Happy Anniversary, Ethiopia

Six months ago today I landed in Ethiopia ready to take on one of the biggest adventures of my life, and wow, what a ride it’s been. When thinking about what I should post in honor of today’s anniversary, I decided to share a presentation on professional goal setting that I gave two weeks ago at the JSC mid-year seminar in Israel. Creating the presentation over the past few months gave me the opportunity to think through the successes and challenges I have faced over my first six months here, as well as what I want to do in the second-half of my fellowship. Unfortunately I couldn’t discuss all my goals and every aspect of my work, but instead just presented a case study on my experience teaching. Here it is.

Coming to Gondar, I knew that teaching was going to be tough. First of all, I had never really taught before, let alone in a developing country. Adding to this, I had read the blogs of the two fellows before me and knew that even getting a classroom of 70 teenage kids to pay attention was going to be a challenge, particularly when it seemed that many of them didn’t see how education could help them improve their lives. However, in the face of all of this, I went into the placement wanting to bring some creativity into the classroom –I would have them read simple plays out loud to improve their speaking skills and would show them episodes of Friends and the Wizard of Oz to help with their listening skills. I thought that through creativity I would make them care.

On one of my first few days in Gondar, Jason and I met with the principal and the head of the English department. I had a ton of questions for them: what should we be teaching, was it necessary to use the textbook, did we need to take attendance, how should we discipline the classes? These are the answers that I got: we should teach listening, speaking, and about American culture. Maybe we should use the textbook, but really, they found that with previous foreign teachers it was best if they did whatever they wanted, so we could teach whatever. We could take attendance if we wanted, but if we didn’t want to, it was fine. We could discipline the students; however, it was up to us. So basically, I was told to do whatever I wanted. Yet, in the coming weeks I would find that other teachers in the department would want to know which section of the textbook we were on because they felt it was important that we use the textbook, even if the administration did not. Despite this, we were pretty much left to our own devices when it came to teaching, so I could show those Friends episodes or play Jeopardy with the classes.

On the first day of class, Jason and I decided we would play an introductory game with the classes, having them move around the room learning things from one another. We stood in front of the class and explained the game: blank stares. We explained in different terms and jotted a few demonstrations on the board: blank stares. We demonstrated with each other: nothing. So, with a bit of disappointment, we skipped the game and moved on to teaching the class other responses to the question “how are you?” other than “I am fine” since that was the only thing that people seemed to say. We taught them “I am great,” “I am tired”, “I am awesome”, and after a bit of explaining and demonstrating, it seemed like many of the students caught on. The next week we returned, opening the class with “how are you?” and the whole class responded “I am fine.” We asked “just fine?” and they said“yes, just fine.” Apparently the lesson from the week before hadn’t really sunk in.

One section of grade nine at my school…and this photo couldn’t even fit all the students!
Photo many not be reproduced for any reason.

I abandoned my thoughts of play reading and TV watching and started focusing on less advanced but still creative approaches: using cut out pictures from magazines as a way for the students to practice describing people using adjectives, and arranging for American pen pals to help teach them about American culture and work on writing. But week after week, we would come back to the classes and ask them what we had learned the week before, and except for one or two students in every class, we would be met with blank stares and the continuation of mistakes that we had spent an entire lesson correcting the previous week. It didn’t seem to matter if the lesson was the most the creative we could think of or just straight out of the textbook, 98% of my 1,200 students didn’t seem to be learning anything.

Soon my goal shifted to wanting to solo teach, but I was really scared to try it. Of the two of us, Jason was the one with the English teaching experience and as a male (and a male who is really loud), he got more respect in the classroom and was able to more easily get angry at the class when they were disrespectful and quiet them down. When I got angry and yelled, I got laughed at. It felt like he would stand up and teach his part of the lesson and everyone would be quiet, but when it was my turn, the class would just explode into chatter. Even though I was discovering that I was pretty good at creative lesson planning, I felt like I would never be able to handle a class on my own. I soon found that teaching was exceptionally frustrating in ways that I could have never understood from the previous fellows’ blogs, and that I found it not at all fulfilling, which was problematic for my entire approach to my work, because for a while, teaching was the bulk of my work.

