This is John, November 18th. Everything at school is winding down and I´m really getting quite anxious about the future. I have no idea what the next step is, but I wanted to let everyone know who reads the blog that I´m still here and doing fine ... will be back in the States in February 2005. Between then and now is a little work and a lot of travelling, so wish me luck! Will fill you in on the details soon ...
Peace,
John
Thursday, November 18, 2004
Thursday, September 30, 2004
09/10/2004
There are moments in life where everything just magically comes together - the happiness and sadness, the fatigue and energy, the shock and routine.
I just finished reading a letter from the States, whipped from teaching a bunch of lessons today, but it totally picked me up. Then my mind went to the news that a young neighbor of ours died this afternoon because his car went into the canal and he couldn't get out. And I can hear people wailing. So what right do I have to have any happiness? To even see balance in this craziness?
It's that I think I've accepted life. Life will play around with me, it will give me moments to mourn and moments to celebrate, but I can't wallow or pity myself because there are a thousand people behind me waiting for things to be half as good as I have them. I love working this hard - it gives me great opportunities and chances to grow and experience life.
This man who died, embodied this spirit - he fixed cars and loved it - he was friendly to all and patient in showing others his craft. So what, that he wasn't making all that much money? The wailing continues.
I know, it's so predictable, considering one's own mortality after a death close to oneself - but really, there's a lot I haven't figured out yet about this world. I mean, it's clear to me that Mozambicans are less preoccupied about the HIV problem than Westerners in Mozambique are. And it makes sense. The "problem" is relatively new, the social stigmas are numerous, and there are tons of other problems aside from HIV that preoccupy people here (like malaria, tuberculosis and childhood diseases). So why be worried? Why be worried about a disease that kills you over the course of years, when that's what the average life amounts to? The life expectancy is approaching 30 here, and it could go below. Why not live a sexually risky life, when all you're risking is the possibility of dying a little sooner? Honestly, for the Mozambicans, I can't justify them using a condom and all the social problems attached to it. I think the only solution is fidelity - but who's to mandate a social solution who doesn't come from this society?
And so, if we're all equal, how does it come out in the end? How do millions of 30-somethings pass through this world whose impact on it is minimized? What's the point? I suppose it's to enjoy life and really do what your heart wants - to follow your instincts. We are, after all, animals, and we follow our instincts. So why can't that be enough? Because our imaginations get us going - how can life exist without a purpose? How can it be a billion-year chemical experiment without some sort of grand design? Can all this be accidental? It's all so cliche. Because, in the fact of death and mortality, I believe it. I think that, whatever really happened, it doesn't affect me now and now is the only time I've got. If it turns out that I get more time down the line, I'll take advantage of that opportunity when it comes along. But the idea of sitting down and having a "career" so I can work 20 years and one day relax a bit is so far from the reality I feel here in Mozambique that I just want to avoid it...completely. Forsaking the moment for some unknown and unlikely future is foolish.
Peace
John
I just finished reading a letter from the States, whipped from teaching a bunch of lessons today, but it totally picked me up. Then my mind went to the news that a young neighbor of ours died this afternoon because his car went into the canal and he couldn't get out. And I can hear people wailing. So what right do I have to have any happiness? To even see balance in this craziness?
It's that I think I've accepted life. Life will play around with me, it will give me moments to mourn and moments to celebrate, but I can't wallow or pity myself because there are a thousand people behind me waiting for things to be half as good as I have them. I love working this hard - it gives me great opportunities and chances to grow and experience life.
This man who died, embodied this spirit - he fixed cars and loved it - he was friendly to all and patient in showing others his craft. So what, that he wasn't making all that much money? The wailing continues.
I know, it's so predictable, considering one's own mortality after a death close to oneself - but really, there's a lot I haven't figured out yet about this world. I mean, it's clear to me that Mozambicans are less preoccupied about the HIV problem than Westerners in Mozambique are. And it makes sense. The "problem" is relatively new, the social stigmas are numerous, and there are tons of other problems aside from HIV that preoccupy people here (like malaria, tuberculosis and childhood diseases). So why be worried? Why be worried about a disease that kills you over the course of years, when that's what the average life amounts to? The life expectancy is approaching 30 here, and it could go below. Why not live a sexually risky life, when all you're risking is the possibility of dying a little sooner? Honestly, for the Mozambicans, I can't justify them using a condom and all the social problems attached to it. I think the only solution is fidelity - but who's to mandate a social solution who doesn't come from this society?
And so, if we're all equal, how does it come out in the end? How do millions of 30-somethings pass through this world whose impact on it is minimized? What's the point? I suppose it's to enjoy life and really do what your heart wants - to follow your instincts. We are, after all, animals, and we follow our instincts. So why can't that be enough? Because our imaginations get us going - how can life exist without a purpose? How can it be a billion-year chemical experiment without some sort of grand design? Can all this be accidental? It's all so cliche. Because, in the fact of death and mortality, I believe it. I think that, whatever really happened, it doesn't affect me now and now is the only time I've got. If it turns out that I get more time down the line, I'll take advantage of that opportunity when it comes along. But the idea of sitting down and having a "career" so I can work 20 years and one day relax a bit is so far from the reality I feel here in Mozambique that I just want to avoid it...completely. Forsaking the moment for some unknown and unlikely future is foolish.
Peace
John
09/09/2004
Jamy, Dan and I sat down with a bunch of students today and talked about their perspectives on HIV/AIDS. I realized that I rarely talk about this with them, and that Jamy and Dan's presence really helps me ask the hard questions.
The problems they identified aren't surprises - using condoms is difficult because it's not a habit, women don't have the power to tell the men to use them, and men don't think to use them when they are dealing with a woman they see as "safe". And they hear fidelity pumped in all the time in church and through other means, but they see fidelity as something only married people can ever achieve as young people will always play around. And the fidelity that's preached to them is "one partner for life", because it's preached alongside abstinence until marriage. So it's just not a viable option.
But the activists still have hope; they still think that they can turn people around with enough help from superiors, money and more of what they're doing.
I just wish the church would stop f...ing things up.
Peace
John
The problems they identified aren't surprises - using condoms is difficult because it's not a habit, women don't have the power to tell the men to use them, and men don't think to use them when they are dealing with a woman they see as "safe". And they hear fidelity pumped in all the time in church and through other means, but they see fidelity as something only married people can ever achieve as young people will always play around. And the fidelity that's preached to them is "one partner for life", because it's preached alongside abstinence until marriage. So it's just not a viable option.
But the activists still have hope; they still think that they can turn people around with enough help from superiors, money and more of what they're doing.
I just wish the church would stop f...ing things up.
Peace
John
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
09/08/2004
Well, it was a fun birthday party - lots of food, dancing and music. Of course, my students showed up at 8 in the morning (it was supposed to be 10) and started cooking, going until 6 in the evening. I helped them out on peeling the potatoes, then got involved in my own project of making pizza. An upshot to making the pizza was that we had to buy a tremendous amount of cheese, so much so that we have had to eat it out of necessity rather than desire. Still good - but I don't think I'll ever be able to eat Gouda again. (This is MOM -- GOUDA on pizza??!!!)
About halfway through the party, it was time to cut the cake and get down to the real business - eating it. Everyone loves cake and so everyone wants it - all of the neighborhood kids, all of the neighbors. It got to be so bad that the head chefs called the distribution off with about 1/3 of the cake left, brought it inside the house, and started to get their fill. It was well-deserved and well worth it. But what I don't get is that they only partied for about 3 hours, and spent all day getting ready for it. The students I spoke with were very happy with the party, but I guess I just don't understand yet what makes for a "good time". I suppose I would think the same thing about an American party if I were Mozambican.
But one thing happened during the party that really struck me. For the first time here, I didn't feel American. I felt like everyone I was talking to was speaking my language, just in different words. I went up to people and treated them just like any friends in the States - no pretenses, just there to have a good time and chat. Maybe it's just all as a result of finally accpeting my role here and figuring out the positives in it.
So why leave NOW? Well, it still isn't my comfort zone. I can do that for 3 hours and interact with Mozambicans the majority of the day, but it's still incredibly tiring. It's not what my body has been trained to do. But at the same time, I've trained my body to do it and now I feel like I will lose something by not having that interaction. A part of me will definitely stay here.
Onias, a Zimbabwean here, is an incredible artist and gives Oscar, a Mozambican, a run for his money. I plan on getting works from both of them before I leave, possibly commissioned.
Jamy, sister of a former PCV and an RPCV herself, came to visit with her fiance today, Dan. They're here to do some research on HIV/AIDS in the field, and here is apparently a good place to turn to. We spoke a lot tonight about life and what is funny about Mozambique. I got the feeling that this conversation is indicative of the ones I'll be having back in the States, except that these will be mundane. But I'm excited to see someone else see these things for the first time and get the chance to talk with real Mozambicans about real problems. Tomorrow we'll get that chance and I hope they gain some insights.
Peace
John
About halfway through the party, it was time to cut the cake and get down to the real business - eating it. Everyone loves cake and so everyone wants it - all of the neighborhood kids, all of the neighbors. It got to be so bad that the head chefs called the distribution off with about 1/3 of the cake left, brought it inside the house, and started to get their fill. It was well-deserved and well worth it. But what I don't get is that they only partied for about 3 hours, and spent all day getting ready for it. The students I spoke with were very happy with the party, but I guess I just don't understand yet what makes for a "good time". I suppose I would think the same thing about an American party if I were Mozambican.
But one thing happened during the party that really struck me. For the first time here, I didn't feel American. I felt like everyone I was talking to was speaking my language, just in different words. I went up to people and treated them just like any friends in the States - no pretenses, just there to have a good time and chat. Maybe it's just all as a result of finally accpeting my role here and figuring out the positives in it.
So why leave NOW? Well, it still isn't my comfort zone. I can do that for 3 hours and interact with Mozambicans the majority of the day, but it's still incredibly tiring. It's not what my body has been trained to do. But at the same time, I've trained my body to do it and now I feel like I will lose something by not having that interaction. A part of me will definitely stay here.
Onias, a Zimbabwean here, is an incredible artist and gives Oscar, a Mozambican, a run for his money. I plan on getting works from both of them before I leave, possibly commissioned.
Jamy, sister of a former PCV and an RPCV herself, came to visit with her fiance today, Dan. They're here to do some research on HIV/AIDS in the field, and here is apparently a good place to turn to. We spoke a lot tonight about life and what is funny about Mozambique. I got the feeling that this conversation is indicative of the ones I'll be having back in the States, except that these will be mundane. But I'm excited to see someone else see these things for the first time and get the chance to talk with real Mozambicans about real problems. Tomorrow we'll get that chance and I hope they gain some insights.
Peace
John
09/02/2004
Cool birthday. All my 10th graders threw me little parties - one brought a radio, one brough me cake, candy and a present (deodorant!), one baked a cake, and bought socks, and one even bought (sorry, caught) me a pigeon. They presented me with the pigeon in a cookie box, and the pigeon flew out as it was presented, narrowly missing my head, strewing feathers everywhere. They then made me dance to several songs they had made up or learned, dancing themselves as well. They made up one song in Changana, "Kufunda ku vava, a hi nyika mazero" which roughly means "Learning hurts, you give us zeroes!" But they said it with a smile on their faces.
And really, that was the theme for the day. It was on and off stormy - one minute sunny, the next rainy. You could appreciate the rain because it was a relief and the sun because it dried everything up again.
When I arrived at school, late-ish, I was in my tux and walked into a protest. Some of the older students were protesting that one group never has to wear their uniforms, while they are required to. So they all showed up out of uniform, which was the impetus for getting into a shouting match with the director of the school. At which moment I arrived and all of the 10th graders went nuts (who had nothing to do with this). It was wonderful.
And then, the rain.
One of my 10th graders who's in my own turma, has been sick since last Friday with measles. I went to visit her today, bringing oranges, and luckily ran into a friend of hers who was also on her way. We wound through the corridors together, finding the right area which was packed full of patients, on the floor, all along the walls...well, it was too much. And Felicidade, my student, was doing pretty poorly. I'm not sure she'll remember my visit, but her mother who is taking care of her will remind her. I didn't know what to say, but I suppose being there was most of it. Oranges just seemed so petty. When I left, I've never wanted to stay here more than in that moment. To make a difference!
Final planning for the Saturday party happens tomorrow. I'm actually not looking forward to the party because those things stress me out, but I'm trying to avoid that by delegating responsibility.
Peace
John
And really, that was the theme for the day. It was on and off stormy - one minute sunny, the next rainy. You could appreciate the rain because it was a relief and the sun because it dried everything up again.
When I arrived at school, late-ish, I was in my tux and walked into a protest. Some of the older students were protesting that one group never has to wear their uniforms, while they are required to. So they all showed up out of uniform, which was the impetus for getting into a shouting match with the director of the school. At which moment I arrived and all of the 10th graders went nuts (who had nothing to do with this). It was wonderful.
And then, the rain.
One of my 10th graders who's in my own turma, has been sick since last Friday with measles. I went to visit her today, bringing oranges, and luckily ran into a friend of hers who was also on her way. We wound through the corridors together, finding the right area which was packed full of patients, on the floor, all along the walls...well, it was too much. And Felicidade, my student, was doing pretty poorly. I'm not sure she'll remember my visit, but her mother who is taking care of her will remind her. I didn't know what to say, but I suppose being there was most of it. Oranges just seemed so petty. When I left, I've never wanted to stay here more than in that moment. To make a difference!
Final planning for the Saturday party happens tomorrow. I'm actually not looking forward to the party because those things stress me out, but I'm trying to avoid that by delegating responsibility.
Peace
John
09/01/2004
Tomorrow's my birthday. Almost forgot.
I've been reading a Sports Illustrated issue about athletes' lives after sports. And it occurred to me that, despite having careers of every sort, Americans don't really DO anything, make lots of money and get fat. Even people who help out aren't actually doing much of anything; they just make it look like it. People here work on their farms, break their backs for a couple of dollars doing whatever labor they can find. Where does that money come from? People who are richer, who own big things. How does someone get rich? They use their smarts to get a bigger chunk of the foreign money coming in to the country, which accounts for the majority of the economy. And who provides much of that? You got it. What do we import from Mozambique? Nothing. We just keep it poor.
What? That makes no sense, right? We give a country money and keep it poor. Well, we give a country money to do specific things, our priorities, and we ensure our own interests which are things like cheap oil, food and clothes. If Mozambique could afford to sell food to us or produce clothes we wanted, would they "need" so much of our money?
So here's the rub. If America stops spending money domestically, subsidizing local industry and promoting international competition, we lose jobs. But we reduce taxes because we're not subsidizing domestic industry and we can cut back on foreign spending because we would allow foreign economies to thrive. Which creates jobs. Specifically, more jobs where people DO something. The math is probably quite complicated and I clearly haven't taken everything into account. But my conclusion is that Americans like the sterilized office life because it is safe and you don't actually have to do anything - leave that to the handful of farmers, doctors and teachers who all suffer in often inadequate conditions.
I want to do something. I will. I am.
Peace
John
I've been reading a Sports Illustrated issue about athletes' lives after sports. And it occurred to me that, despite having careers of every sort, Americans don't really DO anything, make lots of money and get fat. Even people who help out aren't actually doing much of anything; they just make it look like it. People here work on their farms, break their backs for a couple of dollars doing whatever labor they can find. Where does that money come from? People who are richer, who own big things. How does someone get rich? They use their smarts to get a bigger chunk of the foreign money coming in to the country, which accounts for the majority of the economy. And who provides much of that? You got it. What do we import from Mozambique? Nothing. We just keep it poor.
What? That makes no sense, right? We give a country money and keep it poor. Well, we give a country money to do specific things, our priorities, and we ensure our own interests which are things like cheap oil, food and clothes. If Mozambique could afford to sell food to us or produce clothes we wanted, would they "need" so much of our money?
So here's the rub. If America stops spending money domestically, subsidizing local industry and promoting international competition, we lose jobs. But we reduce taxes because we're not subsidizing domestic industry and we can cut back on foreign spending because we would allow foreign economies to thrive. Which creates jobs. Specifically, more jobs where people DO something. The math is probably quite complicated and I clearly haven't taken everything into account. But my conclusion is that Americans like the sterilized office life because it is safe and you don't actually have to do anything - leave that to the handful of farmers, doctors and teachers who all suffer in often inadequate conditions.
I want to do something. I will. I am.
Peace
John
08/30/2004
Aaaaahhh!
