Saturday, January 31, 2015

Classroom

     Having 200 students (98 in one and 102 in the other) has, so far, been a thrilling ride made up of equal parts of downright terror and incomprehensible hilarity. The first time I walked into my classroom, I felt a desire to A) run away B) throw up a little C) cry. The sheer number of students is so immense that it literally takes your breathe away and its no wonder that so many students fail or redouble classes...as a teacher you literally have ZERO time to give individual attention to all the students, you can pick a good chunk of kids from each class to spend more time with but its difficult to deal with the thought that some kids you just simply have to let fail. Its not right and its certainly not fair but teachers are far and few in between in most villages which results in bigger (huuuger) classroom sizes.
     Like any other classroom in the world, some students try really hard and others don't. Here are some of my favorite responses from a “get-to-know-the-students-better” questionnaire I gave my students the first week of class, some of them just grammatically hilarious and others terrifying:

How old are you?
I am fine, how are you?

What is your favorite subject?
My favorite is Ms. Zazie.
(Sawyer is too difficult for them to pronounce...and yes, I was tempted to give this kid points for sucking up)

What is your favorite animal?
My favorite animal is to eat the dog. (Kind of an error....Welcome to BF)

How many brothers and sisters do you have?
I have six fathers...one is donkey. (Uumm...)

What did you buy at the market?
I buy the childrens and a water. (Uummm again...)

What is the purpose and importance of the verb “To do”?
The “to do” verb is important because it is interesting.

     There are many times where my students will push my buttons but half of the time I can't help but cracking up at their attempts to speak broken English...the things they say sometimes, I swear...my stern demeanor is completely undermined all the time. I found that most students are so terrified of their teachers because lets face it, teachers here have a LOT on their plates with the number of students so classroom management is something they have no patience to work torwards with the students. Its either shut up, sit down, get out of the class, go home, you get -5 points, etc. Positive reenforcement is not really a thing here. I have had very little major classroom management problems and I solely attribute this to being scared of being mean and not being liked by my kids so I have come up with a few strategies to reward the well-behaved students rather than only punishing the few stragglers and I have found that the class time we have together has become pretty enjoyable and oftentimes fun! I allow the students some freedoms that they otherwise do not have in other classes...like cracking a harmless joke once in a while.

Some other interactions:

Me : How do you say 'pen' in the plural?
Student #46: Pennes
Me : Almost but nooooo...someone else?
Student #12: Penis?
Me : Uh...what?
Student #33: Madam, he said 'penis'...thats how you say it!
Me: Uh, no, no thats not correct. The correct answer is 'Pens'. You just add 's' to the end to make it plural. Okay, someone come write up on the board a sentence with the word 'pen' in the plural.
Students #87: comes to the board, writes – The penis is red.
Me: Whaaaat? No no no. Why is there 'is', its ---- ah nevermind. Do you guys even know what that means?
Class: No Ms. Zazie.
Me: Oh.....okay, well its not a word in English. Mooooooooving on.
Class: So its not 'penis' its 'pens', got it.
Me: *sigh


     I also allot a 15 minute ask-Ms.Zazie-how-to-say-anything-in-English break at the end of the week for the students to ask things that we may not cover in class but that they've heard in movies or songs, or simply things they want to learn to say. I have found that designating a topic for these sessions has been the best strategy to avoid the super awkward and inappropriate and sometimes vulgar (thank you Lil Wayne) questions. The first time I did this, the kids went crazy with the questions on American rap music (and keep in mind these are all asked in French and sometimes broken English):

     Ms. Zazie, what does “gun” mean? How do you get tattoos like Lil Wayne? Whats the word for “blood”? How do you say “Je veux t'embrasser?” (translation – how do you say “I want to kiss you?”) What is a “whore”? ......

     The list goes on and on. After I got massacred by questions I DID NOT want to answer, I decided that I would have to give the students boundaries for what they can and cannot ask me. The easiest way to do this was to give them a topic each time, innocent as possible. Like: sports, animals, family, life in America versus Burkina, countries, etc. This has helped minimize the damage!

     For a first time teacher, being thrown into such large class sizes has forced me to think on my feet and multitask like never before. Even with only 6 months of experience so far, I tell myself that if I can handle 100 students at once, piled on each other 4 to a desk and stepping over each other to get to the back at times, then I can handle anything Burkina Faso has to throw at me. Bring it on!




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