Ugandan Pedagogy

With a few exceptions this is the general teaching process used at my school:

1) Teachers dictate notes from 8am to 5pm if they show up

2) During AM and PM preps, (4am-8am and 7pm-11pm) students memorize said notes.


Here is a breakdown of the term so far:


Week 1-4: All students report except for prospective S5s (my students) who are waiting on their test results from 4 months back to see if they can move on to A level.

Week 4: S5s report. No teaching yet because they are reporting at a rate of a few a day, as their parents scrape together school fees (Ugandans cant believe that American parents start saving for their kid's college tuition more than a decade before it will be needed)

Week 5: No teaching this week because the students are, according to the head of the math department, "settling in".  There are no time slots in the schedule designated for pure math (my class) despite it being a requirement. The department head assures me he will get me time to teach. The pure math syllabus is missing.

Week 6: No teaching yet but the head of department is getting the syllabus, tells me we will start serious teaching next week and assures me that he will work with the director of studies to find me a time to teach.

Week 7: I talk to other math teachers and find out the syllabus has been sitting in the Head masters office the whole time. I go get it and make a copy on the scanner/printer (then working, now fried by a power surge since it wasn't plugged into a surge protector the school purchased at high cost because "we didn't think it would happen"). Whole process takes less than 30 minutes. I find out which teachers im going to steal lessons from to make time for my math class, but two of them don't show up so i cant discuss it with them. I go in during the head of department's class time, to give my students a "beginning of term exam" so i know what im dealing with. Head of department assures me he will get me a time to teach, and that he is working hard on the syllabus problem.

Week 8: I start to teach on a regular schedule, the other teachers learn about it when they show up to teach their classes and of course couldn't care less. My students are pleasantly attentive and bright and I look forward to a long term with them.

Week 10-12: teaching stops for end of term exams.


And in my computer classes we, and by we i mean the computer teacher and lab attendant because i refuse to be responsible for wasting the student's time, are, in week 8 (these kids have been here since week 1) still struggling to get through 15 power point slides containing nuggets of wisdom such as "a CD is an example of electronic media" "one of the disadvantages of computers is they allow us to access unpleasant, morally corrupting materials. Ok, the latter probably but the former?!? you're lying to yourself (males) and "a man in Washington can press a button and bombs will fall on BHS. We can relate computers to the white man's witch craft"

Well, today the lab attendant didn't show up so i was free to teach anything. First i asked if they had any general question, "Can we see the pictures of the man that turned into a women?" No, unfortunately not, we don't have internet access but be sure to tell your teachers that BHS should for things such as transvestites, they'll love that. No more questions, (earlier in the term it was explained that a computer could store the equivalent of an entire library of books, and one kid asked me where do the books come in and out?) So I taught them how to use the search function and then had them mess around with Microsoft paint. Purportedly to develop mouse skills but really just to get them logging as many hours as possible playing with computers. What i cant seem to convince the teachers is that computer skills are learned by doing, especially when young, which is my my parents are inept and i can more or less figure things out despite having no formal training. I demonstrate paint by drawing (by request)  a scene in a village of a women cooking then ask them to practice on their own, they can draw anything they want. Most draw a women cooking in a village.

Once they all seem to be getting it or at least have the program open, Kenneth, the lab attendant, shows up. He busies himself with a stack of papers and avoids eye contact with me. He is clearly upset that the kids aren't taking notes but it would be inappropriate to show this frustration to me or to confront me about why I'm not doing my job right. So instead he instead zeros in on two girls using Encarta (DEAR GOD, NOT ENCARTA!!!!) and starts slapping them back and forth between their heads, like something out of the three stooges. But Kenneth is a really nice guy and just doesn't have the heart to really put much force into beating a couple of girls, so his frustrated "hitting" just results in the girls giggling. After the first minute of this, i stopped laughing and felt bad for the guy and so offered to get him a stick so he could do the job right. When he's done, he scolds the class, their fault not mine, and turns off all the workstation so they can take notes on the advantages and disadvantages of computers. All this is why (after weeks of attempting to reasonably convince him why this approach to teaching is worthless for the students) I think I'm not going to show up to computer class any more, which I relayed to max. His response: "Tell him why though so he understands hes an idiot"

Picture Time

Three weeks into the term, and I’m just now starting to teach. Why would the timetable be created before school starts? that would only make sense! But really this is just to be expected, and I’m closer now to accepting the fact that time as we know it, does not exist here. Before Uganda I thought I was a more patient person than most, but now i'm not so sure. No news is good news? So.... picture time!

