Model school, or vacation school, as the locals call it, is a Peace Corps ran school that lasts for roughly 3 weeks and ran July 31st – August 4th. I was assigned to teach 7th grade Animal Science, which I was very excited about. We were all split into grade clusters, mine being 7E and 7F. My cluster/group consisted of Abigail who taught algebra, Ly who taught geometry, and Carson who taught plant science and me. Model school is open to all of Kakata for 7-12th grade students. Each class was 45 min and school ran from 8 am-12:15 pm. I taught twice, but only made one lesson plan, so I started in 7E for 3rd period, and gave the same lesson to a different group of kids in 7F for 5th period. On the first day, everyone got a copy book, pen, pencil, eraser, and pencil sharpener, and at the completion of Model School they got a participation certificate from Peace Corps. The concept of going to school for 3 weeks to get a certificate is a concept probably loss on American children, but here getting a certificate was a huge deal.
Day one we went over our expectations for them as a group - my cluster decided on an acronym SCHOLAR, which stood for S= Shame free classroom, C= Challenge yourself, H=Honesty, O=Organized and prepared, L= Listen, A= Ask and answer questions, and R= Respect for everyone. We decided on a way to pass in and back papers (which was a mess and we dropped relatively quickly), how to raise your hand, how to ask to go to the bathroom (which was raising a peace sign in the air), and that discipline/cheating would be up to the individual teacher. I decided for discipline that I would give them a warning to stop the behavior, if they did not stop that behavior I would make them move desks, if that did not stop the behavior I would ask them to leave the classroom and stand outside. They were to stand outside until I had time to talk to them, tell them what they did wrong, why, have them apologize, and invite them back into the classroom. The idea was if we as a group kicked a child out a total of 3 times they would be kicked out of model school. We practiced our first lesson to each other in our cluster several times to help prepare us for when we were in front of our students. We would give our lesson in our groups/cluster and my cluster members would give me feedback in a complement sandwich - for those who don’t know what that is here is an example: you have a great teaching voice, your content was too advance and you need to cut some of it, you have good chalk management, you surround the negative with positive to help “the blow” of the negative. After practicing several times (almost too much) I felt very confident I was going to crush it (boy was I wrong).
The first day arrived and we went over SCHOLAR as a group and gave the ground rules and expectations for them. Everything went really well, everyone was well behaved, as most of them came from different schools, so they were nervous and anxious to see who they would know, and to make new connections. After going over expectations, it was time to go over our lessons, which we had practiced several times. I got up there and I previously decided I would start all my classes by saying: what are we today, the class would respond with: we are smart, strong, successful, ready to learn, then I would say I can’t hear you, WHAT ARE WE TODAY, to which they would yell, WE ARE SMART, STRONG, SUCCESSFUL, READY TO LEARN, I would say, okay glad to hear, and we would start our lesson. I decided for content to go over living and non-living (in animals). This involved going over and having them write the 7 characteristics of living, doing an example which was a small graph with the characteristics, where we would check all 7 boxes for a variety of animals, showing it had to have all 7 to be living. This should have been a quick 45 min session but literacy and writing is a HUGE issue here in Liberia, everyone copies things painfully slow, so I cut 99% of the content during session. I only had them write the 7 questions they can ask for living things (animals) - does it grow, does it eat, does it give out waste, does it have babies, does it breathe, does it respond, and does it move. Even after cutting almost all the content they had to write, the lesson and examples still took 2 full class periods. The rest of content for model school consisted of: the cell (1 day- by cell I mean I taught nucleus, cytoplasm, and cell membrane), vertebrates (2 days), invertebrates (2 days), sexual reproduction day (1 day), malaria day (1 day), puberty (2 days), review (1 day) and test day (1 day).