I just finished reading in Time magazine - er, skimming through it - and I'm exhausted. It's not the hopelessness of it all, it's that it's all so predictable - all this political bullshit - that it just makes me see the future as predictable as well. There seems to be no such thing as change in this world; there are just inexplicable drifts as humanity approaches certain extremes. Who could have predicted that Asia would usurp Africa's place in the international HIV/AIDS community as the biggest problem? And not because the African "problem" got solved? Anyone could have predicted that a leader who speaks like his constituents, would be popular enough to get reelected no matter what; but who could have predicted that "what", and how little it really seems to affect things. So a new president gets elected, does the world take a deep breath? So what about me, sitting in the middle of one of the world's worst health crises, this deadly combination of malaria and HIV? Does it matter here? And if not, what does? I can't even see the worst of it, nor do I want to. You want to see suffering? Just to know it exists? To feel human yourself? This is what really changes the world, right here. People who get embroiled in the lowest common denominator and have to reconcile it with decadence. It's we who change the world because we are changed in a society that accepts us, make that two societies, and we maintain influence in those spheres over those we know well. That's how change happens.
Aaaaaaaahhhhh!!!
Change. I babble on about it as if it is a purely positive thing, unalterable in its very nature, promoting some sort of wonderful future. What if it's all wrong? What if the very idea of changing the world from the group up, little by little, is just fundamentally flawed. What if influence really is Hollywood...the majority of human beings in the world are more likely to trust Toby Maguire than someone like me? That my voice, that my presence, and that of thousands of my neighbors is just a presence that is fleeting and mortal and like me, will pass along with time.
I made peace with the fact that we are all in search of immortality, quite a long time ago. Inevitably, it leads me on a search for my own. And it must have been that this search eventually led me to come here and just do it - to keep pushing the boundaries of what I have tried in my life, in order to find that one thing I can dedicate myself to and completely dominate. Have I accomplished that? No. I have just stretched the boundaries further, predictably, making it harder to figure all this out. Because I'm not sure that the basis of my decision was valid. Who's to say I need to choose something? Who's to say that the change I might exact would be good? Maybe the lack of moral compass in my life has sent me into a recursive tailspin. I have no compass to follow other than my own, and it keeps changing as I keep trying to follow it. I'm not sure whether I feel like a blind man in a vision-based world, or the only person who can see in a tactile world. I prefer the latter. The idea being that what you're seeing doesn't make sense because nobody prepared it to be seen, so you don't know which way to go or what to think, because there is no plan, there is no right solution. And you're not sure you're seeing anything because nobody's there with you to confirm it all. But I see it, I really do. I see how my interactions will affect people here - I see how people will react. I see my emotions and my fears and I deal with them well before I have to. I know myself intensely well. And maybe all this is enough. To see - in a blind world. I'm not so arrogant that I think I'm the only one.
And I'm not so tunnel-visioned to ignore the fact that a day's events can turn emotions on a dime to an unrecognizable state.
One of my students had an epileptic seizure today, and so we rushed him to the hospital before we knew what it was, or why. I had to ask my director for a ride, which he agreed to do somewhat reluctantly. I think his tune changed when he saw the student he was transporting. And when we got to the hospital, after giving the student a proper bed, I sat in the waiting room and watched his doctor take a smoke break of sorts. He's fine, but I nearly lost it when an old chapa came by, practically flinging a woman bleeding from both hips, out of the back onto the steps of the hospital and left her there. The hospital moved slowly - I considered helping her, but I was too stunned to move (partially by the psychological phenomenon of thinking someone else would do something, but I've conquered most of my group conditioning for that.) The hospital eventually brought her in, but only after she had taken six steps and collapsed again. What's wrong with me? She made it in and everyone in the waiting room was babbling that she had AIDS. (You want to know why there's problems here? This is a large, urban hospital, and the mentality is that she must have AIDS. Western-style education has done nothing.)
So I visited my student, who was with two of his friends, went back to school to teach two more lessons, home to eat lunch for an hour, back to school to meet with a teacher, then back home for dinner. And with this teacher I found out that the room of the epileptic and also that other girl I helped a month or two ago, as well as that fight I had to break up last year, is a cursed room. Apparently, someone died in it some years ago. And it's room 13. That number doesn't have any meaning here, but I explained what it meant to this other teacher and she couldn't believe it.
And I just thought of it now, but the kid who died last year at school was on his way to that room. Yes, coincidence, I know.
Peace
John
I just finished reading in Time magazine - er, skimming through it - and I'm exhausted. It's not the hopelessness of it all, it's that it's all so predictable - all this political bullshit - that it just makes me see the future as predictable as well. There seems to be no such thing as change in this world; there are just inexplicable drifts as humanity approaches certain extremes. Who could have predicted that Asia would usurp Africa's place in the international HIV/AIDS community as the biggest problem? And not because the African "problem" got solved? Anyone could have predicted that a leader who speaks like his constituents, would be popular enough to get reelected no matter what; but who could have predicted that "what", and how little it really seems to affect things. So a new president gets elected, does the world take a deep breath? So what about me, sitting in the middle of one of the world's worst health crises, this deadly combination of malaria and HIV? Does it matter here? And if not, what does? I can't even see the worst of it, nor do I want to. You want to see suffering? Just to know it exists? To feel human yourself? This is what really changes the world, right here. People who get embroiled in the lowest common denominator and have to reconcile it with decadence. It's we who change the world because we are changed in a society that accepts us, make that two societies, and we maintain influence in those spheres over those we know well. That's how change happens.
Aaaaaaaahhhhh!!!
Change. I babble on about it as if it is a purely positive thing, unalterable in its very nature, promoting some sort of wonderful future. What if it's all wrong? What if the very idea of changing the world from the group up, little by little, is just fundamentally flawed. What if influence really is Hollywood...the majority of human beings in the world are more likely to trust Toby Maguire than someone like me? That my voice, that my presence, and that of thousands of my neighbors is just a presence that is fleeting and mortal and like me, will pass along with time.
I made peace with the fact that we are all in search of immortality, quite a long time ago. Inevitably, it leads me on a search for my own. And it must have been that this search eventually led me to come here and just do it - to keep pushing the boundaries of what I have tried in my life, in order to find that one thing I can dedicate myself to and completely dominate. Have I accomplished that? No. I have just stretched the boundaries further, predictably, making it harder to figure all this out. Because I'm not sure that the basis of my decision was valid. Who's to say I need to choose something? Who's to say that the change I might exact would be good? Maybe the lack of moral compass in my life has sent me into a recursive tailspin. I have no compass to follow other than my own, and it keeps changing as I keep trying to follow it. I'm not sure whether I feel like a blind man in a vision-based world, or the only person who can see in a tactile world. I prefer the latter. The idea being that what you're seeing doesn't make sense because nobody prepared it to be seen, so you don't know which way to go or what to think, because there is no plan, there is no right solution. And you're not sure you're seeing anything because nobody's there with you to confirm it all. But I see it, I really do. I see how my interactions will affect people here - I see how people will react. I see my emotions and my fears and I deal with them well before I have to. I know myself intensely well. And maybe all this is enough. To see - in a blind world. I'm not so arrogant that I think I'm the only one.
And I'm not so tunnel-visioned to ignore the fact that a day's events can turn emotions on a dime to an unrecognizable state.
One of my students had an epileptic seizure today, and so we rushed him to the hospital before we knew what it was, or why. I had to ask my director for a ride, which he agreed to do somewhat reluctantly. I think his tune changed when he saw the student he was transporting. And when we got to the hospital, after giving the student a proper bed, I sat in the waiting room and watched his doctor take a smoke break of sorts. He's fine, but I nearly lost it when an old chapa came by, practically flinging a woman bleeding from both hips, out of the back onto the steps of the hospital and left her there. The hospital moved slowly - I considered helping her, but I was too stunned to move (partially by the psychological phenomenon of thinking someone else would do something, but I've conquered most of my group conditioning for that.) The hospital eventually brought her in, but only after she had taken six steps and collapsed again. What's wrong with me? She made it in and everyone in the waiting room was babbling that she had AIDS. (You want to know why there's problems here? This is a large, urban hospital, and the mentality is that she must have AIDS. Western-style education has done nothing.)
So I visited my student, who was with two of his friends, went back to school to teach two more lessons, home to eat lunch for an hour, back to school to meet with a teacher, then back home for dinner. And with this teacher I found out that the room of the epileptic and also that other girl I helped a month or two ago, as well as that fight I had to break up last year, is a cursed room. Apparently, someone died in it some years ago. And it's room 13. That number doesn't have any meaning here, but I explained what it meant to this other teacher and she couldn't believe it.
And I just thought of it now, but the kid who died last year at school was on his way to that room. Yes, coincidence, I know.
Peace
John
Saturday, September 25, 2004
08/25/2004
Where am I? Oh yes, that's right, I'm in Mozambique. I'm trying to give a quiz to my 12th graders, who happen to behave like 4th graders on speed, and they will not shut up. One starts to tell a proverb to me, in direct violation of my orders to be silent - so I tell him to leave immediately.
He doesn't.
I tell him to leave again and again...nothing. So I threaten him with an unjustifiable absence (a big deal) if he doesn't leave. He doesn't. I ask him his name. He won't say. I ask the chefe what his name is. The chefe gives me a wrong name. I give the chefe an unjustifiable absence. I ask again his name, this time threatening to not give the ACS (quiz). He says nothing. I leave. The students cheer and wail. Zeroes all around.
I help a student with their mathematics homework. They're asked to convert the base of a logarithm, but don't know that any number divided by itself is "1". In chemistry class, I offer them practice questions for the exams. The chemistry is not all that hard and they get it easily. The math, however, in spite of my best efforts to simplify it, is difficult for them. Like four squared. Is it eight? or sixteen? According to dozens of 12th graders who are doing this math every day, it's eight.
I discuss with Nanosh my problems with the 8th grade Biology students. They, for the most past, memorize (or try to) everything. We imagined what it would be like if we, in America, were taught in schools in another language unrelated to our own (Chinese, for example) concepts that would be difficult to understand in our own language, by people who barely understand them. Would we be doing any better than these students? How would our Chinese be? How about our chemistry? And math?
I think this society - built around what rich countries do now that they're rich, not built around how people get rich - only breeds people who know how to exploit the system and its inherent flaws. Such as a basis in intrinsic meaning. There's an educational system - but it's there to produce certificates and more teachers. No inherent value of education. And can that happen inductively?
There are churches, but they are around to make pastors rich and people happier. What about spirituality? That happens anywhere BUT in church.
Richard Feynman, in his book, explains how there is a group of Pacific Islanders who were invaded by Allied troops and their island used as a way station. The war ended and troops left, and so did all of the food they were receiving from the airplanes that would land. So the islanders built a runway, constructed a tower, and even made reed headphones for the man who sat in the tower, just like the Allied forces had. And they prayed - no, expected food to come.
They saw the world around them suddenly and (MOM can't read the next word) all of it without knowing what it was and why it was there.
I walk back home with bread and tomatoes today, passing construction projects. I think, what separates me and a licensed teacher? Is it just a piece of paper?
I've seen that there are plenty of people in this world who act like they know so much, but they just know facts and act upon those facts. They call themselves experts, but they're idiot savants. And then there are people who live and experience and try and fail and sometimes succeed. These people are not experts. But I'd much rather a doctor of the second type operated on me than the first. Because a doctor of the second type knows that mistakes are human and instead of being deathly afraid of making any mistakes, and acting only within the boundaries of his knowledge, he puts himself on the line and knows his limits. The first doesn't see limits - the first tries to shape reality into his perceptions and the second shapes his perceptions into the reality - he looks to constantly alter how he perceives the world, to be a more accurate representation of it. The first thinks he already knows the world and no change is necessary.
I feel like 95% of the teachers and students here are that first doctor.
Peace
John
He doesn't.
I tell him to leave again and again...nothing. So I threaten him with an unjustifiable absence (a big deal) if he doesn't leave. He doesn't. I ask him his name. He won't say. I ask the chefe what his name is. The chefe gives me a wrong name. I give the chefe an unjustifiable absence. I ask again his name, this time threatening to not give the ACS (quiz). He says nothing. I leave. The students cheer and wail. Zeroes all around.
I help a student with their mathematics homework. They're asked to convert the base of a logarithm, but don't know that any number divided by itself is "1". In chemistry class, I offer them practice questions for the exams. The chemistry is not all that hard and they get it easily. The math, however, in spite of my best efforts to simplify it, is difficult for them. Like four squared. Is it eight? or sixteen? According to dozens of 12th graders who are doing this math every day, it's eight.
I discuss with Nanosh my problems with the 8th grade Biology students. They, for the most past, memorize (or try to) everything. We imagined what it would be like if we, in America, were taught in schools in another language unrelated to our own (Chinese, for example) concepts that would be difficult to understand in our own language, by people who barely understand them. Would we be doing any better than these students? How would our Chinese be? How about our chemistry? And math?
I think this society - built around what rich countries do now that they're rich, not built around how people get rich - only breeds people who know how to exploit the system and its inherent flaws. Such as a basis in intrinsic meaning. There's an educational system - but it's there to produce certificates and more teachers. No inherent value of education. And can that happen inductively?
There are churches, but they are around to make pastors rich and people happier. What about spirituality? That happens anywhere BUT in church.
Richard Feynman, in his book, explains how there is a group of Pacific Islanders who were invaded by Allied troops and their island used as a way station. The war ended and troops left, and so did all of the food they were receiving from the airplanes that would land. So the islanders built a runway, constructed a tower, and even made reed headphones for the man who sat in the tower, just like the Allied forces had. And they prayed - no, expected food to come.
They saw the world around them suddenly and (MOM can't read the next word) all of it without knowing what it was and why it was there.
I walk back home with bread and tomatoes today, passing construction projects. I think, what separates me and a licensed teacher? Is it just a piece of paper?
I've seen that there are plenty of people in this world who act like they know so much, but they just know facts and act upon those facts. They call themselves experts, but they're idiot savants. And then there are people who live and experience and try and fail and sometimes succeed. These people are not experts. But I'd much rather a doctor of the second type operated on me than the first. Because a doctor of the second type knows that mistakes are human and instead of being deathly afraid of making any mistakes, and acting only within the boundaries of his knowledge, he puts himself on the line and knows his limits. The first doesn't see limits - the first tries to shape reality into his perceptions and the second shapes his perceptions into the reality - he looks to constantly alter how he perceives the world, to be a more accurate representation of it. The first thinks he already knows the world and no change is necessary.
I feel like 95% of the teachers and students here are that first doctor.
Peace
John
08/23/2004
Just because I wrote a treatise on cheating doesn't mean I've eliminated it. I still had to deal with a ton of cheating in the 10th graders' first quizzes this trimester, including a whole turma that I had to punish because I could hear them discussing the answers among themselves. And this week, I give the first quizzes to the 12th graders which seems to always be a struggle.
This weekend, taking a walk along the river, in a thick foresty area just under an hour from home, I saw monkeys. A whole family (or clan, as it were)! And in the wild! It only took two years, but I finally saw my first real wildlife here - and it was thrilling. These were pretty large tree-dwelling, butt-picking, tail-flashing, head-bobbing monkeys who were as interested in me as I was in them. Whenever I caught one peeking out at me, it would look away and head for cover.
Speaking of monkeys, I've been talking about the evolution of man lately. And today, one of my students asked me if it was true that white people come from God, and black people come from monkeys. I said "No!", then explained, again, the theory. Up till now, I have been downright religious about telling kids that they can believe whatever they want, but I want them to try and understand evolution as I'm introducing it. But that was the last straw.
I thought they might have been pulling my leg, so I asked them what church told them that - it was the Catholic church. So I spoke with my 12th graders afterwards and they confirmed it, with more raunchy details.
"Yeah, either from monkeys or mud, depending upon the church." I asked the 12th graders if they believed it, and they seemed pretty set against it, but not completely.
Did I mention how much I love missionaries?
Peace
John
This weekend, taking a walk along the river, in a thick foresty area just under an hour from home, I saw monkeys. A whole family (or clan, as it were)! And in the wild! It only took two years, but I finally saw my first real wildlife here - and it was thrilling. These were pretty large tree-dwelling, butt-picking, tail-flashing, head-bobbing monkeys who were as interested in me as I was in them. Whenever I caught one peeking out at me, it would look away and head for cover.