You can really taste the black

No one even stopped to question us when we climbed this cell tower. One thing I like about Uganda is that people aren’t obsessed with keeping you safe here, common sense suffices, and in my case is usually ignored.  If you’re going to do something stupid that’s your own prerogative. All the corners haven’t been rounded for your safety, although I don’t think Ive seen a right angle in a building yet. At the Entebbe zoo, the fences are angled to keep the animals in, if you want to jump in there with the lions go right ahead. A dam was recently finished at bugagali falls, result being the falls are now a lake. The road that led to the parking lot now runs straight into the lake. Without any warning signs, the bus driver taking kids from a Budaka orphanage had to slam on the brakes ran into the lake.

You might think it looks nice but that’s because you can’t smell it from up here.

This is max the fearless russkie. If can be clinbed he’ll scale it, if its edible or plausibly edible he’ll eat it, and if it’s a parasite hes had it.

Says so much. Sums up Ugandan education rather nicely

Paying village children to push us up a hill, I think tax payers would approve. 

A little reading at camp, keep food in the tent at your own risk.

Zoom in to see a Baboon chowing down on a baby antenlope. These guys have fangs big enough for me to wonder just how hungry the people up north who hunt them are. On the safari national park guide mentioned that the antelope are very sweet but not as tasty as hippo. Of course we wanted to try hippo but she said that it is very illegal they only eat them when a poacher has killed them, but sometimes they just eat them anyway.

Yes. Let’s. When I read this I imagined an exclamation mark at the end, a very enthusiastic feed store.

Ugandan home security

Call PETA!

Racist Chinese restaurant menu

Small world

Schools out for winter!!!

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.

Aspects of a situation that are the opposite of what is expected

Overpopulation is at the core of most problems in Uganda or at least is compounding those problems. There is such a simple answer; birth control and education as to how and why it will help enact real change. It has personal incentives built right in; fewer kids equal more money for food and shiny consumer electronics. Not so simple to carry out. Unfortunately, imposed puritanical ideas are discouraging condom education or use among students, many of whom have lost their virginity by time they leave primary school. Here they teach the ABC s of avoiding HIV, Abstinence, Be faithful, wear a Condom, but the emphasis is placed on A when we know that people are people, and people have sex. Especially when 800 high-schoolers are put in boarding school with at most 6 teachers designated to keep tabs on them, whom spend most of their time in the staffroom watching soap operas. Interesting/discouraging fact: almost all of Ugandan schools and businesses are on the same break schedule, lunch starts at 1:20 which is exactly when NTV starts airing “Don’t Mess with an Angel”. The real practical teaching should be on C. Furthermore this education doesn’t matter if condoms are banned at boarding schools. Being caught having sex or even possessing a condom means expulsion. So in practice condoms are not available to students. Why is that? What could possibly be contributing to this problem?

I would like to take a moment to give a great big fuck you to all the missionaries out there. The religious beliefs and the sexual morals you are imposing on developing people run contrary to the facts. Feel free to enjoy your quaint superstitions but don’t shove them down the throats of those who don’t know any better. People back home getting too smart for your scare tactics? Sorry, we know how incomprehensibly gigantic the universe is now, your simplistic heaven/hell human-centric worldview doesn’t quite add up anymore. So you go someplace with plenty of ignorance, they don’t know any better, they don’t have the luxury of being acquainted with the modern world, they get an education that doesn’t encourage critical thinking. What easy targets.

Of course you really believe your own bullshit, but from a practical standpoint why are you really here? So you can satisfy your need to “save” people, your motivations are ultimately selfish, so get off your high horse. Sure you might be building an orphanage or teaching English or funding a local project, all good things. But the problem here is one of mentality and the result of yours is that my students tell me they want to “be fruitful and multiply” without the means to support their spawn, it is printed in textbooks that the most important thing students need to do to prepare for a test is pray, and condom education takes a backseat to just don’t do it ok? You need to take a wider perspective and seriously examine what you are doing to the developing world. Empower people with the knowledge and scientific mentality that can be used to actually change their lot in life. Now I’ll get off my high horse.

Muzungu! You Give Me Money!

I'm the patron of the journalism club at my school. Never been to a meeting, but I'm on the stationary so it must be true. The students decided that they wanted me as their leader despite the fact that i don't know anything about journalism and it didn't matter whether i wanted to or not because they went and told the headmaster that i was their patron. I was a little surprised when the club leader showed up at my door with a stack of invitations to local journalism types for the end of year club party for me to sign. My first duty as Patron, was to ignore his indirect request for me to finance the party, i guess my dollars were showing. i sign each  of the invitation and at the bottom of the pile there is an itemized list of party supplies with a price next to each. At first i didn't know what i was looking at but i connected the dots, and my reaction was to be a little pissed. You made me your Patron without my knowing it, ive never been to a meeting, i don't know the members but you think its ok to ask me to buy a bunch of food and soda for you and your friends. If i sound bitter, i guess i am a little because after a while, when a solid percentage of my interactions with Ugandans amount to them asking me for stuff or money, yeah its starts to wear on me and shape my attitude towards them. Im not really opposed to being part of this club, Ill do it and try to make it into something worth while for them and maybe after i know and like the kids ill want to finance a party for them, but for now its hard to care too much. So i gave the price list a good looking over put it back on the bottom of the stack. handed them back and gave him a big dumb smile.