The anxious/nervous and well-behaved students I was so excited to teach faded away (as I expected). The classes quickly got reputations (from us teachers) as the “good class” and the” bad class” (although they were not bad- but they be acting frisky on me). Kids would raise their hands for the weirdest reasons! I’ve never met a group of students who had to, yes, HAD TO, eat, drink, pee, and walk around as often as these kids had to. They would also nitpick you for the strangest reasons, if my dot to my I was not dark enough they would raise their hand and ask what a certain word was, most of the time walk to the board to also show you that you did not dot your I. If you did not put the subject at the top of the chalk board someone would interrupt your lesson to tell you to write Animal Science at the top of the board, as if they didn’t know what class they were currently in, and god forbid you didn’t erase the previous subject from the board. It would be pure shock and awe once you started teaching animal science and plant science was still written at the top. Telling students to take notes, especially for 5th period, was always met with exasperated signs and eye rolls. Having students sit up, and not flop their bodies all over the desk was also a struggle, there were many classes where I would tell them if I must stand and teach then they need to at least sit up and act like they were paying attention, which would be met with more sighs and eye rolls. Then I would have to go around and tap people, or do the death stare, until they decided to lift their flopping bodies, and half lay down anyway, by propping their heads up with their hands. There were 3 times my class played chicken with me- I gave them group work to do and needed to explain it, they were not listening/ not working together, so we stopped what we were doing and I made them answer questions like: what is respect, what does being quiet mean, what is teamwork. We reviewed them, and I then lectured on what it means to be respectful in class, told them I was disappointed, and we moved on. The next time we worked together and it went poorly I collected the group work, and we all sat in silence for the duration of the time the assignment would take (5 min), then the next day we tried again, it went poorly so we sat for 7 minutes. I warned them every time I would add time to our wait time, if that meant we stayed over, we would stay over, and that they as a class had lost the privilege of group work (all which they were aware would happen if they kept misbehaving). Luckily that was a game of chicken I won- well, I sort of won, doing that meant my classes were running at a different pace, which is extremely annoying to deal with, because you should think of an extra project or something to even them out, so you can make sure they are learning the same content. One of my favorite things though, is the pure shock of a student when you move them. I can look at a kid and be like stop talking, then when they don’t stop say, stop talking or ill move you, and when it finally gets to moving them, they look around the room as if they don’t know you are talking to them, until they are finally like who, me? (Uh- YES) Then the sloth like movement of gathering their things, sighing continuously, looking at you like you have just punished them out of nowhere, walking to the new desk (still sighing), to sloth like unpack their things, all the while being in absolute awe that you had the audacity to move them, is hilarious and frustrating all in one.
At the end of model school, we held a graduation ceremony. We had given them the unit test the day before so we could return it to them. They were to come to the ceremony, and after meet us in the classroom to get their certificate, tests, and food. The food was the second most important thing to the kids. I had a conversation (brought up from concerned children) with the entire class the day before on how they needed to eat a lot because they were dry (skinny) and needed to get fat (fat is self-explanatory). Everyone came (they could invite a parent) and the top boy and girl from every class got a small gift and the top boy and girl with the highest grade in all of model school got a set of books and some other small gifts/school related things. 7E/7F had the top boy AND girl of all model school! Some PC joked that we rigged it, to which I we responded that it wasn’t our fault that we were just the best teachers! Ha.
I remember the day in college meeting with my advisor, and her looking at me and asking if I wanted to gear my degree for teaching, I remember looking at her and saying, HELL NO. There is nothing I wanted to do less then to make no money and teach ha-ha- flash forward to me joining Peace Corps, making no money, and teaching in an area where the resources are so scarce that you only have chalk and a chalkboard at your disposal. I was very skeptical about teaching, after completion of model school, I can honestly say it was a great experience. Teaching here in Liberia is not easy. The students (at least in 7th grade) read at a 2nd /3rd grade level, they haven’t mastered comprehension or critical thinking, you don’t have power/electricity (meaning your classroom in the AM is straight up dark), you don’t have simple school supplies, you can’t easily print worksheets or assignments for them, there are no labs or lab supplies for you to use, they don’t have books (or if they do they are forced to only use it in the library), and there is a language barrier ( Liberian English and standard English are NOT the same). Model school however, much like site exposure, gave me a moment of yes, I can do this and I can do this well... or well enough ha.
