why we teach!  It seems obvious, but all too often I think teachers spend more time considering what they are teaching than who they are teaching.  Ugandans know the importance of putting people first, and although it is sometimes to the detriment of punctuality, this is one priority which, as I reflected on in my very first blog post, I think the people in Uganda have in exactly the right order. 

2)      Be resourceful.  We went to Rwentutu armed with books, construction paper, scissors, glue, tape, and a few blocks and other small manipulatives.   With these tools we taught Math and English grammar, doing our best to develop lessons which were accessible to all students and interesting for them.  We are incredibly blessed with the resources available to us in the States, resources which I have so often taken for granted.  At Rwentutu, I learned to utilize everything and everyone available to me as I developed my lessons.  The teachers we worked with were perhaps the most valuable resource available to us, and I learned to utilize their expertise regarding their students and how they learn, as well as the curriculum, to guide my lesson planning, making my lessons more relevant and effective.

3)      Be creative.  This was an area I was stretched in more than almost any other during my teaching in Uganda.  One of our goals was to introduce some variation into the continual lecture-and-note-taking style of the Ugandan school system, and teach in ways which required the students to think beyond copying what is written on the board and answering close-ended questions.  In short, we worked to make students a more active part of the learning process.  This forced me to come up with ways to develop my own visuals and write lessons which both made sense to, and challenged the students at Rwentutu to learn in new ways and ask critical questions. 

4)      Be joyful.  As a U.S. citizen, I have be blessed in the area of material possessions.  The Ugandans I worked with were all living with so little, and yet they were some of the most generous and happy people I have met.  They taught me to take joy in sharing life together, a lesson which I hope I can carry with me as I begin the next stage of my life here in the States.

Preparations

Elias prepares to raise the Wisconsin flag we
brought with us to leave at the school.

Last Week of Teaching

What a whirlwind of a week!  We spent our final week of teaching preparing for final exams, set to begin on Monday.  In math, my challenge was to get through the highlights of an entire geometry unit in the space of four days.  Thankfully, the unit itself was not too long, but I regret not having time to review (here, as in England, referred to as “revise”) with the students before exams.  However, I spent a little time at the beginning of each class going over the previous day’s material, so there was some revision built in.  Also, the teachers had some time during remedial classes to additional teaching and revision.  The mood of the week was one of anticipation, particularly on the part of the students, as they were told exams could start at any time (although the teachers knew they would start this week), ostensibly so that students would work harder at preparing.

As I mentioned above, math was my main challenge for the week.  We studied a brief geometry unit, involving three-dimensional shapes, characteristics of circles, and angles.  I was able to make some geometrical shapes out of paper in order to help the students see the characteristics of things like cones, prisms, and pyramids, as drawings make it difficult to count edges, vertices, and faces.  Try counting the edges of a cone when it is drawn on paper…it looks for all the world like it has three instead of one.  We also used string to study curves and circles, keeping things interesting and at least a little hands-on. 

A group of girl work to put the events of the story in the
correct order.

I also had to push to complete an English unit, although we got to have some fun with it along the way.  On Monday, the students wrote dialogues in groups using specific sentence structures.  We passed an enjoyable English class on Tuesday as the students acted out the dialogues, bringing up some great opportunities to correct common grammar mistakes and just have some fun!  However, my favorite class this week was Library, on Monday afternoon:  We started with a read-aloud of the book Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears.  I then gave the students the main events of the story mixed up on strips of paper to sort into the correct order.  This was in response to a particularly challenging section on their midterms, in which the students were asked to put a number of sentences in order to form a coherent story.  Only one student succeeded on the exam, so I attempted to create an opportunity for them to practice putting events in the proper order.  Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears was an ideal story, because it is very repetitive, but the students did not need to memorize the story so much as use clues from the sentences to figure out the correct order.  They did a great job, but it was definitely a challenge most of the students, indicating the importance of these kinds of sequencing activities.

One student passionately argues about clearing national
parks for agriculture (for the second week in a row) in debate!

My Primary Four Class!

