We're Official!

I’m proud to announce that all 35 members of PC Nam group 36 were sworn in as official Peace Corps Volunteers on Thursday, 20 Sep 2012! We’ve officially started our 2 years of service as PCVs! 

Since then I've just been in Tses, minus a few-hour excursion to my shopping town in Keetmanshoop. 

I've been shadowing Barbara, the volunteer who's been here for 2 years (but is leaving in 2.5 weeks?!), and other Namibian teachers, to learn more about our school here in Tses. It's really very interesting how different schools are within Namibia, and even more so how different Namibian vs. American schools are.

Yesterday I met my "host family" - I live at the school hostel, but there is a family in town who I will hang out with sometimes after school and on the weekends. The father is on the school board for my school, St. Therese, and we spent a few hours yesterday talking about the school system, learners, teachers, the village community, etc. It was really nice!

This week is also the 85th anniversary of the primary school that is next-door to our school. There have been a bunch of events in the evening, from a gospel music night last night to a gala dinner on Friday. It's cool to see everyone out and gathered together in the evening! (plus let's be real, I'm not gonna turn down an evening of real music!)

Thanks to everyone who has been keeping in touch! I love hearing from all of you, and now that I'm at site I should have more time (and internet access) to respond better to you. Sending love from Namibia!

A Model School and the Nam education system

So I’m still backtracking here, but the week after site visit (about a month ago), we ran “Model School” for a week. The learners were on their 2-week long holiday between terms (their terms run roughly Jan-April, May-Aug, Sep-Nov), and we basically bribed them with free food, notebooks, and pens to come to school for one of those weeks so that we could practice teaching in a safe environment.

Model School was quite an experience for all of us, I think. Like everything, schools here are exactly the same as schools in the US, and also nothing like schools in the US. We were lucky that we had smaller classes (since it wasn’t real school), but the minimum class size in Namibia is about 30 learners. Even dealing with our small classes of 12-20 students was a challenge, so it’s hard to imagine teaching to a class of 40 or so learners, as some teachers do.

I think one of the biggest challenges that Janine (the volunteer I was co-teaching with) and I faced was getting the learners to THINK. Even though the learners who came voluntarily to Model School tended to like school already, the classes they are used to are different than the classes we want to teach. The Namibian government really values education, and is putting a great deal of effort and funding into the educational system. (which is wonderful!!) However, there are still a few kinks to be worked out. Part of this is similar to the problems in the US – lots of mandatory tests mean that teachers sometimes teach to the test, and learners memorize facts so that they will pass. Then there is the added problem of “automatic promotion”, which prevents learners from being held back even if they fail a grade (passing is 40%, which is a whole other problem). This all adds up to a lot of teachers reciting facts, and a lot of learners memorizing facts, without much critical thinking about what is actually being done.

Seeing this in classrooms was a bit frustrating for us. It was interesting that the grade 6 learners seemed to be able to think for themselves much more than the grade 8 learners initially, and you wonder if this isn’t because they have been exposed to the educational system for fewer years. But happily, we found that even the older students definitely have the capacity for critical thinking! Even by the end of the week that we were with them, once the grade 8 learners realized what we wanted them to do, they were much more willing to risk guesses at questions and try to come up with their own solutions to new problems than when we started teaching them. It was really amazing to see this transformation just in a week, when we set new expectations for them.

This raises interesting questions, though. The Namibian government is trying desperately to improve education, and rigorous syllabi and frequent testing do seem like reasonable ways to try to improve academic performance. Where is the line, though, between high standards to encourage high performance and so much governmental oversight that it hinders performance? Or is it the teachers? We have seen again and again that teachers are not necessarily trained to foster critical thinking. And at least by the American way of thinking, corporal punishment in classrooms is not a way to encourage free thinking and academic honesty…

Anyway, model school brought up lots of difficult issues and gave us lots to think about! I’ve just outlined the interesting results here; don’t let me make you think it was all bad. It was great to get to know some of the Namibian learners, work with them, and see their progress over just a week. Plus, our classes were adorable. picture (our grade 6 learners) below.

I'm sure I will be making lots of comparisons to my school in Tses! For now I'm still feeling out my school and the learners. Everyone here is really great, but when you get 35 or so learners in a classroom it gets a little rough to handle. I'm enjoying my week so far though, I'm shadowing Barbara as well as some of the Namibian teachers for a few weeks just to get a feel for how things work at the school. More to come!

Tses, part II

So, sorry I've been so terrible at actually updating this. We've been so so busy! I'm gonna backtrack though, to a few weeks ago when we went to visit our permanent sites for the first time. I'll be going back to Tses for good this Friday, and then I'll be there for the whole 2 years!!! 

 The Tses welcome sign! Somewhere on Facebook, I also have pictures of the sign with Barbara—the group 32 PCV I’ll be replacing. The junior secondary school has had volunteers, either Peace Corps or World Teach, for the last 10-15 years. The associated primary school/hostel also gets 2 German volunteers every year, who we usually end up befriending.

Upon my arrival in Tses on Saturday, I was intrigued to find that it is both exactly like, and nothing like, my expectations. The part of Tses that you might call the “downtown” (downvillage?) is something akin to a town square, I guess? There’s a shop where you can buy the essentials but not much more, two bars/clubs, a gas station, and a barbershop. Maybe a few other things too, but you get the picture. Side note: at least one of the clubs, the gas station, and the shop are owned by the same white South African woman. Which is pretty weird considering that those probably see half of the business done in the whole village. I saw two cars and three donkey carts while we were there. There are maybe 50 houses in ‘town’; then there are 5 locations, or separate shantytown-like neighborhoods on the outskirts of Tses.

The red-door structures are flush toilets that the village council installed for every home in this location last year. I’m still trying to find out who the sponsor was (we think it was someone from out of the country). The juxtaposition of these permanent structures with tents or corrugated metal shacks looks pretty silly, but the project was a huge deal in terms of sanitation and definitely worth it!

Outside of even the locations, there are lots of farms. Anywhere you go around Tses, there seem to be stray goats/sheep/donkeys/cows/horses/chickens wandering around. Nobody here really farms vegetables or grains, but there are definitely lots of animals!

In terms of the landscape, Tses is actually more diverse than you might expect. The Fish River (above) flows about 20km out of the village. Another few hundred km south, it turns into the Fish River Canyon, which is comparable to the Grand Canyon in the US (and we’re definitely hoping to hike it sometime while we’re in country)! There is also a big mountain structure that may or may not be a volcano (nobody seems to know), hot springs, and… well, lots and lots of desert.

There are a few sand dunes just to the south of Tses. Apparently there’s something special about dune sand? Construction will start on the Tses glass factory next year, and it’s expected to bring in about 8000 people eventually. Kind of a big deal when the population of Tses right now is estimated to be under 2000.

My school, St. Therese, is a former mission school and is still sort-of associated with the church next door. St. Therese is a lower secondary school, so we teach grades 8-10. Most of the learners stay in the hostel by the school (where I sort-of live, but in a separate building). Learners may live at the hostel if their families live far out of town, or if they qualify as OVCs—orphaned and vulnerable children. Nearly all of the learners attending St. Therese are OVCs, which 1) is crazy to imagine! and 2) means there is a definite lack of support from home/parents. But, it sounds like that’s pretty much the case with all Namibian learners regardless…

Needless to say, I'm both excited and terrified to move back to Tses for the next 2 years. I'm very grateful that Barbara will be there to show me the ropes for the first month or so, and also that all of my colleagues speak English! (since it sounds like that's not the case in all of the schools.) I'll keep you updated!