"Teacher, so a gang is like a group of punks?" -G

Last weekend I got on a bus to go to a nearby town, and one of my students was sitting on the bus. She was sitting with her son, who looks to be around 6 or 7. She was dressed in the clothes that only women wear (to be a woman here is to be married, especially with children) and had her arm around the boy just like a mother would. My student. Keep in mind, I am teaching Senior 2, which is about 8^th grade. In Rwanda, because you can go back to school whenever you’re able, it’s perfectly common for the youngest student in a class to be 10 years younger than the oldest . I have students who are 12 and 13, and I have students who are older than me, married and with children. And sometimes their children go to the same school. Imagine me, 23 years old, asking a married woman with children why she doesn’t have her homework.

Age also affects credibility. In the States, while we don’t necessarily expect recent college graduates to be wise with experience, there is a certain level of respect for someone who has finished university and has a Bachelor’s degree, even if they are only 23 years old. In Rwanda, being 23 years old and having finished university is essentially unheard of, and except to the well-educated themselves it certainly doesn’t mean a person knows anything. So it’s understandable, then, that to my colleagues, I am basically a child. And I don’t mean the kind of child that just made my mom say out loud, “But you are a child.” I know I’m young. But here I am a child.

Needless to say, this is frustrating on too many levels. When my colleagues can hardly even fathom that I could possibly teach them anything besides the English language and how to physically use a computer, it makes it difficult to make any significant changes within the school system. And when they’re not required to have university degrees to teach at the level we teach, why would they appreciate the fact that I do?

As frustrating as it is to be considered a child, I must admit it comes with its advantages. For one, I absolutely love playing with children. For an adult to do that here is pretty out of the ordinary, so the fact that I’m technically still considered a kid myself means that I can get away with a lot more playtime than I could if I were an adult. And if being so obviously not Rwandese isn’t enough, being a foreign child carries me a long way through those inevitable cultural faux pas.

And, to be fair, my colleagues are in no way disrespectful or condescending to me. It’s just that they sometimes casually avoid trainings or workshops. No big deal, right?

"Please, I speakn't English." -H

We’re into our third week of the last term of the year and so far everything has been significantly better than both previous terms. A variety of things at school are finally starting to fall into place, and I’m feeling more comfortable teaching than I have since I’ve been here.

Because it’s difficult for students to find time to go to our new library (and because, let’s face it, they’re frightened) I decided I want to try having book stations in my classroom next week. In preparation for that, I’ve been taking my students to the library in small groups this week to give them some time to choose books they would like to see in the book stations.

I cannot even begin to express what an absolute joy it has been watching them look through the books. For one, books and libraries are so new to them that they have no real concept of trying to keep books in order or even of putting them on the shelves with the spines out. When I noticed this and did a mini-lesson on the importance of the books’ spines, they refused to trust the front cover as an acceptable place to find the name of a book. Again, because books are so new and their English is so basic, even my oldest students felt absolutely no shame in writing down Baby’s First Colors as a book they would like to read. Boys were writing down princess books, and girls were writing down tractor and machinery books. One student found a book with dialogues and speech bubbles and I watched as she recited the entire dialogue to herself, complete with facial expressions and everything.

I’ve also been doing exercises with my students in class to work on determining and improving their reading speed, and it’s been really exciting to see their enthusiasm and eagerness to beat the highest words-per-minute rate in the class.

Even with these gratifying improvements in the classroom, though, the system as a whole is certainly not without its frustrations.

Today, for example, I arrived at school a few minutes before 7, which is when classes are supposed to begin. I had planned a jeopardy-like game to review the verb tenses we’ve covered so far and had to wait 15 minutes to get tape from the office so I could tape the game cards onto the chalkboard. When I walked into class 15 minutes after it was supposed to have begun, only half of my students were there. Nonetheless, I began to divide them into teams so we could start the game. Shortly after they started moving to sit with their teams, I noticed that almost every student at school was actually standing outside of the classrooms. A few minutes later a teacher came into my classroom and either made an announcement or gave some orders. Since the teacher said everything in Kinyarwanda and either didn’t think or didn’t bother to tell me in English what had just been said, I had no idea why all my students were suddenly picking up their desks and taking them outside the classroom.

Several minutes of confusion later, I was able to find out from a student that they had been told to leave the classroom so a few students could clean it-which is why most of the students in the school were standing outside. Of course, not one of the students chosen to clean any of the classrooms was a boy. If you’re asking yourself whether or not this was really an appropriate time to stop all learning and clean, I’m right there with you.

Needless to say, the entire first period was lost. At that point I was down to one hour to teach this class a game they had never played before, as well as to make sure what little time they had to play actually did prepare them for the quiz at the end of the week.

Inevitably, a few minutes after teams were established and all the game cards were on the chalkboard, another teacher came to do a uniform check. Since half of my students were wearing jackets in the frigid, rainy weather, they had to leave. Perfect. We began the game with about half the amount of students each team had a few minutes before, and about halfway through the game the rest of the students, clueless about rules, points, and procedures, were allowed to join their teammates.

Later in the day when I stopped by a class to make an announcement about an after-school meeting, I walked into the classroom to find that the students were being read their rights. Which rights, I’m not completely sure. And why their rights are being read to them nine months into the school year is absolutely beyond me.

Here’s to a great third term, and almost a year in Rwanda!