I realized that the Ugandan that i have the deepest relationship with, that i know and like the most, isn't a person at all but rather my class. I think i know more about my class as a whole and interact with the class more than any individual member. I'm more comfortable and honest with my class than any other Ugandan and i think the question jar has a lot to do with that.
I started every class this term by reading four questions from the jar. i let them vote on how many i should read but had to cut them off at four. Sometimes students will write more questions while I'm answering one and pass them up to me. usually ill just put them in the jar for later but once a student was very insistent that i read the question right away. so i finish my answer and take a look. "sir your fly is unzipped" i look down and yup, there it is. I start laughing, zip up and all hell breaks loose, they erupted with laughter for a few minutes. kids from other classes popped their heads in the windows to see what all the commotion was about, teachers looked in ready with the cane, (A few times my class has been really loud while they were doing group work. Im usually sitting at a desk with a student so any teacher who walks in doesn't immediately see there is a teacher with these rowdy kids engaged in "hooliganism". They walk in with a cane, start to tell the kids to line up for their beating and stop mid sentence when they notice me.) So Ive learned that, unzipped fly humor, like getting hit in the nuts, is cross cultural.
Here are some of the question jar cream of the crop:
"tell me about the aliens that came to the Bermuda triangle that caused the rise in technology" "you me go to America why?" "can you also distribute kicks?" "who is the father of god?" "is it true that those whites who come to Uganda are poor then they are chased away from America?" "do you really belong to gods kingdom and if so why don't you go to church?" "have you tasted the forbidden fruit? (i mean the vagina)""what led to the separation of Rhianna and Chris brown?" "how does Obama treat you guys are you comfortable with his ruling?" "show us American traditional dance" "do you practice homosexuality on your side?" "sing for us any international song by Chris brown" "is Abe Lincoln's penis preserved in the treasury?"
Caroline is at a rural school and many of her students really struggle with English. my school has the luxury of a printer that occasionally works and a ink rolling printing device i imagine is some relic from a British school that they use to roll out the tests. Her school doesnt have such fancy equipment and she has to write the tests on the chalkboard. On her final she wrote a question about buying lemons at the market. "I bought 22 lemons at the market, each cost..." A student copied the question as: "I bought 2218 men at the market..." turns out people are cheap here, a man costs roughly 200 shillings.
I finished grading the final exams this week and the results are in, 91% of my class failed math. Not that really means anything for them, they will all move on and continue their math education. Nor does it reflect my teaching abilities, the midterm and final (the only two components of their grade) were both written by another teacher and contained roughly 2 questions each on the material id actually covered. the rest was made up of questions taken from a UNEB exam question bank covering everything they "learned" from primary school up to the present. Short of teaching them everything they were supposed to have learned im at a loss as to what to do with them. Luckily i have a handful of students i really like and a few of them are sharp and are right there with me when I'm explaining something, 6 out of 77 isn't too bad.
Three of my favorites students:
Ivan tries but just isn't quite there so far, but at least hes not ashamed to ask for help or to speak above a whisper in class, which sets him apart from his peers. He is one of the kids i routinely play ultimate frisbee with and has picked the game, as well as my language, quickly. he always yells oh sheeeet whenever something isn't working out for his team. He forgot to take the final because he was playing soccer.
Akol Samson comes up to the board to argue with me when he thinks I'm doing something wrong. I have to admire that a little. When i was his age, i was too nervous to get up in front of the class and challenge the teacher. He picks up everything quickly and likes to put ridiculous math problems in the question jar to try to throw me. He also has the best forehand in the ultimate group and likes to talk shit to me when we play. I just gave him Catcher in the Rye to read over the break, I'm curious if he'll get anything out of it.
Oplolot Isaac is a good student who usually will raise his hand at some point during class and tell me that he has another way to solve a problem that he would like to show the class. At the end of the term he asked me if i could give him something to work on over the break. I gave him a elementary math textbook one of my UO profs wrote id brought in case i had to teach primary. Turns out i used it quite a bit teaching secondary. Its all about developing problem solving skills, and if he works through it he'll be on his way. Once the word got out that i lent him the book, i had students coming over everyday asking for math to study during their break. can you imagine a student in the states asking for work over a holiday?
I've started lending novels to the students i know at school, and Ive found that for many of them their reading level is much higher than i expected. I gave a kid Twilght, and he said he "had an appetite", he ignored his revising to finish it. Oh man, surely i can do better than twilight. What I'm thinking is I'd like to start a novel library. I told the headmaster that if he can come up with some money i can handpick some good used novels while I'm back home. He's all for it, we'll see if the money appears.
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