Speaking of monkeys, I've been talking about the evolution of man lately. And today, one of my students asked me if it was true that white people come from God, and black people come from monkeys. I said "No!", then explained, again, the theory. Up till now, I have been downright religious about telling kids that they can believe whatever they want, but I want them to try and understand evolution as I'm introducing it. But that was the last straw.
I thought they might have been pulling my leg, so I asked them what church told them that - it was the Catholic church. So I spoke with my 12th graders afterwards and they confirmed it, with more raunchy details.
"Yeah, either from monkeys or mud, depending upon the church." I asked the 12th graders if they believed it, and they seemed pretty set against it, but not completely.
Did I mention how much I love missionaries?
Peace
John
08/18/2004
I've consistently had problems with one of my students in 12th grade in terms of respect, and today I gave him the boot. I told him to come back in a week and a half, when he had more respect for the teacher and was ready to pay attention in class without goofing off.
I would normally think this a ridiculous solution, that it doesn't address the problem, but it does. I have tried it on several occasions now and it seems to work out every single time there's a student who's disrespectful in and out of class - they just thought I couldn't tell. So it was a big game to them, and they thought I wasn't even playing. And all of a sudden, I win. So then our relationship turns human again, and the respect is there because I beat them at their own game.
Hopefully, it'll be one more time with him. What kills me is when it's a good student, and he is.
Less than 4 months before I finish my service here, and the biggest accomplishments have yet to happen.
Peace
John
I would normally think this a ridiculous solution, that it doesn't address the problem, but it does. I have tried it on several occasions now and it seems to work out every single time there's a student who's disrespectful in and out of class - they just thought I couldn't tell. So it was a big game to them, and they thought I wasn't even playing. And all of a sudden, I win. So then our relationship turns human again, and the respect is there because I beat them at their own game.
Hopefully, it'll be one more time with him. What kills me is when it's a good student, and he is.
Less than 4 months before I finish my service here, and the biggest accomplishments have yet to happen.
Peace
John
08/17/2004
How to stop kids from cheating (or realize that you can't):
I got pulled aside on Saturday by one of my pedagogical directors who told me that he has heard from the night class students that I'm giving excellent lessons and better, that the tested material is clearly presented and reviewed so that there's less reason to bring in a cheat sheet; and when you factor in that I give variants of the same test inside the classroom and crack down harshly on cheating, the students say it's NOT WORTH IT to cheat.
Well, I've been here long enough to consider that a complete victory, but as my mother said, they still don't see cheating as WRONG. Right. Well, it's not wrong until the majority of people aren't doing it, and that won't happen until it's not worth it to cheat on a consistent basis, across the different subjects, from 1st to 12th grades. If it ever happens, it will take at least a decade to permeate and depends upon testing procedures and curriculum changes, among other things. For the time being, however, I offer up this how-to guide as a checklist to cut down on cheating, based upon personal observation and the comments of many of my students and of course this pedagogical director. Like usual, I can't claim any scientific basis for this, only my very specific, tortuous experience, in a Southeastern African country, in a large city school.
1. Simplify
Whether it's English, Biology or Chemistry, I've found that students don't acutally understand 95% of what they're told because it's just too damn complicated. Make one objective for the lesson that encompasses one topic that you can explain in 10 minutes. You'll need twice that time to explain it so that 75% of the class can understand it (remember, 25% will NEVER understand no matter what you do) and the rest of your 45 minutes (or whatever it is in that range) to take care of normal day-to-day activities such as homework and practicing the information explained in those 20 minutes. Of course, every lesson is different, but always seek out ways to simplify.
And don't worry about the curriculum, but DO worry about the testing you don't control. When you have to depart from your style of teaching in order to get students to remember information for standardized testing, let them know that is what you're doing. If you can't explain it so that they understand it, let them know you're not expecting them to understand it but don't leave them without an opportunity to try. Which leads to the second point...
2. Extra help
Whether it be office hours, extra sessions, home tutoring, worksheets that are optional, organized group study, or any other form of extra help, it is critical in fighting cheating. Students are less likely to cheat when they understand the material, which simplifying accomplishes to a certain extent. But even the best students don't always get it or can get someone else to explain it when they are absent - and you could always have a bad lesson or two ):! I offer extra sessions for the students who have to take national exams in November, and I require that they come up with THEIR questions and don't just ask me to explain something over again. This contributes to overall understanding, which is really the biggest contributor to avoiding cheating. And it's necessary. How can you justify giving a zero to a student for copying off of their neighbor when you gave a complicated, difficult to understand explanation of something in class and made no effort to try and clarify what you had said?
3. Test preparation
Unless you give tests every three lessons, you need to limit the scope of your tests and give students an idea of HOW you are going to evaluate their comprehension of the material. Many teachers like to use games for their test preparation, but I find that games only serve to motivate the unmotivated to participate and not necessarily to study, rewarding those who already have study skills but not offering any assistance to those who don't. Moreover, games associate knowledge with the game, not with previous knowledge or practical examples. I've found that giving broad questions which require well-researched responses and declaring that the student is not responsible for material outside that research seems to work decently well. I think this aspect is the weakest of my approach to stop cheating, and that a bad preparation means more cheating.
4. Test writing
Write your tests like you write your lessons - don't try anything new on the test (or try not to). Surprise in a testing situation leads to panic and panic leads to cheating. Be consistent in your testing from evaluation to evaluation. If you want to change something structural in your tests, let the students know - they notice patterns in your tests better than you do. Make the test hard enough so that the best students will have to spend at least half the time allotted to it, and the worst students can still finish it up. A de-motivator is seeing a student get up and leave 5 minutes after receiving the test. The most important thing, however, is to write something simple that springs directly from what you did in class.
Though I hate memorization, I still make my tests half-memorization because students tend to memorize (or try) 100% of what you give them.
5. Variants
Give as many different variations of the test that you can get away with. This depends upon tons of factors, but you can almost always give two variants, alternating students who get each variant. I work in a school that has two-seat desks, so I often give two variants, one to each side of the desk. In the case of three sitting at the same desk, I tell the one in the middle to do a different variant than the ones on the ends. More than anything else, this diminishes cheating by lowering the amount of opportunities.
6. Proctoring
Make a few simple rules and stick to them, 100%. Don't let up - don't make the consequences of cheating a question of value. For example, don't take 25% off if someone is caught, because the student will just weigh that against the points they could gain by cheating. Give them a zero, no questions asked. Even if they weren't cheating, they need to learn how to stop LOOKING like they are.
There's no bigger gray area than in proctoring. There are thousands of ways to cheat and one way to NOT cheat. And you can't get all of your students to act in that one way 100% of the time, or even 50%. I let my students' eyes wander, but as soon as I notice that they are using that information, I take their test. No mercy.
In theory, and in my practice, students cheat relatively rarely when you do all this successfully. And the result is contagious. When students know it's not worth it, they tend to take the "coolness" out of it, making it into an issue of respect for the teacher. And that is the most powerful force, as far as I'm concerned. When you can turn cheating into disrespect for the teacher, and the students agree, it creates a personal responsibility for every single student to respect the teacher or to be ostracized...in this culture. Which is to say that this advice is specific, but I hope is't useful to teachers (and students) anywhere.
Today was city day and I got to participate in a skit that the HIV/AIDS activist group put on. I was the doctor and I had a great time being the arrogant Portuguese white guy.
I gave my 8th graders an assignment to keep a dream journal for a week and promised I'd do the same. We'll see how it goes.
Peace
John
I got pulled aside on Saturday by one of my pedagogical directors who told me that he has heard from the night class students that I'm giving excellent lessons and better, that the tested material is clearly presented and reviewed so that there's less reason to bring in a cheat sheet; and when you factor in that I give variants of the same test inside the classroom and crack down harshly on cheating, the students say it's NOT WORTH IT to cheat.
Well, I've been here long enough to consider that a complete victory, but as my mother said, they still don't see cheating as WRONG. Right. Well, it's not wrong until the majority of people aren't doing it, and that won't happen until it's not worth it to cheat on a consistent basis, across the different subjects, from 1st to 12th grades. If it ever happens, it will take at least a decade to permeate and depends upon testing procedures and curriculum changes, among other things. For the time being, however, I offer up this how-to guide as a checklist to cut down on cheating, based upon personal observation and the comments of many of my students and of course this pedagogical director. Like usual, I can't claim any scientific basis for this, only my very specific, tortuous experience, in a Southeastern African country, in a large city school.
1. Simplify
Whether it's English, Biology or Chemistry, I've found that students don't acutally understand 95% of what they're told because it's just too damn complicated. Make one objective for the lesson that encompasses one topic that you can explain in 10 minutes. You'll need twice that time to explain it so that 75% of the class can understand it (remember, 25% will NEVER understand no matter what you do) and the rest of your 45 minutes (or whatever it is in that range) to take care of normal day-to-day activities such as homework and practicing the information explained in those 20 minutes. Of course, every lesson is different, but always seek out ways to simplify.
And don't worry about the curriculum, but DO worry about the testing you don't control. When you have to depart from your style of teaching in order to get students to remember information for standardized testing, let them know that is what you're doing. If you can't explain it so that they understand it, let them know you're not expecting them to understand it but don't leave them without an opportunity to try. Which leads to the second point...
2. Extra help
Whether it be office hours, extra sessions, home tutoring, worksheets that are optional, organized group study, or any other form of extra help, it is critical in fighting cheating. Students are less likely to cheat when they understand the material, which simplifying accomplishes to a certain extent. But even the best students don't always get it or can get someone else to explain it when they are absent - and you could always have a bad lesson or two ):! I offer extra sessions for the students who have to take national exams in November, and I require that they come up with THEIR questions and don't just ask me to explain something over again. This contributes to overall understanding, which is really the biggest contributor to avoiding cheating. And it's necessary. How can you justify giving a zero to a student for copying off of their neighbor when you gave a complicated, difficult to understand explanation of something in class and made no effort to try and clarify what you had said?
3. Test preparation
Unless you give tests every three lessons, you need to limit the scope of your tests and give students an idea of HOW you are going to evaluate their comprehension of the material. Many teachers like to use games for their test preparation, but I find that games only serve to motivate the unmotivated to participate and not necessarily to study, rewarding those who already have study skills but not offering any assistance to those who don't. Moreover, games associate knowledge with the game, not with previous knowledge or practical examples. I've found that giving broad questions which require well-researched responses and declaring that the student is not responsible for material outside that research seems to work decently well. I think this aspect is the weakest of my approach to stop cheating, and that a bad preparation means more cheating.
4. Test writing
Write your tests like you write your lessons - don't try anything new on the test (or try not to). Surprise in a testing situation leads to panic and panic leads to cheating. Be consistent in your testing from evaluation to evaluation. If you want to change something structural in your tests, let the students know - they notice patterns in your tests better than you do. Make the test hard enough so that the best students will have to spend at least half the time allotted to it, and the worst students can still finish it up. A de-motivator is seeing a student get up and leave 5 minutes after receiving the test. The most important thing, however, is to write something simple that springs directly from what you did in class.
Though I hate memorization, I still make my tests half-memorization because students tend to memorize (or try) 100% of what you give them.
5. Variants
Give as many different variations of the test that you can get away with. This depends upon tons of factors, but you can almost always give two variants, alternating students who get each variant. I work in a school that has two-seat desks, so I often give two variants, one to each side of the desk. In the case of three sitting at the same desk, I tell the one in the middle to do a different variant than the ones on the ends. More than anything else, this diminishes cheating by lowering the amount of opportunities.
6. Proctoring
Make a few simple rules and stick to them, 100%. Don't let up - don't make the consequences of cheating a question of value. For example, don't take 25% off if someone is caught, because the student will just weigh that against the points they could gain by cheating. Give them a zero, no questions asked. Even if they weren't cheating, they need to learn how to stop LOOKING like they are.
There's no bigger gray area than in proctoring. There are thousands of ways to cheat and one way to NOT cheat. And you can't get all of your students to act in that one way 100% of the time, or even 50%. I let my students' eyes wander, but as soon as I notice that they are using that information, I take their test. No mercy.
In theory, and in my practice, students cheat relatively rarely when you do all this successfully. And the result is contagious. When students know it's not worth it, they tend to take the "coolness" out of it, making it into an issue of respect for the teacher. And that is the most powerful force, as far as I'm concerned. When you can turn cheating into disrespect for the teacher, and the students agree, it creates a personal responsibility for every single student to respect the teacher or to be ostracized...in this culture. Which is to say that this advice is specific, but I hope is't useful to teachers (and students) anywhere.
Today was city day and I got to participate in a skit that the HIV/AIDS activist group put on. I was the doctor and I had a great time being the arrogant Portuguese white guy.
I gave my 8th graders an assignment to keep a dream journal for a week and promised I'd do the same. We'll see how it goes.
Peace
John
08/12/2004
I don't know how you teach chemistry without a periodic table, but when I forget to bring the one I made for my lessons, I feel its absence. I was very happy to have it tonight - it gives a visual side to chemistry which is QUITE necessary.
I've been drawing up extra exercises for my 10th and 12th graders, which have been going over very well. They are afraid of being underprepared for the exams, which I understand. I promised to help out my own turma today by writing exercises in mathematics to be done outside of school, in study groups that they organized. I opened up their notebooks to "Properties of Logarithms". They were given 9 properties of logarithms, without much explanation (or so it seemed) as to how they relate to the exponents that they describe - so I'm sure they don't understand what they're doing, which doesn't make it any easier to understand HOW to do it. And I discovered that one of the properties they're given is just WRONG (a log sub a b = b ---- that was Mom trying to write without a subscript), but I have yet to find a math teacher so that I can discuss this with them.
What happens when you see errors like this is usually that the teacher will look at it strangely, look in their notebook, point at the formula in their notebook and say "Well, it's right here, I didn't copy it wrong", with a slightly confused look on their face. Then, your conversation usually ends with "Yes, that's very interesting. Must be a problem with what MY teacher gave me. I've never seen that before."
And THAT'S what scares me. I feel that, in an American classroom, some student would jump on that immediately, if not proving it wrong then at least asking the teacher how it works. But the whole hierarchical system has seemed to run amok here. People become teachers without any real training to be teachers. You can randomly appoint someone a "chefe" and they will automatically be given more respect and responsibility, regardless of how much of it they truly deserve. And you're ALWAYS looking for the "chefe". So even if the teacher is wrong, they're considered the only authority and so can claim 100% correctness.
Peace
John
I've been drawing up extra exercises for my 10th and 12th graders, which have been going over very well. They are afraid of being underprepared for the exams, which I understand. I promised to help out my own turma today by writing exercises in mathematics to be done outside of school, in study groups that they organized. I opened up their notebooks to "Properties of Logarithms". They were given 9 properties of logarithms, without much explanation (or so it seemed) as to how they relate to the exponents that they describe - so I'm sure they don't understand what they're doing, which doesn't make it any easier to understand HOW to do it. And I discovered that one of the properties they're given is just WRONG (a log sub a b = b ---- that was Mom trying to write without a subscript), but I have yet to find a math teacher so that I can discuss this with them.
What happens when you see errors like this is usually that the teacher will look at it strangely, look in their notebook, point at the formula in their notebook and say "Well, it's right here, I didn't copy it wrong", with a slightly confused look on their face. Then, your conversation usually ends with "Yes, that's very interesting. Must be a problem with what MY teacher gave me. I've never seen that before."
And THAT'S what scares me. I feel that, in an American classroom, some student would jump on that immediately, if not proving it wrong then at least asking the teacher how it works. But the whole hierarchical system has seemed to run amok here. People become teachers without any real training to be teachers. You can randomly appoint someone a "chefe" and they will automatically be given more respect and responsibility, regardless of how much of it they truly deserve. And you're ALWAYS looking for the "chefe". So even if the teacher is wrong, they're considered the only authority and so can claim 100% correctness.
Peace
John
Tuesday, September 14, 2004
8/11/2004
Well, I got through another night of dreaming, but this time it was less intense and today was my rest day of the week - only two lessons and lots of lesson planning.
Because of my class load, I haven't had a lot of time to think about the past couple of years or the next few months, but I'm filled with plenty of anxiety about it. I should say, I'm filled with anxiety about the both of them. I don't know if my accomplishments are tangible, and I don't know if I want to evaluate myself (period) and if I do, if I should evaluate myself on "results". In fact, I'd much rather leave the whole thing, figure out how I can use what I've learned here, be satisfied with who I am, and spend less time explicitly improving myself and instead just DOING and BEING. Which is the link between the last two years and the next.