Delays and Opportunities
One event which stands out in my mind from the week involved another surprise trip to town to get supplies (building material) before school one morning.  One particular road into town (in fact, the most direct road into town from our house)has been under varying degrees of construction since our arrival in Kasese.  On this particular day, there were speed bumps every few meters the size of small refrigerators.  Not knowing this before heading into town (they pretty much sprung up overnight), we scraped the bottom of the car a few times before all getting out (aside from Edson, who was driving, and Caleb, a Canadian helping with the building) to wait while Edson took the car to fill up on cement.  As we waited, we soon drew a small crowd of children.  They were not in school, they told us, because it was a sport day at school (apparently different schools had their national game day on different days).  I had a book out and was discussing an idea for a lesson with Jessica, when I noticed the kids eyeing up the book.  Not knowing how good their English was, I started paging through the book with them, asking questions about colors and what the pictures showed.  I ended up reading two stories to them, and although I am not sure how much they understood (at Rwentutu, English is taught much earlier than at other schools, and, as my friend Joseph noticed, the students there are quite advanced compared with these other schools) they were able to answer some of my questions about the books, and seemed to enjoy the stories immensely. 

The car arrived as I was finishing the second story, and as I got back in the children crowded around asking for something.  Assuming they were asking for money, I continued getting in the car.  My attention was arrested, however, when a Ugandan nearby explained that they were asking for a book.  These children, with their torn shirts and bare feet, were asking me for exactly what I came here to give, the means to acquire more knowledge.  The books in my bag all belonged to the students at Rwentutu, however, and I stood there in indecision for a long moment.  While I did not leave a book with them, I have been carrying around one of the books I brought with me ever since, hoping to run into the children again.  But the whole episode stands out starkly in my mind.  Whether for the simple pleasure of looking at the book itself, or for the knowledge that reading is a way to more opportunities, these children wanted nothing more than to have a book.  It caused me to reflect again on how incredibly blessed we are with the resources available to us in the States, and how much we take for granted.  I remember taking tests in high school and having water and snacks available at every break.  During my practicum in a third grade class at Marquette Elementary, the students were offered veggies and Rice Krispy bars between sections of their tests. 

As the students here in Kasese go into exams this week, they will be expected to sit multiple two-plus hour exams each day, with a lunch of posho (ground maize cooked to a mashed-potato-like consistency) and beans, and with the possibility of no breakfast and/or dinner for some.  For these students, school is the ultimate opportunity to better themselves and their lives.  My hope is that content-wise, they will be prepared to do their best despite less than ideal conditions and often poorly written tests.  And as always, the students almost never complain or even lose their positive, joyful outlook on life.  What an incredible bunch of students I have been blessed to work with. 

The Waterfall

And onto the Final Weekend
We spent our last weekend in Kasese enjoying the sunshine and getting together with our friends.  Friday was Corporate Night at KCCL (the mining company).  This consisted of a giant dance party, mini-golf, and goat and chicken on the barbecue!  On Saturday, we made a delicious dinner of our favorite local cuisine: samosas (Joy taught us to make them!), chapatti, guacamole, matoke, and beans, and invited our friends over for a bit of a party. 

On Sunday, we trekked into what felt like the middle of nowhere to find a waterfall we had heard about by word of mouth.  After scaling a narrow track along the side of a steep hill, we plunged through thick undergrowth, passing ant-covered vines and slick rocks to finally arrive at a plunging, frigid waterfall.  I took a quick swim in the pool below the falls but the water, likely snowmelt runoff from the mountains, was very cold, so we took a few pictures and headed back.  It was an amazing experience, well worth the steep climb which left me sore and sweaty!  In typical fashion (for me) I lost a shoe to the falls.  I left my keenes on a rock before going into the pool below the falls, and upon clambering back over the rocks to the river’s edge, found only one of my shoes on the rock.  Thankfully there was an extra pair of flip-flops around to wear for the walk back. 

The path to the falls

More of the path to the falls

We made it!

With exams through Wednesday of this week, I expect that our last few days in Kasese are going to pass quickly.  It is hard to believe that next week at this time, I will be in London…