Then I noticed something. Before going into what it was, I should say that when I first arrived in Gondar, I was told that girls are told that it is unattractive for them to speak up, so many of them would not speak in class or would raise their hands and then when called on, would suddenly be overcome with shyness and would not speak. During the first class, very few of the girls would speak, but then would crowd around me in the break afterwards in order to ask questions. I was often asked in the classes whether I was married or whether I had a boyfriend (and why it was that I didn’t have a boyfriend, which was not a question I was expecting). Recently, a student asked me if I cooked and when I said yes, he asked if I cooked for Jason, a question that I am asked often. He seemed very surprised when I replied that I did not. He got the same answer when he asked if I made coffee for Jason. Again, shock.  Anyway, returning to teaching, as the weeks went by, when Jason would be teaching his section of the lesson, I would notice that many of the girls in each class would be watching me. When he would call on them, they would look at me, waiting for me to smile and nod to them to go ahead and answer. I realized that maybe I couldn’t creatively improve the English of all 1,200 kids that I teach, but there was something that I could do and had been doing since day one, without even trying. I could be a role model for my female students. I could stand in front of them as a woman with a master’s degree who was not married at 25, did not cook or clean for my male co-teacher, and could teach a class as an equal with my male teaching partner and demand the same attention and respect in the classroom as was given to him. Maybe the female students look at me as being completely nuts for not being married and maybe they think that they cannot be educated and unmarried at 25 as Ethiopians even though I can do it as an American. But I hope that maybe one or two of them will decide to approach their lives differently, strive for a higher level of education and career success, because they see it is possible.

This also led me to re-think who it was that I wanted to impact. In early November, Jason and I did a letter writing unit with all of the classes, having them write letters to sixth grade students at the inner city school in Philly where my friend is vice principal. For the lesson, we would do a listening activity on Philadelphia and then explain the project and have the students start. Some of the students would finish their letters and many would turn in letters that were just copies of the American letters they had been given, although we had said about a thousand times not to copy the letters but to respond. For those who did not finish, they were told to finish the letters at home and bring them back the next week. A handful of students did so. On the last day that we were doing the lesson, there was one girl, Rebeka, who didn’t finish her letter and asked if she could continue reading the American letter during recess. As we were finished with the lesson, I told her she could take it home and bring back her letter the following week. As it turns out, there was an unexpected change in our work and Jason and I did not return to the school for three more weeks. One of our first days back, Rebeka found me in the teacher’s lounge and gave me the letter that she had been carrying around, waiting for us to come back.

Rebka’s letter to her American pen pal that made me re-think who I was trying to impact

I read it –it was extremely well written, but more importantly, in the letter she wrote that she really wanted to practice speaking English, but had no one to practice with. The next day, she called to me from an open class window and when I came over, she wished me happy Christmas and handed me a Christmas card. I told her that I had read her letter and that if she wanted to practice speaking with me, we could always practice after class. She thanked me, and I realized that even if I made no impact on the other 1,199 students, I could at the very least make a difference for this one student who so wanted to learn, but felt like she couldn’t do so with her friends and family.

So now, rather than beating myself up for not being able to creatively change the education of all the kids I teach, I just focus on assisting those who want to learn. Don’t get me wrong, I still teach as though I can impact all of them because I hope that even if someone is pretending not to pay attention, maybe they are will pick up something from the lesson. Both in the classroom and out, I encourage and help the students who participate and show they really want to learn. I mentor the girls who started the girl’s leadership and empowerment club so as to be more than a role model and help them teach other girls about self-advocating and leadership. And by the way, my student Rebeka is one of the founding members of the club, despite being the youngest and the only founder who did not go to the Peace Corps camp last summer where local girls are taught how to talk about gender in their communities.

First meeting of the Gondar girls’ leadership and empowerment club
Photo may not be reproduced for any reason.

And I teach alone. When there are students who don’t want to learn and prefer to disrupt the entire class, I kick them out. I allow the students who want to learn to quiet their peers when they are being disrespectful and don’t scream and shout because apparently that leads to laughter instead of quiet. And you know what? I have found that as a solo teacher I don’t get any less respect than when I taught with Jason (actually I am starting to think I get more respect). I still find teaching to be extremely frustrating at times and am fully aware that I do not want a future career as a teacher, but I find teaching to be a bit more gratifying now that I am able to accomplish the goals that I set out for myself.

So there you have it. Coming back to Gondar from Israel was tough because all of the sudden I realized that I simultaneously have too much and not enough time left here. Creating goals for the next few months is easier this time around because I know what I’m facing; yet, I’ve also learned that new challenges can pop up when you least expect. As we say here, T.I.E. (This Is Ethiopia), you truly never know what to expect. With that in mind, happy six month anniversary, Ethiopia. Just like my students, sometimes you bring me so much pride and joy, but oftentimes, I just want to walk out and never see you again. Yet, for all these challenges, you’ve made me a stronger person who will be able to deal with whatever comes my way after this year is over. Here’s to part two, with all its successes and failures.