So do I need to be in a new place to take a new approach to life? Am I ready to change gears, from the "student" to the "participant", or is it an unerasable part of me to always be the student, to always put as much on my plate as I can handle? Well, I'd like to try it. And I think I've come up with the parameters of the next step.
First, I have to be unconcerned with what others think about my decision and trust my own judgment. I think I've looked to others to validate my actions for long enough.
Second, I want to be close to those who I've grown close to back in the States - and do away with this seemingly interminable distance and silence.
Third, I want to have the time to listen and to live. I want to have the time to not fall into a routine, which implies a certain amount of business but not an excess.
Fourth, I want to change the world, and I know what that means. It means that you change how the people around you live in small but meaningful ways, enough so that those people will want to do the same thing. And I don't want the credit for it.
Peace
John
Because of my class load, I haven't had a lot of time to think about the past couple of years or the next few months, but I'm filled with plenty of anxiety about it. I should say, I'm filled with anxiety about the both of them. I don't know if my accomplishments are tangible, and I don't know if I want to evaluate myself (period) and if I do, if I should evaluate myself on "results". In fact, I'd much rather leave the whole thing, figure out how I can use what I've learned here, be satisfied with who I am, and spend less time explicitly improving myself and instead just DOING and BEING. Which is the link between the last two years and the next.
So do I need to be in a new place to take a new approach to life? Am I ready to change gears, from the "student" to the "participant", or is it an unerasable part of me to always be the student, to always put as much on my plate as I can handle? Well, I'd like to try it. And I think I've come up with the parameters of the next step.
First, I have to be unconcerned with what others think about my decision and trust my own judgment. I think I've looked to others to validate my actions for long enough.
Second, I want to be close to those who I've grown close to back in the States - and do away with this seemingly interminable distance and silence.
Third, I want to have the time to listen and to live. I want to have the time to not fall into a routine, which implies a certain amount of business but not an excess.
Fourth, I want to change the world, and I know what that means. It means that you change how the people around you live in small but meaningful ways, enough so that those people will want to do the same thing. And I don't want the credit for it.
Peace
John
8/10/2004
My dreams have been controlling me lately. On Monday, I dreamed about my old house and some people in my life whom I haven't seen for a while, which controlled my entire day emotionally, feeling in this state of suspended dreaming. I guess I returned there last night, with dreams of leaving here and the relationships that will end - and the relative ease of life I'm to look forward to. So my mind was in this funk, brought on by a constant pall, very negative, and all dream-induced. I hope my dreams improve tonight.
Peace
John
Peace
John
8/08/2004
I've got about 4 months left - that's the same amount of time as between arriving in Mozambique and teaching the first two weeks of class, ever.
And I find myself enjoying class, however tedious it may be to grade hundreds of papers and teach on Friday nights. Enough so that I could see myself teaching next year, as well, SOMEWHERE in the world - or doing social work. I can't really decide. But something makes me think that if I end up doing social work, I'll end up in a country or area that doesn't need it all that badly.
Actually, my idea is to just apply for all jobs that sound interesting, whether or not I'm qualified. Let THEM sort it out.
So, any career ideas?
Peace
John
And I find myself enjoying class, however tedious it may be to grade hundreds of papers and teach on Friday nights. Enough so that I could see myself teaching next year, as well, SOMEWHERE in the world - or doing social work. I can't really decide. But something makes me think that if I end up doing social work, I'll end up in a country or area that doesn't need it all that badly.
Actually, my idea is to just apply for all jobs that sound interesting, whether or not I'm qualified. Let THEM sort it out.
So, any career ideas?
Peace
John
8/05/2004
I'm currently staring at a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, wondering why my students can't understand the four quantum numbers (the 11th graders, yet!) and alternately marveling at the fact that my 10th graders understand natural selection. Speaking of, I'm about to eliminate this PB&J from the gene pool.
Done. (The PBs from Maputo, the Js local.)
It was beautiful. I gave the 10th graders a table of characteristics for six different flies. I asked them, in groups, to choose the two best-suited flies of the six. The resulting chaos was extraordinary if only because it was exactly the heated internal discussion I wanted to create. There was NO right answer. At first, they balked, but then they realized that there doesn't NEED to be a right answer with me, that I want them to just put any answer down as long as they think about the question. I nearly cried. It was a wonderful moment, because suddenly they understood exactly what to do and I was as unnecessary as I've ever been, observing the individual righteousness put an indelible mark into their minds of this lesson. What's more, many chose similar responses even though I made the table without any favor for one fly or another, and the similar responses came from groups sitting far apart.
They THOUGHT, then DISCUSSED inside their cultural framework and came to similar CONCLUSIONS (but not identical) based upon an abstract exercise. For an American educator, this may seem more trivial, but it's the first time in my year and a half that I've witnessed it on such a global scale.
And although the 11th graders don't seem to have a handle on quantum numbers (which go beyond "abstract" into the simultaneous realms of microscopic and unimaginable), I have confidence in my ability to get it across to them in the next lesson.
This week, I have loved teaching. If I were to go back to the States next week, I'd look to continue. A lot can happen between now and my return, but I don't see giving this up just yet.
Peace
John
Done. (The PBs from Maputo, the Js local.)
It was beautiful. I gave the 10th graders a table of characteristics for six different flies. I asked them, in groups, to choose the two best-suited flies of the six. The resulting chaos was extraordinary if only because it was exactly the heated internal discussion I wanted to create. There was NO right answer. At first, they balked, but then they realized that there doesn't NEED to be a right answer with me, that I want them to just put any answer down as long as they think about the question. I nearly cried. It was a wonderful moment, because suddenly they understood exactly what to do and I was as unnecessary as I've ever been, observing the individual righteousness put an indelible mark into their minds of this lesson. What's more, many chose similar responses even though I made the table without any favor for one fly or another, and the similar responses came from groups sitting far apart.
They THOUGHT, then DISCUSSED inside their cultural framework and came to similar CONCLUSIONS (but not identical) based upon an abstract exercise. For an American educator, this may seem more trivial, but it's the first time in my year and a half that I've witnessed it on such a global scale.
And although the 11th graders don't seem to have a handle on quantum numbers (which go beyond "abstract" into the simultaneous realms of microscopic and unimaginable), I have confidence in my ability to get it across to them in the next lesson.
This week, I have loved teaching. If I were to go back to the States next week, I'd look to continue. A lot can happen between now and my return, but I don't see giving this up just yet.
Peace
John
8/02/2004
Teaching is neat. I walked into my 8th grade classes without a clue as to what to do, because I wasn't able to plan a lesson and was under the impression that I was not going to be their teacher any more - so I gave a review of the past four lessons with a lot of interaction and very interactive demonstrations of concepts, that seemed to be fairly successful. I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow, but it should be just as spontaneous.
I had to kick one of my students out of school today (for the year!). She had had too many absences and had falsified signatures (plus, her grades were rock-bottom). When I told her what had happened, with a couple of other students present, she started to shake and I could tell she was going to cry, mostly out of anger. Half of me feels badly, because I know she wants to study, but the other half of me realizes that you have to put the effort in to study, or you're just wasting time and money. And she's put in almost no effort.
Went out to dinner with Nanosh and Brooke after Brooke's house was broken into. Half of me can't wait for security again.
Peace
John
I had to kick one of my students out of school today (for the year!). She had had too many absences and had falsified signatures (plus, her grades were rock-bottom). When I told her what had happened, with a couple of other students present, she started to shake and I could tell she was going to cry, mostly out of anger. Half of me feels badly, because I know she wants to study, but the other half of me realizes that you have to put the effort in to study, or you're just wasting time and money. And she's put in almost no effort.
Went out to dinner with Nanosh and Brooke after Brooke's house was broken into. Half of me can't wait for security again.
Peace
John
8/01/2004
For the first time in Mozambique, I have no clean underwear. As these things happen, I did it quite accidentally, leaving my dirty laundry behind a locked door. Woe is me.
I traveled a bit down to Maputo and took care of some much needed shopping for the last phase of my service here. Differently shaped pasta, peanut butter and soy sauce were my vices this time. Some fresh cumin even came along for the ride.
And so tomorrow I begin the last trimester, guaranteed to be the most memorable as I help 10th and 12th graders pass their Biology and Chemistry exams, respectively. I thought for a while that my writing would start to turn sentimental at this point, but I'm not letting myself get that far ahead. There's still a lot to be accomplished before I get out of here. Reflecting isn't on the list.
I really love teaching.
Peace
John
I traveled a bit down to Maputo and took care of some much needed shopping for the last phase of my service here. Differently shaped pasta, peanut butter and soy sauce were my vices this time. Some fresh cumin even came along for the ride.
And so tomorrow I begin the last trimester, guaranteed to be the most memorable as I help 10th and 12th graders pass their Biology and Chemistry exams, respectively. I thought for a while that my writing would start to turn sentimental at this point, but I'm not letting myself get that far ahead. There's still a lot to be accomplished before I get out of here. Reflecting isn't on the list.
I really love teaching.
Peace
John
7/27/2004
I walked into the secretary's office, on a dual mission. The best kind of mission, because if one fails, you've always got another, so you can justify your efforts.
Unfortunately, the second half of the mission was to tell one of the secretaries that her relative had failed the year because of excessive absences and falsification of documents. I've always had a good relationship with her, and was afraid of the consequences of telling her.
So I told her I had news, and that her relative had to be failed. She grabbed my hand and started to walk off, saying "What about that peanut butter you promised me? When are you going to bring that in?" It was a relief to hear that it was no big deal - it was probably what she had expected all along. But it was a surprise, as most of these things are.
I get routinely called into offices, expecting the worst, but end up fixing a fax machine or copier. Then once in a while, I really get ripped into for something I hadn't expected to cause a problem.
And honestly, this is the last challenge of being here - to stop being so surprised. I come in to these situations with a certain list of expectations that I thought I had carefully cultivated over these couple of years only to find that I am once again wrong. Dead wrong. And surprised about that. So what I'm saying is that I just need to stop being surprised about being wrong. I need to let myself be more human and to realize how unpredictable others are.
Interestingly, it was this quality that I noticed in the returned volunteers I had met - a hesitancy to predicts others' actions - that made me admire them so much. And so I want to see that in myself, too.
And, by the way, the other mission I was on was for money which (unsurprisingly) wasn't there.
Surprisingly, however, it arrived an hour later as they said it would.
Peace
John
Unfortunately, the second half of the mission was to tell one of the secretaries that her relative had failed the year because of excessive absences and falsification of documents. I've always had a good relationship with her, and was afraid of the consequences of telling her.
So I told her I had news, and that her relative had to be failed. She grabbed my hand and started to walk off, saying "What about that peanut butter you promised me? When are you going to bring that in?" It was a relief to hear that it was no big deal - it was probably what she had expected all along. But it was a surprise, as most of these things are.
I get routinely called into offices, expecting the worst, but end up fixing a fax machine or copier. Then once in a while, I really get ripped into for something I hadn't expected to cause a problem.
And honestly, this is the last challenge of being here - to stop being so surprised. I come in to these situations with a certain list of expectations that I thought I had carefully cultivated over these couple of years only to find that I am once again wrong. Dead wrong. And surprised about that. So what I'm saying is that I just need to stop being surprised about being wrong. I need to let myself be more human and to realize how unpredictable others are.
Interestingly, it was this quality that I noticed in the returned volunteers I had met - a hesitancy to predicts others' actions - that made me admire them so much. And so I want to see that in myself, too.
And, by the way, the other mission I was on was for money which (unsurprisingly) wasn't there.
Surprisingly, however, it arrived an hour later as they said it would.
Peace
John
7/26/2004
You know, I don't think I'd work this hard or this intensely if I thought I'd stay here for a few years. I think the balance would be tipped more to the side of being social than accomplishing things that may have more personal than external meaning.
As it is, I'm giving exercises to my 10th and 12th graders to resolve on their own, and probably exercises to the 11th graders to go research. Maybe all this will pay off some day for them, but it's hard to say. Will it motivate them to step out of a bankrupt system? To try and understand, not just memorize?
Peace
John
As it is, I'm giving exercises to my 10th and 12th graders to resolve on their own, and probably exercises to the 11th graders to go research. Maybe all this will pay off some day for them, but it's hard to say. Will it motivate them to step out of a bankrupt system? To try and understand, not just memorize?
Peace
John
7/25/2004
I was walking down the street towards what I call home now, thinking about a couple of points. It was dusk, with a thin mist hovering three feet above the ground everywhere. A cool evening, but nothing abnormal. As I looked around, I saw people entering houses, waiting for the night, meeting up with family they haven'd seen in days, weeks or months. Fires burned in yards, and around those fires were conversations about what happened today and the typical reactions ("Liar!", "You're crazy!") So the points that were swimming around in my head were the idea of "family day" and the Changana definition of home. As marked in the official calendar, December 25th here is "family day" instead of Christmas, in order to be non-denominational. But it's another example of Western influence. It assumes that you don't spend enough time with your family, but even the most estranged families here make time for each other once a year aside from the mandated December 25th. It just seems silly to me that people accept "family day" as a norm.
More to the positive side of things, but still along the same lines, I've been thinking about what home means. In different contexts, my home is alternately Mozambique, Cleveland and Connecticut. So which is it? Where do I live? In Changana, the word for "to live" (in this sense) is "kutsama" which also means "to sit". So now, I live in Mozambique. But this definition allows for plenty of change - you can always choose to sit somewhere else. As I was thinking it might be nice to "sit" in the south and teach at a school in the States that was in analagous condition to this one here. Yet another idea.
Peace
John
More to the positive side of things, but still along the same lines, I've been thinking about what home means. In different contexts, my home is alternately Mozambique, Cleveland and Connecticut. So which is it? Where do I live? In Changana, the word for "to live" (in this sense) is "kutsama" which also means "to sit". So now, I live in Mozambique. But this definition allows for plenty of change - you can always choose to sit somewhere else. As I was thinking it might be nice to "sit" in the south and teach at a school in the States that was in analagous condition to this one here. Yet another idea.
Peace
John
7/23/2004
It's been pretty relaxing around here - been going to school in the morning and shopping, playing chess, reading in the afternoon. Tomorrow I'm going out to Jenna's site to travel a bit and get out of the city while I can.
School's got us in seminars through next Saturday, which would mean no breaks from January through December. I just don't understand it. Strangely, I miss teaching already and I want to get back to it. Hell, if I miss teaching NOW, then I definitely can't give up on it when I get back. But where do I want to be? And doing exactly what?
Peace
John
School's got us in seminars through next Saturday, which would mean no breaks from January through December. I just don't understand it. Strangely, I miss teaching already and I want to get back to it. Hell, if I miss teaching NOW, then I definitely can't give up on it when I get back. But where do I want to be? And doing exactly what?
Peace
John
7/21/2004
I feel obligated to put down what I've been doing, when the real important words are those that describe how.
So it's strange, all this.
I've been planning out my last trimester, looking ahead to the business and hecticness that it will create without trying to look behind it. At the same time, there's a good chunk of me that's starting to really look at my trip home as an imminent reality. It's as if time is on two different paces, one for the known quantities and one for the unknown.
It all comes down to one thing - new shoes. My current shoes have holes in the bottoms and are essentially irreparable. If I get new shoes (and slacks, too), I will be quite comfortable on my feet for an average of 8 hours a day. And if I'm comfortable for 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, I'll thoroughly enjoy the work I put in and feel some closure so that the trip home will feel less like a random event and more like the next logical step.
So, what HAVE I been doing? Writing down grades on big sheets of paper in 5 different ways and planning out all my lessons for the last trimester. Two of my stuents will fail (or, have failed) because of absences, which may or may not cause controversy. I gave grades of 100% to several students, which has already caused quite a stir, some good and some bad reactions. I have been playing lots of chess with Dinho, Nanosh and Lisa (Nanosh's girlfriend who has come to visit from Tonga). Most importantly, I've had time to relax to some extent. It'd be nice to have a couple days next week as well, but I'm not counting on it.
So, yes, Nanosh is back and getting into the swing of things, but it's difficult. I don't know who it's harder for - him, his family, or the people around him. Only the test of time will tell.
Peace
John
So it's strange, all this.
I've been planning out my last trimester, looking ahead to the business and hecticness that it will create without trying to look behind it. At the same time, there's a good chunk of me that's starting to really look at my trip home as an imminent reality. It's as if time is on two different paces, one for the known quantities and one for the unknown.
