My model classroom

After my last post was pretty negative, I’m hoping this one will make you smile. One of my tasks as an education volunteer is to set up a model classroom. I don’t do any direct teaching or have my own set of students (except for my English club). The space I am given is to be used to show how a classroom can be used as a teaching tool either by decorating it in a certain way or making and putting up examples of teaching aids. It’s important to create a welcoming environment for students to want to learn and study. A typical Ethiopian classroom has a used/cracked chalkboard, dirt floors, mud walls, and is filled with old, overused wooden desks. There are usually 3-4 students to a desk (at least at my school) meant for only 2. Average class size at my school is 80 students. In the lower grades (grades 1 and 2) however, I have seen over 100 students in a class! It’s pretty overwhelming and I don’t know how the teachers do it. Most rooms are very dark and somber looking. As you can imagine this does not create the best learning space for students.

Since I’ve gotten my model classroom I’ve been working on making it a nice space for both the teachers and the students to enjoy. I had the room painted a few weeks after I was given the key. Since then, I’ve gotten some more desks from my school and a chalkboard. (I’ve been very lucky with my placement in this school system. The administrative staff, the teachers, and the education office support me completely. They are always telling me that anything I need to just ask. My counterpart, the cluster supervisor for Butajira primary schools, tells me not to worry every time he sees me. Whatever I need he will get it for me. I know this is not the situation for a lot of volunteers so I’m very thankful for this placement). With the model classroom I’m to show how teachers can make their own teaching aids using few resources. I thought I would post some pictures of what I’ve been working on. It’s not completely finished, but I’m getting there and so far, the school seems to like it. Teachers and students come in when I’m there to look at what I’ve done and read all of my posters. The education office has visited my room and they would like me to show and help teachers do this in the classrooms of the younger grades.

            Some of the projects I’m doing in my classroom include English club and teacher trainings. I’ve got an English club for grades 7 and 8 already going. We meet once a week for an hour, on English Day (Thursday for my school). I’ve included pictures of what we did in our last meeting. We discussed setting goals and made “Life Goals Tree.” We talked about not only the importance of setting goals (represented by the branches of the tree) but also knowing the steps we need to make to make our goals a reality (represented by the roots of the tree). The roots help us get to our goal. When the students were finished I had them tape their trees on the walls.

I’d like to start a club for grades 5 and 6 as well so hopefully in the next couple weeks that will be set up. This week I’ll be going to one of the other primary schools in Butajira to discuss getting a space for a model classroom and setting up some English clubs that I can run with the English teachers. This week, I will also be starting a series of teacher trainings to last 6 weeks for all the English teachers in the primary schools of Butajira (look for a future post on how that goes).  

And finally, thanks to a donation from one of my wonderful friends in America, I have books in my classroom as well!! With my classroom being almost finished I brought the books to school and now slowly, students are coming in to look at them and read them. This makes me so, so happy!! I’ve got a project lined up for a book drive to start collecting some more books for my school so be on the lookout for that in the future.

I have to say, it feels good to finally have some stuff happening.