Classrooms at my school

So far I’ve gotten the chance to observe a handful of English classes. I can say that I am enjoying doing observations. I feel like I’m actually doing something when I observe a class but also, I love seeing the students excited to raise their hands and participate. Of course, there are always the few in the back not wanting to be there and paying no attention, but I think that happens worldwide. You cannot escape it, there will always be some that just don’t want to be there. Honestly, I didn’t always pay attention in school either. Here, I’ve noticed that the majority of students are excited about school. At least they seem to be when teachers ask them questions. They are always very eager to be called on as they raise and wave their hands saying, “Teacher, teacher, teacher,” hoping to be the student that is called on to answer. They like being noticed by the teacher.

            After the period is over the teachers always tell me that class size is a huge problem. Classroom management is their biggest challenge. Average class sizes at Mekicho are 75 students. I witnessed one teacher who had 100 first graders in his class! And just because there are many students in one class does not man a teacher has a bigger room to accommodate those numbers. Students just have to cram themselves in, sometimes 5 or 6 students to a desk that is meant for only 3.

Watching this got me thinking on the best way to fix it. A lot of my work will be on helping teachers with classroom management and showing them different and new practices to teaching. But as I have been visiting all 3 public schools in Butajira, I have noticed that all of them have big, open fields within the school compounds showing me that there is plenty of space to build more classrooms. But as one teacher pointed out, the education budget is small and if you build more classes, which costs money, you also have to hire more teachers for those classes, which also costs money.

It seems like education always receives the smallest budget. I try to explain to my Ethiopian friends and teachers that this is similar in the States. Not everyone in the States is rich and certainly not the citizens who work in education. Teachers in America also have small salaries and each year school budgets around the country get cut.

All in all, some of my teacher trainings will definitely have to be on classroom management. We got plenty of training on this during PST (pre-service training) and we will get more trainings during IST (In- Service training) in Januray. For now I will continue my observations and conduct some interviews with teachers and some of the staff at the education office. My main priority for the moment is working on my CENA or Community Education Needs Assessment. I have to turn this into Peace Corps before our IST. And of course each day I continue to try to understand Butajira a little bit more and become better adjusted to living in Ethiopia.