It all comes down to one thing - new shoes. My current shoes have holes in the bottoms and are essentially irreparable. If I get new shoes (and slacks, too), I will be quite comfortable on my feet for an average of 8 hours a day. And if I'm comfortable for 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, I'll thoroughly enjoy the work I put in and feel some closure so that the trip home will feel less like a random event and more like the next logical step.
So, what HAVE I been doing? Writing down grades on big sheets of paper in 5 different ways and planning out all my lessons for the last trimester. Two of my stuents will fail (or, have failed) because of absences, which may or may not cause controversy. I gave grades of 100% to several students, which has already caused quite a stir, some good and some bad reactions. I have been playing lots of chess with Dinho, Nanosh and Lisa (Nanosh's girlfriend who has come to visit from Tonga). Most importantly, I've had time to relax to some extent. It'd be nice to have a couple days next week as well, but I'm not counting on it.
So, yes, Nanosh is back and getting into the swing of things, but it's difficult. I don't know who it's harder for - him, his family, or the people around him. Only the test of time will tell.
Peace
John
Thursday, August 19, 2004
07/16/2004
The trimester is over. I gave 550 students grades for the trimester, and the whole thing ended with an uncharacteristic whimper. I forgot to bring the exams to the night classes tonight, then during the make-up exam I was giving, the "office boy" decided it was time to go and he turned off all the lights, leaving us in the pitch black, with unfinished work. I was angry. But I let that pass in about 20 minutes.
I got here and Jurcia, Violeta and one of their friends were here cooking because their own power had been cut. The house was full of the wonderful aroma of lentils, tomatoes and onions from dinner that Jenna had prepared, and Lisa and Nanosh were sitting around, basking in the busyness. It was hard not to relax pretty much straight away.
Now that I've essentially got just one trimester left before I'm out of here, I'm thinking about how I can put all of myself into it - but I'm sure that will happen in any case.
I've been dealing with one of my students lately who has an excessive number of absences - about 60 over the course of the trimester (which is the equivalent of missing every single class for two weeks straight) and didn't bother to get them excused until this past week. She first complained of vision problems, then uteral problems, now her child is ill, and so she's unable to come to school, etc. It's not that I don't believe it -- she had the proof -- it's that when it comes down to it, she isn't coming to school. And she tried all sorts of backward methods to get around it, like altering the attendance book, forging teachers' signatures, getting other teachers and staff members to go over my head, and so on. I just don't understand. It would have been so much easier to either come to class (she's very unmotivated) or just drop school altogether, because she's got important things to attend to that clearly preclude coming to school. What's her motivation? What is a 10th grade education going to do for her if she's not there for it? Even if it's only for the certificate, what is she going to do with that?
There's some missing link here I just don't see - I don't know whether that is because of cultural differences of because I refuse to believe that someone would choose to pay to go to school if they didn't really want to get anything out of it. Is it just for the social life? Is it for her parents? Maybe I'll figure it out, maybe not.
My plan is, let her stay in school but under close sanctions - she must justify all absences within one week or I call her parents again. She has a problem with lying and I'm determined to try and show her that she doesn't need to lie.
Peace
John
I got here and Jurcia, Violeta and one of their friends were here cooking because their own power had been cut. The house was full of the wonderful aroma of lentils, tomatoes and onions from dinner that Jenna had prepared, and Lisa and Nanosh were sitting around, basking in the busyness. It was hard not to relax pretty much straight away.
Now that I've essentially got just one trimester left before I'm out of here, I'm thinking about how I can put all of myself into it - but I'm sure that will happen in any case.
I've been dealing with one of my students lately who has an excessive number of absences - about 60 over the course of the trimester (which is the equivalent of missing every single class for two weeks straight) and didn't bother to get them excused until this past week. She first complained of vision problems, then uteral problems, now her child is ill, and so she's unable to come to school, etc. It's not that I don't believe it -- she had the proof -- it's that when it comes down to it, she isn't coming to school. And she tried all sorts of backward methods to get around it, like altering the attendance book, forging teachers' signatures, getting other teachers and staff members to go over my head, and so on. I just don't understand. It would have been so much easier to either come to class (she's very unmotivated) or just drop school altogether, because she's got important things to attend to that clearly preclude coming to school. What's her motivation? What is a 10th grade education going to do for her if she's not there for it? Even if it's only for the certificate, what is she going to do with that?
There's some missing link here I just don't see - I don't know whether that is because of cultural differences of because I refuse to believe that someone would choose to pay to go to school if they didn't really want to get anything out of it. Is it just for the social life? Is it for her parents? Maybe I'll figure it out, maybe not.
My plan is, let her stay in school but under close sanctions - she must justify all absences within one week or I call her parents again. She has a problem with lying and I'm determined to try and show her that she doesn't need to lie.
Peace
John
07/14/2004
At 8:30 AM this morning, I found myself in the rural hospital here in town. And once again, I was in charge of someone who had gotten suddenly sick, with someone who had to be carried in. This time it was my student who had passed out in the classroom and stopped breathing for a minute or so while we ran her to the hospital.
Ironically, Nanosh was trying to call me from Maputo at exactly that moment for the first time since he became ill.
I talked with him later on and we are eagerly anticipating our reunion.
And speaking of meetings, I had a 3 1/2 hour meeting at school today, all about yelling at teachers for not doing this or not doing that. Lately, I've been getting up and speaking, but today I chose to skip that.
Because I wanted to get back to correcting tests that I gave yesterday, at night. I've given so many tests and corrected so many tests done by the students, that I am tired of it. I'm good at it now, but I am ready to be done with it for at least a few days.
I weighed myself at the hospital today - 65 kg (143 lbs). It's the least I've weighed since freshman year of college. I'm working very hard - I'm regularly pulling full days of classes and work at home without rest other than for eating. I can't continue like this, not even for one trimester.
So I planned out my work for next trimester, and it seems that I can spread out the difficult parts (correcting) over the course of the 13 weeks and I'm working on getting ahead in my lesson plans.
I'm concerned about this because I see people getting sick around me for strange reasons, not all explained, and I don't want to be one of them because of working myself to the bone. Moreover, I can work this hard anywhere in the world; shouldn't I be more preoccupied with doing here what I can't do elsewhere? Am I really helping all these kids that much?
I don't know the answers. What I do know is that it's going to feel real good to get back home, relax, and figure out the next step over a delivered pizza and drinkable tap water. Of course, the next step may end up looking a lot like this step. Just bigger - but definitely not as rigorous!
Peace
John
Ironically, Nanosh was trying to call me from Maputo at exactly that moment for the first time since he became ill.
I talked with him later on and we are eagerly anticipating our reunion.
And speaking of meetings, I had a 3 1/2 hour meeting at school today, all about yelling at teachers for not doing this or not doing that. Lately, I've been getting up and speaking, but today I chose to skip that.
Because I wanted to get back to correcting tests that I gave yesterday, at night. I've given so many tests and corrected so many tests done by the students, that I am tired of it. I'm good at it now, but I am ready to be done with it for at least a few days.
I weighed myself at the hospital today - 65 kg (143 lbs). It's the least I've weighed since freshman year of college. I'm working very hard - I'm regularly pulling full days of classes and work at home without rest other than for eating. I can't continue like this, not even for one trimester.
So I planned out my work for next trimester, and it seems that I can spread out the difficult parts (correcting) over the course of the 13 weeks and I'm working on getting ahead in my lesson plans.
I'm concerned about this because I see people getting sick around me for strange reasons, not all explained, and I don't want to be one of them because of working myself to the bone. Moreover, I can work this hard anywhere in the world; shouldn't I be more preoccupied with doing here what I can't do elsewhere? Am I really helping all these kids that much?
I don't know the answers. What I do know is that it's going to feel real good to get back home, relax, and figure out the next step over a delivered pizza and drinkable tap water. Of course, the next step may end up looking a lot like this step. Just bigger - but definitely not as rigorous!
Peace
John
07/07/2004
I think I needed some time to not write for a while, to collect my thoughts and work hard on what's in front of me, right here, right now. Though I've been noticing lately that I've been very absent-minded in my work and stretching myself thin. Not that this is any surprise - I guess I just needed to find where that limit was. And I've been going through another tough emotional time that I essentially have to deal with by myself - for a few reasons. And though I'm accomplishing what I viewed as quite possibly "impossible", I don't feel all that wonderful about it. Yeah, I'm teaching almost 600 kids now on all different levels in two different subjects at all times of the day. It's a constant challenge, but is my body really up for it? I know that when I start making careless errors, it's the first sign that my brain is tired. Not because I can't do the problem, but because I'm looking for (and satisfied with) shortcuts.
I've found that what keeps me going is being in front of and with students. This very human aspect of WORK makes it all worthwhile. It's what I need in any job that I have from this point on in my life. People. Yesterday, I taught for 8 hours and was doing schoolwork for another 3 or so. It's addicting. I do and don't like being addicted. I never want to be a workaholic - so I want to not think of it as work. But I know that personal relationships suffer when you spend all your time buried in work, whether or not it's "work".
So my thoughts are pretty scattered, my perspective on the world and on life is nice and rounded, and my pen is once again ruining perfectly blank pieces of journal paper.
I've noticed that, without Nanosh or the Canadians around, my Portuguese has improved markedly. I still can't express myself as I'd like (would that day ever come?), but I'm feeling more comfortable in these shoes.
I used to have Wednesday's completely off, but now I have to teach in the morning...and then I end up doing all sorts of other things at school. Today, I found myself there from 7 AM till 11AM, and 2 PM till 7 PM. Not exactly a day off. But I showed some kids how to use a microscope, and I prodded them gently to play around with it. One of them got a drop of "clean" water from outside and found it to be much less than pristine. They were very interested in the applications, but I think the real application is in getting them to see the very necessary connectionn between the cells in our body and how small and omnipresent they are. It's something that, without proper visual aids or personally seeing it, it can never really be properly imagined for minds cultivated on analytical methods. The use of the microscope has such far-reaching implications, but ONE for a group of FIFTY!? That's what's so difficult.
And of course what's been on my mind - what will inevitably come to dominate my thoughts - is the next step in my life. And the very question (What to do?) is part of the debate. I'm very tempted to just not decide and let the next step find me. I think there's just too much to consider and cull so that it might be counterproductive to look. What I have to convince myself of is that there is no one job where I can fulfill all of my goals - all I can do is take a good job and make the most of it, molding it into the job I want. Like this one. And the hope is that with every job, self-directed or not, I'll get closer and closer to my goals.
I guess it's just a professional reflection of my philosophical wanderings - that, inevitably, I will get closer and closer to the truth that doesn't really exist. Just like when you tear a piece of paper in half. And then do it again. And agian. And, assuming you get small enough instruments, you can keep on doing that for quite a while. You never get down to "no paper" - you just get infinitely close to it. I'll just get close enough to get a good idea. And I'll never find the perfect job. I'll just get close enough to have an idea of what it would be.
I'm so preoccupied with happiness - mainly, that of others - that I don't focus on my own. So my next job definitely needs to address that situation. Which isn't to say that I'm not happy. This is definitely the coolest (and lowest paying - roughly $30 per week) job. So I guess another objective would be to find something as cool.
Which leads me to the next conclusion, that I need to move. Preferably from the States. But I need to figure out where I am emotionally first, and how I can maintain relationships with loved ones. But I could easily see myself in China, Brazil, Lithuania or even Canada, speaking Chinese, Portuguese, Lithuanian or Canadian :) The possibilities make my head spin, because although it's only months away, it's a world that I can't imagine right now.
Peace
John
I've found that what keeps me going is being in front of and with students. This very human aspect of WORK makes it all worthwhile. It's what I need in any job that I have from this point on in my life. People. Yesterday, I taught for 8 hours and was doing schoolwork for another 3 or so. It's addicting. I do and don't like being addicted. I never want to be a workaholic - so I want to not think of it as work. But I know that personal relationships suffer when you spend all your time buried in work, whether or not it's "work".
So my thoughts are pretty scattered, my perspective on the world and on life is nice and rounded, and my pen is once again ruining perfectly blank pieces of journal paper.
I've noticed that, without Nanosh or the Canadians around, my Portuguese has improved markedly. I still can't express myself as I'd like (would that day ever come?), but I'm feeling more comfortable in these shoes.
I used to have Wednesday's completely off, but now I have to teach in the morning...and then I end up doing all sorts of other things at school. Today, I found myself there from 7 AM till 11AM, and 2 PM till 7 PM. Not exactly a day off. But I showed some kids how to use a microscope, and I prodded them gently to play around with it. One of them got a drop of "clean" water from outside and found it to be much less than pristine. They were very interested in the applications, but I think the real application is in getting them to see the very necessary connectionn between the cells in our body and how small and omnipresent they are. It's something that, without proper visual aids or personally seeing it, it can never really be properly imagined for minds cultivated on analytical methods. The use of the microscope has such far-reaching implications, but ONE for a group of FIFTY!? That's what's so difficult.
And of course what's been on my mind - what will inevitably come to dominate my thoughts - is the next step in my life. And the very question (What to do?) is part of the debate. I'm very tempted to just not decide and let the next step find me. I think there's just too much to consider and cull so that it might be counterproductive to look. What I have to convince myself of is that there is no one job where I can fulfill all of my goals - all I can do is take a good job and make the most of it, molding it into the job I want. Like this one. And the hope is that with every job, self-directed or not, I'll get closer and closer to my goals.
I guess it's just a professional reflection of my philosophical wanderings - that, inevitably, I will get closer and closer to the truth that doesn't really exist. Just like when you tear a piece of paper in half. And then do it again. And agian. And, assuming you get small enough instruments, you can keep on doing that for quite a while. You never get down to "no paper" - you just get infinitely close to it. I'll just get close enough to get a good idea. And I'll never find the perfect job. I'll just get close enough to have an idea of what it would be.
I'm so preoccupied with happiness - mainly, that of others - that I don't focus on my own. So my next job definitely needs to address that situation. Which isn't to say that I'm not happy. This is definitely the coolest (and lowest paying - roughly $30 per week) job. So I guess another objective would be to find something as cool.
Which leads me to the next conclusion, that I need to move. Preferably from the States. But I need to figure out where I am emotionally first, and how I can maintain relationships with loved ones. But I could easily see myself in China, Brazil, Lithuania or even Canada, speaking Chinese, Portuguese, Lithuanian or Canadian :) The possibilities make my head spin, because although it's only months away, it's a world that I can't imagine right now.
Peace
John
06/29/2004
Days are moving quickly. Had a couple weird dreams/waking moments now that I'm living alone, at least for the time being. I woke up a couple days ago to the sight of the fan that's two feed from my head. I only saw the silhouette and my half-sleep mind saw the perfectly still, standing body of an eight year old girl. I instantly thought that someone had broken into the house (which has happened, while I was sleeping) and for some reason there was a young girl keeping watch over me. I thought she might be dangerous or perhaps possessed. Within moments, however, I realized it was just the fan and I made out the form of the fan quickly enough to save myself from insanity.
Speaking of insanity, last Tuesday I gave 13 lessons, which is the most I will ever give and have ever given. It was exhausting in a good way, but nonetheless exhausting.
And then I had a dream that Nanosh was back in town and mad at me.
Peace
John
Speaking of insanity, last Tuesday I gave 13 lessons, which is the most I will ever give and have ever given. It was exhausting in a good way, but nonetheless exhausting.
And then I had a dream that Nanosh was back in town and mad at me.
Peace
John
Thursday, August 05, 2004
06/20/2004
I haven't written for what seems like a lifetime. I'll try and catch up on the big things and then get on to the biggest...if you can call it that.
After much hassle and struggle and shame and slander, I am teaching Chemistry to all of the 11th and 12th grades. I was, at one point, told to cease and desist because I hadn't been given proper permission, then I was denied giving lessons because of Peace Corps regulations that my school misunderstood, then reinstated after I talked to a turma, telling them that the school denied me the ability to give them lessons. But now I have 11 turmas, or 39 classes per week (including other responsibilities). I have to plan 14 lessons for 8th, 10th, 11th and 12th grade. But, as Nanosh says, I love an intellectual challenge and this is definitely just that. The night students are wonderful, and I'm already having a blast with them. The only down side was getting yelled at by my director in front of the pedagogical director for saying bad things about the direction of the school. I deserved it, but it was a means to an end as otherwise these students would still be out a teacher. This is what started Thursday.
All week, Annie and Charles had been saying their goodbyes, starting at their going away parties on Friday and Saturday, and culminating in a last dinner on Wednesday night. Nanosh and I, Albertina and Latifa were saying goodbye at the restaurant we have always gone to with Annie and Charles, adnd we shared a lot of good memories and laughs. We talked about the future - about how uncertain it really is when you get down to it. Then I went by their house early Thursday afternoon to see them drive off for the last time out of C---. Nanosh was sick at home.