Random Update:
Princess went to model school and was my insight to the student world. She told me that if my class is laughing when I’m turned around, and I heard my name, that they were making fun of me, and I should tell them that I am not their business/ not to discuss me. She told me that I could not wear trousers because everyone would make fun of me/discuss me. She told me how there was a teacher they laughed at a lot, she assured me she never said anything, but that she could laugh. She told me that if people were to spy (cheat) they would use their phone, have an extra piece of paper and throw questions around the room when the teacher isn’t looking, or a friend would prop their paper as if they are reviewing it for the person next to them or behind them to spy off of. She also used another peace corps member who doesn’t shave her legs to shame me for shaving my legs. She was like I saw her and she is beautiful, and she doesn’t cut her legs, and would look at me and be like why do you cut yours? ha-ha. To which I would be like I just do, and she was like, well you should stop, hers looks better than yours ha-ha.
Day one we went over our expectations for them as a group - my cluster decided on an acronym SCHOLAR, which stood for S= Shame free classroom, C= Challenge yourself, H=Honesty, O=Organized and prepared, L= Listen, A= Ask and answer questions, and R= Respect for everyone. We decided on a way to pass in and back papers (which was a mess and we dropped relatively quickly), how to raise your hand, how to ask to go to the bathroom (which was raising a peace sign in the air), and that discipline/cheating would be up to the individual teacher. I decided for discipline that I would give them a warning to stop the behavior, if they did not stop that behavior I would make them move desks, if that did not stop the behavior I would ask them to leave the classroom and stand outside. They were to stand outside until I had time to talk to them, tell them what they did wrong, why, have them apologize, and invite them back into the classroom. The idea was if we as a group kicked a child out a total of 3 times they would be kicked out of model school. We practiced our first lesson to each other in our cluster several times to help prepare us for when we were in front of our students. We would give our lesson in our groups/cluster and my cluster members would give me feedback in a complement sandwich - for those who don’t know what that is here is an example: you have a great teaching voice, your content was too advance and you need to cut some of it, you have good chalk management, you surround the negative with positive to help “the blow” of the negative. After practicing several times (almost too much) I felt very confident I was going to crush it (boy was I wrong).
The first day arrived and we went over SCHOLAR as a group and gave the ground rules and expectations for them. Everything went really well, everyone was well behaved, as most of them came from different schools, so they were nervous and anxious to see who they would know, and to make new connections. After going over expectations, it was time to go over our lessons, which we had practiced several times. I got up there and I previously decided I would start all my classes by saying: what are we today, the class would respond with: we are smart, strong, successful, ready to learn, then I would say I can’t hear you, WHAT ARE WE TODAY, to which they would yell, WE ARE SMART, STRONG, SUCCESSFUL, READY TO LEARN, I would say, okay glad to hear, and we would start our lesson. I decided for content to go over living and non-living (in animals). This involved going over and having them write the 7 characteristics of living, doing an example which was a small graph with the characteristics, where we would check all 7 boxes for a variety of animals, showing it had to have all 7 to be living. This should have been a quick 45 min session but literacy and writing is a HUGE issue here in Liberia, everyone copies things painfully slow, so I cut 99% of the content during session. I only had them write the 7 questions they can ask for living things (animals) - does it grow, does it eat, does it give out waste, does it have babies, does it breathe, does it respond, and does it move. Even after cutting almost all the content they had to write, the lesson and examples still took 2 full class periods. The rest of content for model school consisted of: the cell (1 day- by cell I mean I taught nucleus, cytoplasm, and cell membrane), vertebrates (2 days), invertebrates (2 days), sexual reproduction day (1 day), malaria day (1 day), puberty (2 days), review (1 day) and test day (1 day).
