Model School and beyond

Model school is a time to get to know your teaching style and gauge what kind of a teacher you want to be. I discovered I’m probably going to be a strict German time-Nazi who really likes grammar rules and their accompanying charts. Being at a boarding school is only going to help me achieve this.

Teaching, as much as I feared it in the beginning, isn’t as intimidating anymore as I thought it would be. My first time stepping in front of my S1 class (see below) felt fine; I wasn’t scared, nervous, or stumbling to find words. As time progressed I found my footing and what worked for me and my classes (each week we taught a different level, S1-S3 only though). During the whole of model school we co-taught, which was a nice crutch to fall on once in a while. Class started at 8am and would be go straight through until 1030am.

Not going to go in depth on what happened, but here are some highlights: classes were roughly 30-45 students (in another village some trainees had 70), ages ranged from 10-30 (when the genocide happened many had to drop out of school and because education is now free people are returning), creativity and independent thought do not exist in this country, Pree (my co-teacher) was asked if she was a spinster, I was asked how many children I have (not if), in my S3 class one girl kept making sentences about how handsome I was, my last lesson I taught them the lyrics to Young MC’s Bust a Move. It was a complete hit.

The only thing of consequence to happen in the last month after model school was that we all had our language proficiency interviews and final interviews to assess if we would be recommended to be sworn in as Volunteers. The morning that the LPI’s started was tense and nerve racking. People walked out and felt like they wanted to do nothing more than cry. I can’t remember how many times I said, “Simbumva” (I don’t understand) and “Simbizi” (I don’t know). But alas, Peace Corps has deemed my language abilities to be intermediate low. I honestly think I am actually intermediate mid. I just had performance anxiety. I am decent enough to have basic conversations with my host family and I can conjugate verbs like it’s my job. But once I am at site I am going to start in on learning French, so we’ll see how much more Kinyarwanda I learn. I hope to maintain what I have at least. The final interview went swimmingly well, praise Jeebus!, and now I will be a PCV as of Thursday December 15, 2011!

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There are three levels to Rwandan schools, with the last just starting to be implemented as the country moves from free 9 years basic education to 12.

P1-P6, more or less our elementary school

S1-S3, more or less our middle school

S4-S6, more or less our high school