One Step at a Time: A Peace Corps Story: The Ethiopian Classroom

As I’m sure many people can imagine an Ethiopian classroom is not at all the same as an American classroom (speaking strictly about public school in both countries). For my practicum teaching I was in a primary school in Butajira and here are some of the things I observed:

1. There is no electricity in the classrooms so when it is cloudy or even worse, when it storms it gets very dark (I had to teach on one such day and it does not create a great learning environment)

2. The roof is made of tin therefore when it rains it gets extremely loud and you have to yell for the students to hear you. Usually when it rains most of students stop paying attention to the lesson.

3. Some of the classrooms had no doors.

4. Each classroom had an old and used chalkboard – writing with chalk is not simple. First, it is messy and gets all over your clothes. Second, if you’re not careful when you write your arm can erase part of what you wrote before. Third, chalk breaks easily.

5 5. The desks are all very old and small. They are long rather than wide and I have seen up to four students at a single desk.

6. The floors and walls are cement. Some of the walls are not painted so it looks more like a prison and the floors are extremely dirty. There are no janitors here so the classrooms and the school compound never gets clean.

7. Many students will come to class without paper (or what they call their exercise books) or something to write with. During practicum we were told to kick students out if they did not come prepared. I partially understand this. This is school so students have to come prepared to learn however I have the feeling that some of them could not afford a pen or exercise book. The few materials that I saw were in terrible condition.

8. Students’ level of English ranges from not being able to speak, write, and comprehend the language to being able to understand all the teacher’s directions. This range exists in all the grades we taught (Grade 3 – Grade 8) making it challenging to plan lessons that will help all the students.

Peace Corps gave us one flip chart paper and two pieces of construction paper (half the size of the flip chart) each day. Our supplies did not make it to the end of practicum so we had to get creative and reuse some material, use the flip charts from our previous lessons, write on the back or cut parts of the flip chart that hadn’t been written on. At first it was a bit frustrating because how were we supposed to plan a creative lesson with visual aids with so little supplies. It was an important part of practicum however because there’s a good chance that when we get to our sites we will have fewer materials than the little bit we received for practicum.

I have a newfound respect for teachers after getting a taste of all the work that goes into lesson planning. And even after lesson planning there’s no guarantee that your class will go according to plan. I’ve found that even with a good lesson plan, there’s a good chance that the Ethiopian students will not understand me. I’ve had to repeat directions and rephrase my explanations the best I could because the students did not understand my English. Sometimes I had to think of a whole new lesson within the first ten minutes of class and pretty much throw my lesson plan out the window because the students had no idea what I was teaching. In some of my other lessons I had the opposite problem where I found that students already knew everything I had planned so I pretty much had to improvise there as well. Basically, when you’re dealing with any classroom you can never be exactly sure of how well it will go so it’s good to plan extra material just to be on the same side. Also, these were not our students and we were only with them for a short time so it was difficult to assess their level. I’m hoping that when we get to site we will get a better taste of the level of our students and therefore plan accordingly. I’ll definitely have more to write on this topic when I get to my site and start working. For now practicum teaching is over. What started off being the scariest part of training ended up being the most help full. I have learned a lot about the education system in Ethiopia. For now, G9 is going back to workshops with the Peace Corps Education training team.

This little girl was in the 3rd grade class that I taught. When the bell rang for the end of class she came up to the board and wouldn't let me erase anything until she copied every last word.