Richard, my housemate, is an International volunteer working for an umbrella organization for NGO’s. So he does work for all members in Nasarawa State. One of the NGO’s is fighting for a community school to become a government school. It is the secondary school in Eggon Hills. There are 8 communities in the hills whom together build a secondary school. Right now the communities pay the teachers, all maintenance, books everything. Quite expensive, although the teachers do earn even less then government teachers. The principal, Manasseh, invited Richard to come and visit the school for a second time. This time Manasseh asked him to bring more International Volunteers, so he could pass on the information to other ears and other channels. When was the last weekend I didn’t travel at all? I don’t remember to be honest. Last weekend I was at least the Saturday in Lafia. I have had my first tennis lesson that morning, knowing that the next lesson wouldn’t be within the next two weeks, because of work and parties. So where did I go this time then? With whom and why?
We were supposed to go with 5 international volunteers and some people from local NGO’s, in the end only Richard, Teddy and I took the challenge of a 3 hour walk through Eggon hills. Manasseh, some local kids and a teacher were waiting for us at the start of the trail. The kids were there to carry the pure water, Manasseh to lead the way and encourage us. It wasn’t a simple walk and after a while I was really clad that I did some tracking in Kagoro and Obudu. The views were magnificent!! Around every corner, behind every rock a new surprise.
We started walking around 4 pm and arrived at Manasseh’s house around 7 pm. It’s was just starting to get dark. At the house we installed ourselves in our rooms. Teddy and Richard together in a room that was built for teachers to come and stay. Not yet finished but a nice way to make the stay for a teacher more comfortable. I did get a room in the house, probably the room of Manasseh’s oldest son. That night was an early night. Exhausted!!!
On Monday morning Manasseh gave a briefing of what he wanted us to do at the school. As we were planning on staying for 2 days we could take our time to observe the teachers today and maybe prepare some lessons. Then we could give some lessons in the afternoon or on Tuesday. When we arrived in the school around 8 am there was only 1 teacher present. 1 teacher for secondary school and none for primary school!!! Problem! Change of plans: If we please could arrange some lessons for this morning. No big problem for me, as I am a teacher, slightly bigger problem for Teddy and Richard. Luckily they could find some quick maths to teach. At the same time a good way to check the level of maths.
My first lesson that day was about mapping and locating. I drew a map of the world on the black board and asked the pupils of SSS1 and 2 to copy it in their notebooks. They were stunned. They never had to draw something, especially not a map of the world. I could see it in the way they started drawing the continents. Next part of the assignment was locating 6 continents in the map. First question; which continents are there? After the puzzle of naming the continents and putting them on the right spot on the map, I asked them to locate Nigeria, India, The United Kingdom and The Netherlands. Luckily the pupils knew they had to be in Africa but where……… they had no clue. After helping them with a compass, because they knew it was West Africa, a girl could place it in the right spot. Everybody can probably guess that the other countries didn’t end up at the right spot on the map. After explaining why maps and locating are important I moved on to a subject closer to home: Vegetation zone in Africa. As locating is really important at geography, I drew a map of Africa and started drawing the vegetation zones. With every zone I located in the map I told a little story to sketch a picture in the minds of the pupils. They were looking at me as I was speaking Spanish. They were not able to make images in their heads because they had never seen examples of images. A reason for me to get the pupils outside and get them looking around and moving around. I drew the map of Africa in the sand and asked the pupils to move from on zone to the other. In every zone I told them to pretend to be the vegetation in the zone. So, i.e. rainforest with big trees and leafs, making yourself big and arms spread out.
In JSS1 I wanted to play a game to let them learn the different parts of a flowery plant. I drew a picture of a plant and wanted the pupils to form groups. · Culture shock one:Kids didn’t move on their own, they formed no groups, they were just sitting and looking at me like I came from Mars. After I made the groups and turn the tables a little, I asked the groups to number the members 1 till 4. Another 10 min past in silence, again they were looking at me like I came from Mars. Teddy how was visiting my lesson, and part of one of the groups, tried to get his group to organize themselves. Finally after 30 minutes we were playing a memory/drawing game.
· Culture shock two: Kids were not able to look at a picture, store it in their heads and draw it in their own notebook. Lot of the drawings of these 12+ year olds were like drawings of a 4 year old in The Netherlands!
· Culture shock three: After the game I wanted to test the memory and drew the flower on the chalkboard, put lines at several parts and wrote the names. After the recap I whipped away the names and asked pupils to come forward to write a name at the right spot in the drawing. Most of the boys, but also some girls, could write! They had spent 6 years in school, past 6 classes and still weren’t able to write letters!
Barbara, Anneke, Helma and Dorien and everybody else teaching creative subjects I now know how important it is to develop creativity and creative thinking in an early age! I’ll never underestimate any of the creative subjects in school again!!!!
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