Peace
John
After much hassle and struggle and shame and slander, I am teaching Chemistry to all of the 11th and 12th grades. I was, at one point, told to cease and desist because I hadn't been given proper permission, then I was denied giving lessons because of Peace Corps regulations that my school misunderstood, then reinstated after I talked to a turma, telling them that the school denied me the ability to give them lessons. But now I have 11 turmas, or 39 classes per week (including other responsibilities). I have to plan 14 lessons for 8th, 10th, 11th and 12th grade. But, as Nanosh says, I love an intellectual challenge and this is definitely just that. The night students are wonderful, and I'm already having a blast with them. The only down side was getting yelled at by my director in front of the pedagogical director for saying bad things about the direction of the school. I deserved it, but it was a means to an end as otherwise these students would still be out a teacher. This is what started Thursday.
All week, Annie and Charles had been saying their goodbyes, starting at their going away parties on Friday and Saturday, and culminating in a last dinner on Wednesday night. Nanosh and I, Albertina and Latifa were saying goodbye at the restaurant we have always gone to with Annie and Charles, adnd we shared a lot of good memories and laughs. We talked about the future - about how uncertain it really is when you get down to it. Then I went by their house early Thursday afternoon to see them drive off for the last time out of C---. Nanosh was sick at home.
Peace
John
06/08/2004
For two straight days now, I've been pretty much alternating between work and school, on and off. I'm going to teach at least 11th grade Chemistry, starting this week, which means I'm due to have quite a few weeks like this. Makes up for it, as I blazed through three books last week.
There's a whole lot on my mind, too, but I'm finding that I can deal with that much better than I could last year. Actually, it's somewhat a relief to start to worry and fantasize about the next step. I think it's be really fun to start all over in a brand new place again - but among friends. I have to find that balance somehow.
My extra session today was heavily attended by some of the most vocal students, creating a very difficult lesson, but it reduced the amount that they complain, for the moment. Pretty soon, we'll stop talking about genetics and start in on evolution. Honestly, I can't wait. Not that I don't like genetics, but explaining the very basics of the simplest notions 8 times or more...it's tiring.
I think what would be the coolest challenge here in education would be to teach Biology at the University level. I would have to do some serious studying, but those students are (in theory) the hardest-working and some of the smartest. I just feel like I need to rearrange all of my students into levels so I can have an honors class, normal classes and a remedial class. It wouldn't be perfect, but at least I could discuss some more advanced concepts, concentrate on the basics without boring the others, and hammer in the most basic techniques for those who need them.
In my 8th grade classes today, I gave 15-minute mini-lessons on how to answer a "Why" question. They routinely answer questions like "Why does the earth warm up?" with responses like, "The earth warms up because the solar radiation is one of the forces in the universe.", after I give them a list of forces in the universe. They don't know how to answer the question so they look for a key word, then spit out a phrase that they were given. So I gave them an analytical method: 1) Identify a reason that makes the question true ("The solar energy is hot.") 2) Connect that reason with the original question ("The solar energy is hot and heats up the earth.") One turma even started asking ME to use this method for complicated questions. It was nice to know they understood and knew how to apply it, not questioning why their Biology teacher is telling them all of this.
Soon, I'll be going through some struggles with the 11th graders, I'm sure. I think my expectations will be too high, and I'll have to resort to explaining things 5 times because I'm not making immediate sense to them. We'll see.
My students are always asking me why I just don't let them cheat a little - how unfair it is that I'm so harsh, because what if they just forgot a little fact? or they weren't able to study? or... No is not an acceptable answer. Not at all. And instead of accepting it and moving past it, they try and find different ways to cheat instead of studying and doing very well (as many students have already done).
To hell with "4Mat" which grinds in teaching to the 4 different learning styles - my kids have one style and even when I address just that one style, they still have difficulties because they expect the same old shit - to vomit back the notes I give them. I find that most of them actually understand next to nothing. That's scary.
Peace
John
There's a whole lot on my mind, too, but I'm finding that I can deal with that much better than I could last year. Actually, it's somewhat a relief to start to worry and fantasize about the next step. I think it's be really fun to start all over in a brand new place again - but among friends. I have to find that balance somehow.
My extra session today was heavily attended by some of the most vocal students, creating a very difficult lesson, but it reduced the amount that they complain, for the moment. Pretty soon, we'll stop talking about genetics and start in on evolution. Honestly, I can't wait. Not that I don't like genetics, but explaining the very basics of the simplest notions 8 times or more...it's tiring.
I think what would be the coolest challenge here in education would be to teach Biology at the University level. I would have to do some serious studying, but those students are (in theory) the hardest-working and some of the smartest. I just feel like I need to rearrange all of my students into levels so I can have an honors class, normal classes and a remedial class. It wouldn't be perfect, but at least I could discuss some more advanced concepts, concentrate on the basics without boring the others, and hammer in the most basic techniques for those who need them.
In my 8th grade classes today, I gave 15-minute mini-lessons on how to answer a "Why" question. They routinely answer questions like "Why does the earth warm up?" with responses like, "The earth warms up because the solar radiation is one of the forces in the universe.", after I give them a list of forces in the universe. They don't know how to answer the question so they look for a key word, then spit out a phrase that they were given. So I gave them an analytical method: 1) Identify a reason that makes the question true ("The solar energy is hot.") 2) Connect that reason with the original question ("The solar energy is hot and heats up the earth.") One turma even started asking ME to use this method for complicated questions. It was nice to know they understood and knew how to apply it, not questioning why their Biology teacher is telling them all of this.
Soon, I'll be going through some struggles with the 11th graders, I'm sure. I think my expectations will be too high, and I'll have to resort to explaining things 5 times because I'm not making immediate sense to them. We'll see.
My students are always asking me why I just don't let them cheat a little - how unfair it is that I'm so harsh, because what if they just forgot a little fact? or they weren't able to study? or... No is not an acceptable answer. Not at all. And instead of accepting it and moving past it, they try and find different ways to cheat instead of studying and doing very well (as many students have already done).
To hell with "4Mat" which grinds in teaching to the 4 different learning styles - my kids have one style and even when I address just that one style, they still have difficulties because they expect the same old shit - to vomit back the notes I give them. I find that most of them actually understand next to nothing. That's scary.
Peace
John
06/06/2004
I would hate to ever be pregnant. I got some sort of food poisoning on Friday evening and spent the night jumping up from bed to empty my stomach - the way things started. So I don't think I could ever handle doing that every day for months at a time - maybe not as frequently, but having those wishy-washy feelings that maybe things will just get better on their own.
With just a week to go in town, Annie and Charles invited us over to watch more or less a final movie - "The Killing Fields". I had never seen it before and though it was often shocking and the story strong, it reminded me of how fruitless it seems to be to be fighting on the side of peace within a war-loving society. Is it that we forget so easily the horrors of war? Or is it that we get so bloodthirsty that it just doesn't matter? It's clear that most people for war don't know or care about what war does to a society. Here in the south of Mozambique, where the war was the worst, people are consistently more violent, more apathetic and less educated than those in the rest of the country. Regardless of what war may resolve, it creates problems too numerous and horrible to ever justify war.
I might still end up teaching Chemistry and keeping my 10th graders.
Peace
John
With just a week to go in town, Annie and Charles invited us over to watch more or less a final movie - "The Killing Fields". I had never seen it before and though it was often shocking and the story strong, it reminded me of how fruitless it seems to be to be fighting on the side of peace within a war-loving society. Is it that we forget so easily the horrors of war? Or is it that we get so bloodthirsty that it just doesn't matter? It's clear that most people for war don't know or care about what war does to a society. Here in the south of Mozambique, where the war was the worst, people are consistently more violent, more apathetic and less educated than those in the rest of the country. Regardless of what war may resolve, it creates problems too numerous and horrible to ever justify war.
I might still end up teaching Chemistry and keeping my 10th graders.
Peace
John
06/03/2004
I realize I haven't offered my token "it's damn cold here" entry yet this year, so here it is.
It's damn cold. I sleep inside my sleeping bag, with capulana pants on, everything zipped up, windows closed, and still wake up cold. I boil 2/3 of a pot of water for a 2/3 full bucket and still freeze my ass off when I stop pouring water over myself to shave. That part is downright dangerous - shake and shave. Then I run out of the bathroom, put a t-shirt on under my dress shirt, then my fleece on top of that. When I get to school, my mouth and hands are still at 50% functionality and I can see my breath. I can see my students' breath too, in front of their crossed-arm, shivering bodies. Many don't have warm clothing, so arrive in their t-shirt and pants uniform - ironically, it's those of us who have the warm clothing who seem to be suffering more.
Every once in a while, I'll get the kids to do jumping jacks if they seem really frigid. But most of the time, we suffer together, but talking and walking keep me considerably warmer.
I came here the other day quite late and got out Nanosh' thermometer thinking "This is the coldest it's been yet!" I let it sit in the main room, and it dropped to a whopping 65 degrees F. Man, I am a weakling. What am I going to do when that's considered warm?
I was about to give my second class of the day when the Chemistry teacher took me aside and said, "The 11th and 12th grades haven't had a Chemistry teacher since the beginning of the year. As people know you're good at Chemistry, I was wondering if you might be able to do it. We'd arrange a Biology teacher to take your classes."
I immediately started considering it - the new challenges, new students (motivated and smart), new colleagues, material, etc. but leaving behind students I've befriended and gotten to trust me over a year and a half. Torn. So I asked some of my students who had shown up for an extra session. I knew how they would respond, but it convinced me that I need to finish the year with them. They need ME, just as much as I need them, which doesn't make for a great long-term relationship, but it'll do for another six months.
Peace
John
It's damn cold. I sleep inside my sleeping bag, with capulana pants on, everything zipped up, windows closed, and still wake up cold. I boil 2/3 of a pot of water for a 2/3 full bucket and still freeze my ass off when I stop pouring water over myself to shave. That part is downright dangerous - shake and shave. Then I run out of the bathroom, put a t-shirt on under my dress shirt, then my fleece on top of that. When I get to school, my mouth and hands are still at 50% functionality and I can see my breath. I can see my students' breath too, in front of their crossed-arm, shivering bodies. Many don't have warm clothing, so arrive in their t-shirt and pants uniform - ironically, it's those of us who have the warm clothing who seem to be suffering more.
Every once in a while, I'll get the kids to do jumping jacks if they seem really frigid. But most of the time, we suffer together, but talking and walking keep me considerably warmer.
I came here the other day quite late and got out Nanosh' thermometer thinking "This is the coldest it's been yet!" I let it sit in the main room, and it dropped to a whopping 65 degrees F. Man, I am a weakling. What am I going to do when that's considered warm?
I was about to give my second class of the day when the Chemistry teacher took me aside and said, "The 11th and 12th grades haven't had a Chemistry teacher since the beginning of the year. As people know you're good at Chemistry, I was wondering if you might be able to do it. We'd arrange a Biology teacher to take your classes."
I immediately started considering it - the new challenges, new students (motivated and smart), new colleagues, material, etc. but leaving behind students I've befriended and gotten to trust me over a year and a half. Torn. So I asked some of my students who had shown up for an extra session. I knew how they would respond, but it convinced me that I need to finish the year with them. They need ME, just as much as I need them, which doesn't make for a great long-term relationship, but it'll do for another six months.
Peace
John
Thursday, June 24, 2004
6/2/2004
I pretty much sat on my ass all day and read. I read about a fictional woman who struggles through her own demons of past and future to realize how fragile and fleeting life is, only in the end to settle down. Is this always the happy ending? I felt myself wishing for the nicely encapsulated ending and got it. As disturbing as traveling around can be, jumping from one life to another, I couldn't see myself stuck in one life for decades or even more than a few years. It could be something that I just need to get out of my system, but I think it's more likely that I was made to be unhappy with monotony - I'm even feeling the creep of monotony in my life here, though I know that's me not doing my part lately to get as involved as I'd like to be, socially.
In fact, I rarely visit people, and I see it as a result of fear and laziness. What am I going to talk about? How will I leave? What if I don't want the food offered? You'd think that by now, I'd have all this down. But I still can't gossip like a Mozambican or eat without thinking about the effort needed in order to prepare it. Does that make me stubborn, maladjusted...or normal?
I'm too hard on myself. That I've been told a thousand times, enough to start believing it, but not enough to do anything about it.
The latest in school is this HIV/AIDS campaign called "ESH" or Escolas Sem HIV (schools free of HIV). It's a program developed by FDC, the Community Development Fund organized by Nelson Mandela's wife, Graca Machel (widow of Mozambican hero Samora Machel). The idea is that FDC has a lot of arms reaching into the communities to try and fight HIV, including a very visible billboard campaign, home visits to HIV-positive people, and tons of other sponsored campaigns outside of the schools. The ESH program (pronounced "ehsh") started last year in my province at Nimi's school, and now it's at dozens of local schools.
The idea is that if teachers and students are empowered with information and a fund for performing activities, rewarding these schools who are judged to be the most successful, the fight against HIV can be won on a direct level.
Unfortunately, like all of these things, there's a big downside. All of the planning and organizing in the world can't change the fact that you're trying to change a behavior (unsafe sex with multiple partners) of many, by trying to change the behaviors of a few (the teachers and student activists). The idea that the educated will educate is all well and good, but it assumes a certain level of willingness to strengthen the message. The message received at the school level is watered-down: teachers know what the problem is, how to talk about it, who to speak with, but they don't know how to make a student embrace the idea with more than an academic interest. And so goes the house of cards. FDC says, "Use a condom and be faithful", the teacher says. "Use a condom", and the student says, "Look at the t-shirt I got from FDC!"
I was thinking about all of this when I started talking with Teresinha, the chefe of our ESH group, about what activities we were going to do this month. Well, of course we would have to do some debates which would free the students of questions, some theater to drive the message home, and some soccer games with a simple theme to really get the students to listen up. (Never mind that the debates would only happen in half the classrooms and end up debating whether "AIDS" meant one thing or another, the kids would all talk during the theater and miss the point, and the soccer game's message would be easily ignored.) And as I'm busy on Saturday, would you be so good as to run the meeting we scheduled?
Feeling the power shift, I suggested that we make a theme for the entire month of June: Does AIDS exist? I had heard that from Jenna's school, many students and teachers are asking this very question when the white person isn't around. So I figured it had to be relevant to the situation here (which it is) and it being so basic to the fight against HIV/AIDS, could spend easily one mont htalking about it, doing more good than condom demonstrations over the same period of time. Because the kids KNOW how to put a condom on, they KNOW how you get AIDS, they KNOW what the symptoms are, but if they don't THINK that it exists in the first place, what good does all that knowledge do? I didn't explain all of that, but I got the point across. And I asked what we could do to make a soccer game actually relevant to HIV/AIDS - apparently, we just need to put a banner up with a catchy slogan. Well, my theme got booted from the whole month down to just one week. But I'm running the meeting.
Not that I blame Teresinha. She cares for the students and wants the best for them. But somebody came and told them the solution was easy so they embraced it and refuse to see the solution as much closer to impossible than they'd ever like to imagine. Is that what I came here for? To be the resident cynic?
I suppose even the peacenik is considered violent in a Buddhist temple.
Peace
John
In fact, I rarely visit people, and I see it as a result of fear and laziness. What am I going to talk about? How will I leave? What if I don't want the food offered? You'd think that by now, I'd have all this down. But I still can't gossip like a Mozambican or eat without thinking about the effort needed in order to prepare it. Does that make me stubborn, maladjusted...or normal?
I'm too hard on myself. That I've been told a thousand times, enough to start believing it, but not enough to do anything about it.
The latest in school is this HIV/AIDS campaign called "ESH" or Escolas Sem HIV (schools free of HIV). It's a program developed by FDC, the Community Development Fund organized by Nelson Mandela's wife, Graca Machel (widow of Mozambican hero Samora Machel). The idea is that FDC has a lot of arms reaching into the communities to try and fight HIV, including a very visible billboard campaign, home visits to HIV-positive people, and tons of other sponsored campaigns outside of the schools. The ESH program (pronounced "ehsh") started last year in my province at Nimi's school, and now it's at dozens of local schools.
The idea is that if teachers and students are empowered with information and a fund for performing activities, rewarding these schools who are judged to be the most successful, the fight against HIV can be won on a direct level.
