Four Weeks

After what I would sheepishly consider a rather desultory first year in village, I made a conscious decision to jump into my second year of service with a plan, with focus, and with the expectation that I would get results. This was immediately not the case.

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Joel Turner, unofficial school teacher. School began the first week of October. In an attempt to make myself a more permanent fixture at the school, I asked the school director if there was anything I could do to help. It felt like I was asking a family friend if he had any summer work for me. Like mowing lawns or scraping paint off an old shed. The director mentioned that there were two classes unacceptably over capacity. CP1 and CP2 (Kindergarten and 1st grade, respectively) have a combined enrollment of 290 students. Two classrooms. Two teachers. That is an average student/teacher ratio of 145:1. I was not about to deny his offer (rather, plea) to assist these teachers in their duties. A few days later, our school was fortunate enough to acquire an extra teacher, so my duties were reduced to simply assisting my counterpart, Madame Guigma, in CP1.

The past four weeks have been among the most enriching in my entire Peace Corps service. Never have I had such an extreme range of emotions. I have never been more frustrated. I have never been more in awe of the skill required to teach. I have never been so angry. I have never been so humbled. Bold statements, I know, but simply passing the mornings in the CP1 classroom has taught me a lot. I will try to begin to describe some of which I have learned.

The Class.

I would have thought that after 17 months in this country, I had been exposed to the most audacious scents Burkina has to offer. I was wrong. Picture this. A classroom about the size of your normal high school room suitable for 20-26 16 year olds. Tin roof. Poor ventilation. 30 bench-style desks that seat 5 (yes FIVE) students per desk (do the math 30 x 5). 145-150 six year-olds that bathe perhaps once a week. They cough, they sneeze, they have dried mucus tattooed to their upper lips, they have pink eye and influenza and other nasty infections. The aisles between desks are almost too narrow for the students to pass through, nevermind adults. Even if I could describe the smell that usually arrives at about 8:30 am, every morning and manages to stay with me all day long, I wouldn’t wish to expose you all to such writing.
So there is the smell. I have learned to essentially turn off my nose in Burkina Faso, and while the CP1 class has proven to be quite a challenge to this talent of mine, I can still “shut it out” if you will. The sound, however, is difficult to regulate unless I put cotton swabs in my ears and that, well, would just look silly. I have found that disciplining children that outnumber me 150 to 1 is difficult when I a) am a strange tall white guy b) speak little Moore c) know they speak zero French d) know that they know that I will not, under any circumstances hit them for their bad behavior...unlike every other teacher in the school. Even though the kids are incapable off drawing a straight line, they are smart enough to know that I will not reprimand them for their actions in any serious fashion. Therefore, loud, raucous children essentially roam free when I am alone in the class with them.

Spare the rod...please?

According to the law books here in Burkina Faso, corporal punishment is illegal. Every teacher knows this. But everybody knows that every teacher hits. I always knew that teachers hit students. After spending four weeks in CP1, I have still not grown accustomed to watching, idly, while a six year-old is being whipped over the head for misbehaving or simply mispronouncing the word “Bonjour.”. Teachers tell me, emphatically, that it is a necessary practice to properly discipline the children. Even though I know the students do not respect me because I do not hit, I still completely and passionately disagree. In my most adamant of opinions, they hit because they are lazy. Teachers tell me that these kids are different from the kids in the United States. They need to be hit in order to improve their performance. Again, I disagree. Aside from a gross lack in life chances and social capital, these kids are no different from their six year-old counterparts in the United States public school system. The difference is the United States public school system has practically streamlined the idea of positive reinforcement when interacting with youth. It is so prevalent, in fact, that it is no longer considered a technique so much as a standard of teaching youth.
I am confident that long after I leave this country, students will continue to receive multiple lashings on the head with a thick rubber belt for mispronouncing a word. This does discourage me. And I will continue to do what I can to promote a more friendly environment for students, but I am not operating under the assumption that my efforts will bear fruit.

The Reward

If one was to take a verbal poll, I would guarantee that a sample of any given population would consider teaching to be the most rewarding profession. Personally, I would agree. I will continue to complain about each day and its misadventures. I will continue to dread the smell of the combined force of 150 hygienically-challenged African children. I will continue to bite my lower lip and refrain from raising my hand to these students when they continually tempt me to exercise their understanding of discipline. But I reap the reward of knowing what it is like to be a teacher. I reap the reward that comes with being a teacher. In four weeks, I have seen 150 students go from struggling to learn how to draw a straight line, conceptualizing the difference between left and right, to writing simple sentences in french. Four weeks ago, few if any of these students had ever been challenged to scrutinize the written word. To be able to witness the beginnings of formal education for these students will stay with me for ever. Right up there with the smell.


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