Our Role

As Peace Corps Volunteers, we have three specific goals set forth by the Peace Corps. These are, vaguely:

to improve Namibians’ understanding of Americans,

to improve Americans’ understanding of Namibians,

to assist with development in Namibia in whatever way we can.

As a teaching volunteer, I have another set of goals. These include things like improving learners’ marks, improving teachers’ capacities for teaching effectively, improving management at the school and improving English and critical thinking skills among both learners and teachers. There are more, but you get the idea.

So, teaching volunteers are placed at schools where there is perceived to be a need. Schools where learners consistently underperform. The thought is that at these schools, learners probably are not getting the support they deserve from teaching staff, and teaching staff are probably not doing their jobs as far as showing up to school every day, teaching effectively, communicating ideas in English. It’s our job as volunteers to come in and do whatever we can to improve the situation, set a good example as a teacher, etc.

But what do I do when these common problems are not the problems faced by my school? It’s something that I’ve been struggling with, and I would absolutely love advice from anyone reading this!!!

Many other volunteers complain regularly about teachers who miss weeks of school at a time, or teachers who sit and do nothing rather than teaching at the front of the classroom. Teachers who don’t speak English well and therefore are not well equipped to help the learners pass their exams. Here’s the thing though—my community doesn’t suffer from these problems. My teachers, in fact, are a pretty amazing set of individuals. They care a TON about the learners, they come to school every day, they TEACH in school every day, and their English is actually very good.

Yet, I had a 15% pass rate on my recent end-of-term exams, among my grade 8 and 9 learners. These learners attend school every day, and most of them have at least 2 hours of mandatory study time every day. We taught every day during the term and reviewed before the exam. The struggle at our school right now is: why and how is teaching occurring, but learning is not happening?

Now, I know I’m a teaching volunteer, so my primary position is in the classroom. But if the reason I was sent here was to improve the pass rate of my learners, we need to figure this out. From talking to teachers, learners, community leaders, and church leaders, the best I can figure out: it’s a cultural problem, not a school problem. The culture in my region is not a culture that values education highly. The Nama people were herders, suffered under the German genocide in the early 20^th century, and after that faced apartheid. Most of the adults haven’t completed formal education past grade 5 or grade 8, and many of them honestly don’t see the need, since they subsistence farm for a living. Many kids don’t have frequent parental supervision, and parents definitely aren’t checking if they have finished their homework or if they are passing their classes. Many of them aren’t even checking if their children have eaten 3 meals in a day.

We recently hosted a “parent meeting” – we have one at the beginning of every term in order to try to keep a supportive school environment. 14 parents attended, and I have about 210 learners. This is the kind of support we are commonly receiving from the community.

My philosophy so far has been that probably I can make more of a difference by working with the community rather than spending all of my time in the classroom. Working with the young people here to stay busy and motivated (and be good role models for the kids and good future parents), working with parents, working with the community leaders. But I don’t know. How do you work within this kind of community and expect to make any kind of difference?