Unfortunately, like all of these things, there's a big downside. All of the planning and organizing in the world can't change the fact that you're trying to change a behavior (unsafe sex with multiple partners) of many, by trying to change the behaviors of a few (the teachers and student activists). The idea that the educated will educate is all well and good, but it assumes a certain level of willingness to strengthen the message. The message received at the school level is watered-down: teachers know what the problem is, how to talk about it, who to speak with, but they don't know how to make a student embrace the idea with more than an academic interest. And so goes the house of cards. FDC says, "Use a condom and be faithful", the teacher says. "Use a condom", and the student says, "Look at the t-shirt I got from FDC!"
I was thinking about all of this when I started talking with Teresinha, the chefe of our ESH group, about what activities we were going to do this month. Well, of course we would have to do some debates which would free the students of questions, some theater to drive the message home, and some soccer games with a simple theme to really get the students to listen up. (Never mind that the debates would only happen in half the classrooms and end up debating whether "AIDS" meant one thing or another, the kids would all talk during the theater and miss the point, and the soccer game's message would be easily ignored.) And as I'm busy on Saturday, would you be so good as to run the meeting we scheduled?
Feeling the power shift, I suggested that we make a theme for the entire month of June: Does AIDS exist? I had heard that from Jenna's school, many students and teachers are asking this very question when the white person isn't around. So I figured it had to be relevant to the situation here (which it is) and it being so basic to the fight against HIV/AIDS, could spend easily one mont htalking about it, doing more good than condom demonstrations over the same period of time. Because the kids KNOW how to put a condom on, they KNOW how you get AIDS, they KNOW what the symptoms are, but if they don't THINK that it exists in the first place, what good does all that knowledge do? I didn't explain all of that, but I got the point across. And I asked what we could do to make a soccer game actually relevant to HIV/AIDS - apparently, we just need to put a banner up with a catchy slogan. Well, my theme got booted from the whole month down to just one week. But I'm running the meeting.
Not that I blame Teresinha. She cares for the students and wants the best for them. But somebody came and told them the solution was easy so they embraced it and refuse to see the solution as much closer to impossible than they'd ever like to imagine. Is that what I came here for? To be the resident cynic?
I suppose even the peacenik is considered violent in a Buddhist temple.
Peace
John
6/1/2004
What is a volunteer if not somebody with a low-paying job? We refer to ourselves as volunteers, but the job isn't inherently that selfless. It's inherently a job. It's just that the underlying assumption is that we will take the job and run with it, going above and beyond what is required out of pure will, instead of being besieged by tons of annoying, bureaucratic requirements.
So that puts things in perspective when I think of getting a "real" job again - that there's nothing "fake" about this job, only that I took it knowing it was a stepping stone to something else. Though I can see myself teaching a science in another language in another country sometime in the future, and I see that as ten times more real than going back to the States and programming computers or analyzing documents.
French.
Maybe I oughta find myself a French-Canadian school and just go for it. After a year or so of French, of course.
A "real" job. Ha! Maybe it's just distance that brings out the "boring" buried in "real".
Peace
John
So that puts things in perspective when I think of getting a "real" job again - that there's nothing "fake" about this job, only that I took it knowing it was a stepping stone to something else. Though I can see myself teaching a science in another language in another country sometime in the future, and I see that as ten times more real than going back to the States and programming computers or analyzing documents.
French.
Maybe I oughta find myself a French-Canadian school and just go for it. After a year or so of French, of course.
A "real" job. Ha! Maybe it's just distance that brings out the "boring" buried in "real".
Peace
John
5/30/2004
It's cold. Last night, being fully clothed under a sheet and blanket was simply not enough. Of course, sleeping on a reed mat in a strange coastal house had something to do with it...and also not having batshit insulation plays a part.
Been doing a lot of thinking lately, which is always dangerous. Life is definitely too short - a fact accentuated by being here, where you see more infants than people your age and up - and the moment must be taken advantage of. It doesn't even feel like life here sometimes, because of how we're brought up to approach life as moving in some logical manner. But it doesn't.
You have to hold on to your surroundings and the people who surround you, for the support you need because only in the familiar can you ever find solace. And every day that passes, your past gets further away and you inevitably get more different than the people from your past.
This isn't to say that you can't hold on to the past. You can, but you miss out on so much that is going on right in front of your nose - like everything else, the moment is a balance. The moment is a delicate combination of what you can see and feel, and what you can remember of everything that made this moment.
And life doesn't work on a gradient - like modern theories of evolution, a lot happens in a burst and then nothing happens for a while until the next burst.
I'm in a burst now, just on a different level, and I'm really unsure as to where it's going to bring me and if I'm ready for it.
Peace
John
Been doing a lot of thinking lately, which is always dangerous. Life is definitely too short - a fact accentuated by being here, where you see more infants than people your age and up - and the moment must be taken advantage of. It doesn't even feel like life here sometimes, because of how we're brought up to approach life as moving in some logical manner. But it doesn't.
You have to hold on to your surroundings and the people who surround you, for the support you need because only in the familiar can you ever find solace. And every day that passes, your past gets further away and you inevitably get more different than the people from your past.
This isn't to say that you can't hold on to the past. You can, but you miss out on so much that is going on right in front of your nose - like everything else, the moment is a balance. The moment is a delicate combination of what you can see and feel, and what you can remember of everything that made this moment.
And life doesn't work on a gradient - like modern theories of evolution, a lot happens in a burst and then nothing happens for a while until the next burst.
I'm in a burst now, just on a different level, and I'm really unsure as to where it's going to bring me and if I'm ready for it.
Peace
John
5/27/2004
This is the first journal entry in a long time that I've made by candlelight. Interesting, as the candle was poorly made so it's giving me a veritable pyrotechnic display in its snapping and popping.
More interesting is that I don't have power, not because of some natural disaster, but because Nanosh's school didn't pay the bill for three months. So they came to cut the energy today. They say it'll be back tomorrow.
The radio quit yesterday. Got shaken up too much. Can still use the tape player, which is now a moot point without electricity. The water still works, but the ants are reveling in every moist spot available. And we don't have any security lights right now, but it's not a big deal because Nanosh has the only thing of value - the cell phone - in Maputo. And since the freezer needs power, it's useless and as the gas is practically gone, the stove is useless.
The good news: they started work on the potholes again (it's been over a month since they did anything) and my latest theory is that Mozambicans are actually smarter than Americans, trapped in a bankrupt system.
Peace
John
More interesting is that I don't have power, not because of some natural disaster, but because Nanosh's school didn't pay the bill for three months. So they came to cut the energy today. They say it'll be back tomorrow.
The radio quit yesterday. Got shaken up too much. Can still use the tape player, which is now a moot point without electricity. The water still works, but the ants are reveling in every moist spot available. And we don't have any security lights right now, but it's not a big deal because Nanosh has the only thing of value - the cell phone - in Maputo. And since the freezer needs power, it's useless and as the gas is practically gone, the stove is useless.
The good news: they started work on the potholes again (it's been over a month since they did anything) and my latest theory is that Mozambicans are actually smarter than Americans, trapped in a bankrupt system.
Peace
John
5/26/2004
I gave a tutoring session for some of my oldest 10th graders in Mathematics today. They were working on word problems and I led them through step by step, at least how I had learned to do it. They were really pleased and gracious, making me think that maybe I teach the wrong subject. Imagine - Math teacher John. Hmmm. I think I would have the same problems, however. Teaching on the secondary level requires that the primary level education was done well, and that dependent concepts have been introduced. As that doesn't always happen, math could be quite the adventure, like Biology.
Peace
John
Peace
John
5/25/2004
I'm starting to learn a lot about what's lacking in the educational system here, almost enough to come up with some very real conclusions.
I was in my extra session today, telling the few students who arrived that I would only answer specific questions, and not "I don't understand...genetics", for example. So we sat and stared at each other for a while, they being completely at a loss as to how to ask a specific question on material they were pretty sure they understood and me struggling to NOT try and explain everything all over again, knowing that it would just reinforce memorizing my explanation.
So we sat and sat, and eventually after much prodding and impatience from the students, they asked about a homework assignment that I had given them. It read, "Which codon controls the color brown?" Now, I was doing an exercise in using the genetic code that was not all that scientifically accurate, but useful to introduce the necessary concepts. But I didn't think it would be an exercise in basic education.
I said, "Let's start with the question. What is the question asking for?" I gave them examples of what I meant, writing the question, "What is the capital of the USA?" on the board and asked if "In the capital is where the President is located" is an appropriate response. They recognized that it wasn't appropriate but didn't really know why. I explained that the question is asking for a city. I gave more scientific examples of these questions, making special note of the key words in the questions. After about 10-15 minutes, they understood that the homework was asking for codons and after that, the assignment was trivial. But the reason I receive ridiculous responses that have nothing to do with the question, is because they don't know how to read a question properly. They've never been TAUGHT how to read a question. Never. My lesson on responding properly was probably the first time, and the glow on their faces afterwards confirmed it.
So what happens when they don't know how to read the question? They match it up with the information that's closest to it and just repeat the information, hoping (often correctly) for a good answer to the question. But the way I write questions, they're screwed if they don't know how to read a question AND think about and internalize the information in order to be able to apply it. So the kids who can do all of that get close to perfect (or perfect) scores, ones who can do half of it get decent scores, ones who haven't tried to learn outside of the system fail miserably.
But can they really learn how to read a question in 10th grade? Granted, it's better than the 8th grade struggles. I asked today where the blood goes after leaving the heart, aside from the body, and they rightly said the lungs. I asked them what happens in the lungs, and since they had already stuck themselves onto the definition for the circulation between the heart and lungs, I got, "The blood returns to the heart." It had nothing to do with the question.
So I asked some students what their names were, how old they were, where were they born, etc. They, of course, answered these questions fine, so I pointed out that since they were listening to the questions I was asking now, I'd try again. They got it and I think realized their mistake, but I pointed out that they can't just read the definition. The 10th graders have this down pretty well after a while in my lessons, but it's incredibly frustrating to deal with just the basic listening skills when you're also working with thinking skills.
Sometimes I wish I didn't even have a curriculum so I could teach the most basic concepts just to actually teach basic learning skills (though in a sense, I'm actually doing that). It's frustrating because I think they actually want to understand for the sake of understanding and I just can't spend the class time on what they really need.
But it's clear to me that skills like summarizing, choosing the main idea, concept association, etc., are so foreign that students as old as these can only treat the skills as something else to memorize - and when I don't give them the opportunity to memorize, they freak out. Well, little by little.
Peace
John
I was in my extra session today, telling the few students who arrived that I would only answer specific questions, and not "I don't understand...genetics", for example. So we sat and stared at each other for a while, they being completely at a loss as to how to ask a specific question on material they were pretty sure they understood and me struggling to NOT try and explain everything all over again, knowing that it would just reinforce memorizing my explanation.
So we sat and sat, and eventually after much prodding and impatience from the students, they asked about a homework assignment that I had given them. It read, "Which codon controls the color brown?" Now, I was doing an exercise in using the genetic code that was not all that scientifically accurate, but useful to introduce the necessary concepts. But I didn't think it would be an exercise in basic education.
I said, "Let's start with the question. What is the question asking for?" I gave them examples of what I meant, writing the question, "What is the capital of the USA?" on the board and asked if "In the capital is where the President is located" is an appropriate response. They recognized that it wasn't appropriate but didn't really know why. I explained that the question is asking for a city. I gave more scientific examples of these questions, making special note of the key words in the questions. After about 10-15 minutes, they understood that the homework was asking for codons and after that, the assignment was trivial. But the reason I receive ridiculous responses that have nothing to do with the question, is because they don't know how to read a question properly. They've never been TAUGHT how to read a question. Never. My lesson on responding properly was probably the first time, and the glow on their faces afterwards confirmed it.
So what happens when they don't know how to read the question? They match it up with the information that's closest to it and just repeat the information, hoping (often correctly) for a good answer to the question. But the way I write questions, they're screwed if they don't know how to read a question AND think about and internalize the information in order to be able to apply it. So the kids who can do all of that get close to perfect (or perfect) scores, ones who can do half of it get decent scores, ones who haven't tried to learn outside of the system fail miserably.
But can they really learn how to read a question in 10th grade? Granted, it's better than the 8th grade struggles. I asked today where the blood goes after leaving the heart, aside from the body, and they rightly said the lungs. I asked them what happens in the lungs, and since they had already stuck themselves onto the definition for the circulation between the heart and lungs, I got, "The blood returns to the heart." It had nothing to do with the question.
So I asked some students what their names were, how old they were, where were they born, etc. They, of course, answered these questions fine, so I pointed out that since they were listening to the questions I was asking now, I'd try again. They got it and I think realized their mistake, but I pointed out that they can't just read the definition. The 10th graders have this down pretty well after a while in my lessons, but it's incredibly frustrating to deal with just the basic listening skills when you're also working with thinking skills.
Sometimes I wish I didn't even have a curriculum so I could teach the most basic concepts just to actually teach basic learning skills (though in a sense, I'm actually doing that). It's frustrating because I think they actually want to understand for the sake of understanding and I just can't spend the class time on what they really need.
But it's clear to me that skills like summarizing, choosing the main idea, concept association, etc., are so foreign that students as old as these can only treat the skills as something else to memorize - and when I don't give them the opportunity to memorize, they freak out. Well, little by little.
Peace
John
5/23/2004
Silence is wonderful.
In its smooth nothingness, it provides a place for everything that is directionless and lost. Silence opens up doors in the soul, in the soul that you only know in silence.
Went and ate lunch at Maria's place with David. David, Nanosh and I went to the city soccer game this afternoon and watched C-- squeeze out a scrappy win against Macia. I thought during the game that I could probably do a comparable job in goal. It's quite tempting to give it a try. Soccer really is an addictive sport, even for those who watch it just for the funny errors that happen to the other team.
Nothing all that notable is going on (that I wish to share with the entire world!) - just a lot more of the same. But I can think of my time here as 6 months and a few weeks - how quickly it all goes by...
Peace
John
In its smooth nothingness, it provides a place for everything that is directionless and lost. Silence opens up doors in the soul, in the soul that you only know in silence.
Went and ate lunch at Maria's place with David. David, Nanosh and I went to the city soccer game this afternoon and watched C-- squeeze out a scrappy win against Macia. I thought during the game that I could probably do a comparable job in goal. It's quite tempting to give it a try. Soccer really is an addictive sport, even for those who watch it just for the funny errors that happen to the other team.
Nothing all that notable is going on (that I wish to share with the entire world!) - just a lot more of the same. But I can think of my time here as 6 months and a few weeks - how quickly it all goes by...
Peace
John
Tuesday, June 22, 2004
05/19/2004
Custodio came by to visit today (Peace Corps staff). Nanosh and I asked him about his past, in which he has worked for various NGOs and other organizations. I asked him whether he thought NGOs were good or bad. He says he thinks Peace Corps is a good organization because we're down in the trenches doing real development, and there's a lot of organizations that are all about money - money comes in and it just disappears. We see a lot of that here, personally.
And so it begs the question - where's the limit? If we, as volunteers, see that our communities and colleagues are completely dependent upon outside organizations, does that mean we are part of a broken machine or that we are far enough removed to be considered actually innocent of this economic colonialization? I talk to people on a regular basis who tell me that "Eh pa! I just lost my job because the project ended. If the money goes through, I might get picked up again", or conversely, "I can't make it here any more because I found a project to work on." So, instead of starting businesses or developing a domestic economy, the economy of first world giving is kept afloat. Wonderful.
Peace
John
And so it begs the question - where's the limit? If we, as volunteers, see that our communities and colleagues are completely dependent upon outside organizations, does that mean we are part of a broken machine or that we are far enough removed to be considered actually innocent of this economic colonialization? I talk to people on a regular basis who tell me that "Eh pa! I just lost my job because the project ended. If the money goes through, I might get picked up again", or conversely, "I can't make it here any more because I found a project to work on." So, instead of starting businesses or developing a domestic economy, the economy of first world giving is kept afloat. Wonderful.
Peace
John
05/18/2004
I just finished correcting the first quiz this term for my 8th graders, and there were 5 students with 100% and 5 with 0%, with everything in between, at an average of 40%! It's really incredible to me how little information most of them know or understand. And the answers I accepted were...generous.