The anxious/nervous and well-behaved students I was so excited to teach faded away (as I expected). The classes quickly got reputations (from us teachers) as the “good class” and the” bad class” (although they were not bad- but they be acting frisky on me). Kids would raise their hands for the weirdest reasons! I’ve never met a group of students who had to, yes, HAD TO, eat, drink, pee, and walk around as often as these kids had to. They would also nitpick you for the strangest reasons, if my dot to my I was not dark enough they would raise their hand and ask what a certain word was, most of the time walk to the board to also show you that you did not dot your I. If you did not put the subject at the top of the chalk board someone would interrupt your lesson to tell you to write Animal Science at the top of the board, as if they didn’t know what class they were currently in, and god forbid you didn’t erase the previous subject from the board. It would be pure shock and awe once you started teaching animal science and plant science was still written at the top. Telling students to take notes, especially for 5th period, was always met with exasperated signs and eye rolls. Having students sit up, and not flop their bodies all over the desk was also a struggle, there were many classes where I would tell them if I must stand and teach then they need to at least sit up and act like they were paying attention, which would be met with more sighs and eye rolls. Then I would have to go around and tap people, or do the death stare, until they decided to lift their flopping bodies, and half lay down anyway, by propping their heads up with their hands. There were 3 times my class played chicken with me- I gave them group work to do and needed to explain it, they were not listening/ not working together, so we stopped what we were doing and I made them answer questions like: what is respect, what does being quiet mean, what is teamwork. We reviewed them, and I then lectured on what it means to be respectful in class, told them I was disappointed, and we moved on. The next time we worked together and it went poorly I collected the group work, and we all sat in silence for the duration of the time the assignment would take (5 min), then the next day we tried again, it went poorly so we sat for 7 minutes. I warned them every time I would add time to our wait time, if that meant we stayed over, we would stay over, and that they as a class had lost the privilege of group work (all which they were aware would happen if they kept misbehaving). Luckily that was a game of chicken I won- well, I sort of won, doing that meant my classes were running at a different pace, which is extremely annoying to deal with, because you should think of an extra project or something to even them out, so you can make sure they are learning the same content. One of my favorite things though, is the pure shock of a student when you move them. I can look at a kid and be like stop talking, then when they don’t stop say, stop talking or ill move you, and when it finally gets to moving them, they look around the room as if they don’t know you are talking to them, until they are finally like who, me? (Uh- YES) Then the sloth like movement of gathering their things, sighing continuously, looking at you like you have just punished them out of nowhere, walking to the new desk (still sighing), to sloth like unpack their things, all the while being in absolute awe that you had the audacity to move them, is hilarious and frustrating all in one.
At the end of model school, we held a graduation ceremony. We had given them the unit test the day before so we could return it to them. They were to come to the ceremony, and after meet us in the classroom to get their certificate, tests, and food. The food was the second most important thing to the kids. I had a conversation (brought up from concerned children) with the entire class the day before on how they needed to eat a lot because they were dry (skinny) and needed to get fat (fat is self-explanatory). Everyone came (they could invite a parent) and the top boy and girl from every class got a small gift and the top boy and girl with the highest grade in all of model school got a set of books and some other small gifts/school related things. 7E/7F had the top boy AND girl of all model school! Some PC joked that we rigged it, to which I we responded that it wasn’t our fault that we were just the best teachers! Ha.
I remember the day in college meeting with my advisor, and her looking at me and asking if I wanted to gear my degree for teaching, I remember looking at her and saying, HELL NO. There is nothing I wanted to do less then to make no money and teach ha-ha- flash forward to me joining Peace Corps, making no money, and teaching in an area where the resources are so scarce that you only have chalk and a chalkboard at your disposal. I was very skeptical about teaching, after completion of model school, I can honestly say it was a great experience. Teaching here in Liberia is not easy. The students (at least in 7th grade) read at a 2nd /3rd grade level, they haven’t mastered comprehension or critical thinking, you don’t have power/electricity (meaning your classroom in the AM is straight up dark), you don’t have simple school supplies, you can’t easily print worksheets or assignments for them, there are no labs or lab supplies for you to use, they don’t have books (or if they do they are forced to only use it in the library), and there is a language barrier ( Liberian English and standard English are NOT the same). Model school however, much like site exposure, gave me a moment of yes, I can do this and I can do this well... or well enough ha.
Random Update:
Princess went to model school and was my insight to the student world. She told me that if my class is laughing when I’m turned around, and I heard my name, that they were making fun of me, and I should tell them that I am not their business/ not to discuss me. She told me that I could not wear trousers because everyone would make fun of me/discuss me. She told me how there was a teacher they laughed at a lot, she assured me she never said anything, but that she could laugh. She told me that if people were to spy (cheat) they would use their phone, have an extra piece of paper and throw questions around the room when the teacher isn’t looking, or a friend would prop their paper as if they are reviewing it for the person next to them or behind them to spy off of. She also used another peace corps member who doesn’t shave her legs to shame me for shaving my legs. She was like I saw her and she is beautiful, and she doesn’t cut her legs, and would look at me and be like why do you cut yours? ha-ha. To which I would be like I just do, and she was like, well you should stop, hers looks better than yours ha-ha.