In response to my last post, my friend Aubrey was inspired to write a post about me. Her blog is probably better than mine so you can start reading hers now.

http://aubsinthepeacecorps.blogspot.com/2011/10/my-good-friend-ryan.html

Big News!

I finally made it through my first bar of soap! I stocked up on soap when i arrived at site and I'm just now finishing my first one, maybe i shouldn't make that information public. I think ill look back at this phase of my life as the stinky years. Right now I take one real, hot shower a week when I go into town on the weekends. I guess if I'm going to be disgusting i might as well own up to it. Ugandans on the other hand, go through tremendous quantities of soap and bathe twice a day. Whitney will occasionally mop my floor for me and sometimes she'll ask me if Ive bathed. If my lie isn't convincing enough she'll refuse to mop my floor until i go clean up, so ill splash some water on my face and go next door for inspection, as long as she doesn't rub my arms to see the dirt and dead skin peel off, i get my floor cleaned.

Some would say that I stink, I prefer to say I have taken on an exotic odor befitting an exotic land. But really my friend max summed it up best. Dude, you smell like a Ugandan. And not the bathe twice a day variety either. I was actually pretty excited when he told me this, which gives you insight into just how exciting my life is right now. I when I first got here I really noticed a difference between Ugandan and American BO, maybe just because it was new but it didn't smell bad necessarily just interesting, and if you can stomach it i think i detected a hint of rhubarb. no joke. So i guess in a sense I'm integrating successfully, I smell like the people in the place i live. I like to think that my American BO producing bacteria living in my armpits were pushed off their land and i have a happy family of Ugandan bacteria in their place. At least my clothes don't smell, at least when i put them on... Changing clothes is the new bathing, shed some of that stink! I now have a house girl who does my laundry once a week so you'll be glad to know that i now change my underwear daily.

Mr. Muzungu

On the school front, my classes are much better this term. I’m no longer at all nervous before class and I have a good routine worked out. I wake up at 5am, spend exactly one hour thinking of ways to explain the material to be covered that day, jot down rough outline and leave the rest to spur of the moment creativity which is really where all my best teaching comes from. Today I was teaching logarithms and told the class that I was not going to teach them how to evaluate logs from log tables because it’s an antiquated method now that we have computers and I know that although there are some interesting ways to solve unrelated with these tables, the vast majority will miss the subtleties of this and gain nothing they can apply elsewhere. Instead I tell them I’m going to teach you how to estimate logarithms and how to use your calculator effectively. I had thought this up in my hour and wanted to tell them how calculators are programmed in base ten so any log you plug in will automatically be in that base and use this as a justification for teaching them the change of base formula. I planned on explaining all this. Instead, once I started writing how a calculator works in base ten on the blackboard, I think, ill just let them try to use their calculators and be confused by the results so they ask why it didn’t work. In the moment I thought this would get them involved and get the math off the blackboard but in hindsight I see that it was a good way to spark curiosity. So I find a student with a calculator and have him figure out what log base 10 of 1000 is. He does and reads it to the class, fine, no problem everyone is in agreement. Ok, now tell me what log base 2 of 4 is. He reads off a long steam of numbers and the students who are paying attention, quickly realize there is a problem, try it for themselves and look at me like what the fuck? We know log base 2 of 4 is 2! So I had a really nice transition into teaching the change of base formula.

That was a good day. For every day when I’m on top of my game there are a few when im struggling to come up with different ways to look at a concept and trying not to get frustrated with my students, it’s not possible that you can’t get this stuff! You are just refusing to think! Some get frustrated and go to sleep, or maybe they’re just tired and hungry I don’t know. Sleeping is certainly easier than thinking. My class is at the point where most will answer honestly if I ask them, “have you picked?” and when I clarify slowly I think most are being helped. But when I’m asked to explain my instinct is to step back and try to explain the concept that’s at work and in doing so start to use bigger words and be less concrete and algorithmic, as in, getting away from, these are the steps you blindly follow, and so sometimes confuse the hell out of them. But it is fun for me… Which brings me back to an issue I’ve had, do I spend lots of time designing a lesson plan which neatly dissects the hour and twenty minutes like I’m supposed to, or do I teach on my feet, which is more fun and rewarding for me but has a lower success rate? Maybe a well made and executed lesson plan would end up being more rewarding but I’ve found that my best ideas come spontaneously in front of the class. In any case, I think I’ve found a happy medium that leaves me feeling prepared but also gives me free time.