Something that I have noticed as my first year as a professional volunteer teacher comes to an end is that teachers are not very appreciated. Teachers have to work long days in the classroom and then spend the rest of their time planning lessons and grading. After all of that it’s hard to care enough to want to run a club or coach a sport. That is why no one coaches basketball at my school, but the b-ball court is in pretty bad condition as of late. There is actually only a coach for soccer. I think it takes a lot of work to be good at any job, but most other jobs will have bonuses and overtime or at least pay better than teaching. Teachers also have administration that will make them work harder or get in the way of them doing their job at all. There have been so many times when I have been ready to go teach and we have a surprise meeting about nothing.
For this reason and maybe more teaching is looked at as a temporary job in Rwanda. This year three (including myself) started at the beginning of the year and are finishing it, two have come and gone, three have left for better paying jobs, three who started after the school year started (two just started at the beginning of this term), and one is brought in on weekends to make up for another teacher who is too ‘old and can’t work all of the hours that are required’ (this teacher just won an award – I can’t stand this guy, he doesn’t put any effort into teaching. During exam week there was a day between the elective exams and main subject exams and I was going to have a review for the Math and English exams, but this guy gives a quiz. During exam week he gave a quiz. I am sure that its because he didn’t have enough to make grades for the term. I was only able to review math. Then when I turned in my grades to him for the term he asked me for the grades for the whole year and I didn’t know I needed that, he then calls me lazy and starts talking about me to the other teachers. I can’t understand everything that you’re saying man, but I can tell when you are talking about me). So overall the school added three teachers this year. Of the 18 teachers who have worked here over the last year 12 of them were not working here the year before. Of the six who have been here for longer than I have I can tell that only three have been here for much longer than that (one of them being the award winner), and I know that they will not be here much longer because they are removing lower secondary from this school in the next two years and they all teach lower secondary. Another reason they won’t be teachers much longer is the Ministry of Education is enforcing teachers to have certain qualifications and none of these three have these. In fact, I met someone who works for the Ministry of Education who told me that 50% of secondary school teachers in Rwanda are not qualified to be teaching. The standards are not even that high. All they have to have done is either gone to secondary school for teaching, or go to a teacher training school (I don’t know how involved that is). There is teacher training for unqualified teachers during breaks primarily to learn English that from what I understand most teachers choose to skip. I wouldn’t be qualified to be a teacher in America, but here since I have a bachelor’s degree I am one of the most qualified people working there. There is one guy who goes to school on the weekends in Kigali to get a bachelor’s in teaching and two who go to Uganda to get masters and both of them are getting their masters so they can get better jobs than teaching.
I recently met some VSO volunteers who just started in Byumba, Leslie and Steve. Leslie will be training teachers and Steve will train headmasters. They are much more qualified than I am. They have worked in schools for as long as I have been alive and now they decide to come to volunteer in Africa. Doing that when you retire would be hard to want to do. They deserve to take it easy, but here they are doing something that is really hard. Pretty impressive, I hope they can accomplish a lot. I hope they can at least change teacher methodology enough that they don’t consider it enough to just copy notes from a textbook and then rewrite that on the board for the students to copy into their notebooks with little to no explanation. I haven’t been very successful in changing this mentality.
The administration has not changed much though. Only the headmaster changed because the old one was not qualified so he was replaced. I really like the headmaster. He is pushing the school and teachers to improve and he is the reason for some of the turnover in teachers.
I wrote that when I was attending a ceremony for International Teachers Appreciation Day. For International Teachers Appreciation Day there was no school and instead all of the teachers from Kaniga sector (a sector is like a county) met at my school to celebrate. The ceremony started two and a half late, but I anticipated that so I came an hour and a half late kinda hoping I would be late, but it started later than I had expected. Keeping time is just not all that important here. Lucy’s school also held a ceremony and hers started four hours late.
The ceremony included singing and dancing by students, long speeches, presentation of awards and finally a meal. When I watch my students perform all that I think about is if they can learn how to do this so well then why aren’t they better at math and English. Its cool that they like dancing and they are very good at it.
The next event that the school held was the second edition of the backyard brawl, another sports day with Rushaki. This time it was in Mulindi. Lucy didn’t come because she was at the new group of volunteer’s training. I however was there but I didn’t go until after they had played handball and started basketball. They wanted me to play basketball with them again, but I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about considering how bad we were beaten last time. I just watched and cheered. Everyone kept asking me why I wasn’t playing so I made like 10 different excuses. It was raining and no one told when I should be there were my best ones. We lost at basketball and I wouldn’t have made a difference. Just doesn’t seem fair when we play bball. Rushaki has a really nice basketball court thanks to Scott the volunteer there before Lucy and the closest basketball court to my school is 45 minute walk up a hill. You have to really want to play to go there. We did win at soccer though which was the main event. So take that Rushaki.
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