And the cheating continues. One girl, as I was explaining the questions, turned to her neighbor ever so subtly and began asking him something. So I took her paper away. Minutes later, I saw her standing right outside the door, copying off the questions to do the quiz outside. Why? Well, she never put her name on the paper I took away, so her plan was to write another quiz up and sneak it into my pile as the only one with her name. As I said to the class right afterwards, "It's unfortunate that Sonia thinks I don't know her name."
And then there are my stoner girls in the 2nd oldest 8th grade turma. They're about 16 years old and show up late every day, in a very loud, inappropriate mood. I'm pretty sure they're not arriving stoned, but I don't know how to explain it. Well, they showed up late to the quiz, stared at me and at each other for a while, wrote the questions (but not the answers) and handed the papers in. Nothing. No effort. And 25% of their grade.
These kids aren't required to be in school, and more, they have to pay. Every year, school fees, books (if the teachers require them), bribe money for both teachers and students, school supplies, etc. I'd be tempted to call their parents if I thought they wouldn't beat their children OR do absolutely nothing.
My extra session for the 10th graders went well. Abdul asked me if it's good to have a girlfriend, in English. I said , yes, if you want to have one and she wants to have you as a boyfriend. And to be careful because "I love you" doesn't always mean what you think it means. I just wish it were really that simple.
Peace
John
And the cheating continues. One girl, as I was explaining the questions, turned to her neighbor ever so subtly and began asking him something. So I took her paper away. Minutes later, I saw her standing right outside the door, copying off the questions to do the quiz outside. Why? Well, she never put her name on the paper I took away, so her plan was to write another quiz up and sneak it into my pile as the only one with her name. As I said to the class right afterwards, "It's unfortunate that Sonia thinks I don't know her name."
And then there are my stoner girls in the 2nd oldest 8th grade turma. They're about 16 years old and show up late every day, in a very loud, inappropriate mood. I'm pretty sure they're not arriving stoned, but I don't know how to explain it. Well, they showed up late to the quiz, stared at me and at each other for a while, wrote the questions (but not the answers) and handed the papers in. Nothing. No effort. And 25% of their grade.
These kids aren't required to be in school, and more, they have to pay. Every year, school fees, books (if the teachers require them), bribe money for both teachers and students, school supplies, etc. I'd be tempted to call their parents if I thought they wouldn't beat their children OR do absolutely nothing.
My extra session for the 10th graders went well. Abdul asked me if it's good to have a girlfriend, in English. I said , yes, if you want to have one and she wants to have you as a boyfriend. And to be careful because "I love you" doesn't always mean what you think it means. I just wish it were really that simple.
Peace
John
Saturday, June 19, 2004
05/17/2004
No chalk!
First class, Monday morning, and the report back from the student sent to go get chalk is that there's none. So I send the chefe of the turma back to the room to sit and wait until they give him chalk, saying that I refuse to teach until I've got chalk. Which is really 50% pragmatism as most of my lesson depends on chalk for the students' understanding and 50% protest because I could easily make something up that doesn't require chalk. So we sat there for about half an hour while I showed them how to measure their pulse and then we sat and did homework. But a few minutes in, a student asked to go home to get chalk from his house, another found a tiny piece, and word came down tht there would soon be chalk. So I have 15 minutes of a 45-minute lesson and saved an extra piece of chalk I got from the student to give my next lesson, but was out again for the third. So I pulled the protest again and got another piece. Before my last class, I scored another piece, but I wouldn't be surprised if the night classes didn't happen and classes tomorrow are worse.
I never really experienced it before, but if you deny yourself passion, it's hard to really get it back after a while.
I've been thinking more and more about social work lately, as I would like to have some direction and that's a direction I'd like to go in. Plus, with a degree in Biology and Computer Science, experience in web design, personal tutoring and high school teaching, what could be a more logical choice?? Now, if I could just find a way to do it outside the US and feasibly...:)
Peace
John
First class, Monday morning, and the report back from the student sent to go get chalk is that there's none. So I send the chefe of the turma back to the room to sit and wait until they give him chalk, saying that I refuse to teach until I've got chalk. Which is really 50% pragmatism as most of my lesson depends on chalk for the students' understanding and 50% protest because I could easily make something up that doesn't require chalk. So we sat there for about half an hour while I showed them how to measure their pulse and then we sat and did homework. But a few minutes in, a student asked to go home to get chalk from his house, another found a tiny piece, and word came down tht there would soon be chalk. So I have 15 minutes of a 45-minute lesson and saved an extra piece of chalk I got from the student to give my next lesson, but was out again for the third. So I pulled the protest again and got another piece. Before my last class, I scored another piece, but I wouldn't be surprised if the night classes didn't happen and classes tomorrow are worse.
I never really experienced it before, but if you deny yourself passion, it's hard to really get it back after a while.
I've been thinking more and more about social work lately, as I would like to have some direction and that's a direction I'd like to go in. Plus, with a degree in Biology and Computer Science, experience in web design, personal tutoring and high school teaching, what could be a more logical choice?? Now, if I could just find a way to do it outside the US and feasibly...:)
Peace
John
05/13/2004
Let's see...two years ago I was finishing up my degree, starting full-time again at Dirt Devil, involved in a couple of side projects, sights set on Peace Corps...and now? Well, I've got 7 months to figure out where to set my sights and the ongoing internal debate is the necessity of grad school. Part of me thinks that in order to really dominate a field, I need a Master's, but part of me knows to do good things, I just need the willpower and grad school is just more money and indebtedness (yet good experience). And I look at lives here, at what people make out of nothing and how they succeed by being flexible - but how they would jump at the opportunities I've got.
Maybe the international job market...
Peace
John
Maybe the international job market...
Peace
John
05/12/2004
Today I worked with the other 8th grade Biology teacher on a lesson plan for the circulatory system. As much as I'd like to spend a couple weeks on circulation, I have about 4 total lessons, so it's good to make those count.
We were to plan out a lesson on the big and small circulations - the big circulation being between the heart and the cells of the body, while the small circulation happens between the heart and the lungs.
When we got to the small circulation (heart and lungs), we worked on making the information more concise, which she did a pretty good job with, but then got down to actual content. I asked her "What is the function of the small circulation?" and expressed it in other ways like "Why does the blood even go TO the lungs, why not just go out directly to the rest of the body?" and all I got back from her were random definitions like "The left ventricle of the heart is larger than the right ventricle."
Not that I was shocked, it was just disappointing. She couldn't actually process the question because she had never been taught that the question has any actual meaning - the whole game in school is to match the answer with the question, given a finite number of possible questions. Worse comes to worst, give the definition of some of the terms used in the question. That's how educated people seem to act, after all!
So she was playing the same game with me that my students play with me. And all I can think to say is "Think about the question" which means to them that I've already given them the answer, but it's hard to think of. And so much of the problem has to do with language. The students don't know what these words mean, so they memorize them and when they are teachers, make up definitions to appease the students. But they're just memorized words.
So in this teacher's education, she had been introduced to the "small circulation", but never thought about what it meant or anything about it beyond the questions and definitions. What I was asking her to do today was elementary in many educational systems, but high-level for the system here.
And after about 10 minutes of poking and prodding, she finally got that the blood needs oxygen, which it gets in the lungs.
When we got to the "big circulation" we ran into the same problem and spent as much time resolving it. I don't know if I can teach her how to think critically or analytically, but at least she sees the simplicity of it. In fact, she remarked on how simple the concepts really are and how often they become overcomplicated.
It really seems to me that the objective of education here is to lord over others by complicating matters and elevating language - in other words, hold people down.
In a discussion with Nanosh today, I concluded that the truth can never be found as we ourselves are always changing and the world is always changing. But we can still have spirituality in the sense that we can look for rules or ideas to live by. It is this spirituality I have and it feels so much more real than any religion I have experienced.
Peace
John
We were to plan out a lesson on the big and small circulations - the big circulation being between the heart and the cells of the body, while the small circulation happens between the heart and the lungs.
When we got to the small circulation (heart and lungs), we worked on making the information more concise, which she did a pretty good job with, but then got down to actual content. I asked her "What is the function of the small circulation?" and expressed it in other ways like "Why does the blood even go TO the lungs, why not just go out directly to the rest of the body?" and all I got back from her were random definitions like "The left ventricle of the heart is larger than the right ventricle."
Not that I was shocked, it was just disappointing. She couldn't actually process the question because she had never been taught that the question has any actual meaning - the whole game in school is to match the answer with the question, given a finite number of possible questions. Worse comes to worst, give the definition of some of the terms used in the question. That's how educated people seem to act, after all!
So she was playing the same game with me that my students play with me. And all I can think to say is "Think about the question" which means to them that I've already given them the answer, but it's hard to think of. And so much of the problem has to do with language. The students don't know what these words mean, so they memorize them and when they are teachers, make up definitions to appease the students. But they're just memorized words.
So in this teacher's education, she had been introduced to the "small circulation", but never thought about what it meant or anything about it beyond the questions and definitions. What I was asking her to do today was elementary in many educational systems, but high-level for the system here.
And after about 10 minutes of poking and prodding, she finally got that the blood needs oxygen, which it gets in the lungs.
When we got to the "big circulation" we ran into the same problem and spent as much time resolving it. I don't know if I can teach her how to think critically or analytically, but at least she sees the simplicity of it. In fact, she remarked on how simple the concepts really are and how often they become overcomplicated.
It really seems to me that the objective of education here is to lord over others by complicating matters and elevating language - in other words, hold people down.
In a discussion with Nanosh today, I concluded that the truth can never be found as we ourselves are always changing and the world is always changing. But we can still have spirituality in the sense that we can look for rules or ideas to live by. It is this spirituality I have and it feels so much more real than any religion I have experienced.
Peace
John
05/11/2004
On Saturday, I had a meeting with all of the guardians and parents and directors of the school. As expected, it started an hour late and lasted twice as long as it needed to, with people complaining about the normal things. About 500 people packed into a gym to talk about a trimester worth of school, can't be all that productive. The only surprise was that our director announced his transfer to another school, effective as soon as we get a new director. One of the pedagogical directors, Evaristo, has already been asked and turned down the job of director. He was my choice (as if I have one) because he's forward-thinking, open-minded and enthusiastic. Oh, well. He (Evaristo) said that the likely new director is more along these lines than our current director.
After this big meeting, we split into individual turmas to give the grades to the parents and guardians. Of course, I thought this was a perfect opportunity to actually speak with them about how their students were doing, but I came to find out why they never come to talk with me. I told them the general situation of their students, some things that were going on in school, etc. And their reaction was, "Can we just get the grades already?" So I gave them out, and they left immediately afterwards, without a word for me.
I walked up to Dona Flora who was there for her daughter who had just received VERY poor grades. Dona Flora complained that nobody told her what was going on with her daughter, so she couldn't have known to help.
The post office lady, whose son is another of my students, keeps insisting that I make her son go to the board every class to make him study harder.
The other 8th grade Biology teacher uses my lesson plans exclusively for her lessons, but uses them just so she can do less work (she doesn't actually implement the lesson, just the information which is simplified for the sake of the students). On Monday, she greeted me with an arrogant smile and an upturned hand, meaning she wanted my next lesson plan.
The binding theme to all this is responsibility. It seems to me that I am surrounded by people who don't want any of it and expect things to get done. And so, by being responsible, I get used. I'm really tired of it - the complaining, the persistence, etc. And my students do the same thing. They wait until after all is said and done to complain instead of taking reponsibility before there is a problem. Most of them.
I realize Mozambican society is non-confrontational, but even Mozambicans complain about it. So I just urge my students to take responsibility and see what happens from there.
On Saturday, Jenna, Matt, Tiffany and I traveled to Chris' place to go to the discoteca and see his site. From the moment we arrived to when we left, it was a nice social atmosphere, catching up with people I hadn't seen in quite a while and meeting some new people. I now have some visits I have to make, and soon!
On Sunday, after getting about 1 hour's sleep after a lot of beer, on a nice hard ground, Jenna and I got a magical ride from Peace Corps halfway home (just in the nick of time, as she was getting harassed by a crazy guy) then a quick chapa the rest of the way.
I arrived at home about 1 PM, enough time to plan a lesson and take a short nap before going to Marcilio's sister's christening party. Ahem, a BYOB christening party. So we arrived at 4 PM, sat and talked with a German guy who's married to Mercilio's other sister (or cousin, I don't remember), who Nanosh and I called Dieter because he just seemed like a Dieter.
At this point, I was almost passing out in my chair, from going through detoxification and sleep deprivation. But sure enough! At 6 PM we got started with dinner and out came the obligatory beer (we bought) and within minutes I felt my good old alcohol-dependent self.
We ate and danced like kings, jetting out for a movie at the Canadians (I should have gone straight home, but hey...) and getting home at 10:30 PM. I was still pretty wiped out yesterday, but made it. Today I feel recovered, but I'm going to avoid ever getting so dependent on alcohol to just feel normal. It was really only one night that did it, but I didn't like the idea of having to drink to be in balance.
I can see how come there are so many alcoholics here.
Peace
John
After this big meeting, we split into individual turmas to give the grades to the parents and guardians. Of course, I thought this was a perfect opportunity to actually speak with them about how their students were doing, but I came to find out why they never come to talk with me. I told them the general situation of their students, some things that were going on in school, etc. And their reaction was, "Can we just get the grades already?" So I gave them out, and they left immediately afterwards, without a word for me.
I walked up to Dona Flora who was there for her daughter who had just received VERY poor grades. Dona Flora complained that nobody told her what was going on with her daughter, so she couldn't have known to help.
The post office lady, whose son is another of my students, keeps insisting that I make her son go to the board every class to make him study harder.
The other 8th grade Biology teacher uses my lesson plans exclusively for her lessons, but uses them just so she can do less work (she doesn't actually implement the lesson, just the information which is simplified for the sake of the students). On Monday, she greeted me with an arrogant smile and an upturned hand, meaning she wanted my next lesson plan.
The binding theme to all this is responsibility. It seems to me that I am surrounded by people who don't want any of it and expect things to get done. And so, by being responsible, I get used. I'm really tired of it - the complaining, the persistence, etc. And my students do the same thing. They wait until after all is said and done to complain instead of taking reponsibility before there is a problem. Most of them.
I realize Mozambican society is non-confrontational, but even Mozambicans complain about it. So I just urge my students to take responsibility and see what happens from there.
On Saturday, Jenna, Matt, Tiffany and I traveled to Chris' place to go to the discoteca and see his site. From the moment we arrived to when we left, it was a nice social atmosphere, catching up with people I hadn't seen in quite a while and meeting some new people. I now have some visits I have to make, and soon!
On Sunday, after getting about 1 hour's sleep after a lot of beer, on a nice hard ground, Jenna and I got a magical ride from Peace Corps halfway home (just in the nick of time, as she was getting harassed by a crazy guy) then a quick chapa the rest of the way.
I arrived at home about 1 PM, enough time to plan a lesson and take a short nap before going to Marcilio's sister's christening party. Ahem, a BYOB christening party. So we arrived at 4 PM, sat and talked with a German guy who's married to Mercilio's other sister (or cousin, I don't remember), who Nanosh and I called Dieter because he just seemed like a Dieter.
At this point, I was almost passing out in my chair, from going through detoxification and sleep deprivation. But sure enough! At 6 PM we got started with dinner and out came the obligatory beer (we bought) and within minutes I felt my good old alcohol-dependent self.
We ate and danced like kings, jetting out for a movie at the Canadians (I should have gone straight home, but hey...) and getting home at 10:30 PM. I was still pretty wiped out yesterday, but made it. Today I feel recovered, but I'm going to avoid ever getting so dependent on alcohol to just feel normal. It was really only one night that did it, but I didn't like the idea of having to drink to be in balance.
I can see how come there are so many alcoholics here.
Peace
John
05/10/2004
Two health trainees paid us a visit, Matt and Tiffany. They're quite excited about what they can accomplish in Mozambique, and so it will be very interesting to see where they end up. It sounds like two volunteers will be coming to my site, for a grand total of way too many Americans!
We visited the HIV-testing center, local hospitals, the Red Cross and a few other places to help them get their bearings, and figure out what they might end up doing.
On Friday, we had a big dinner cooked up for us by Issefa, the empregada, and we enjoyed a movie with the Canadians.
Early Saturday morning, I woke up to go to a school meeting that began a fatigue that I haven't yet recovered from and plan to try to begin recovering from right now...
Peace
John
We visited the HIV-testing center, local hospitals, the Red Cross and a few other places to help them get their bearings, and figure out what they might end up doing.
On Friday, we had a big dinner cooked up for us by Issefa, the empregada, and we enjoyed a movie with the Canadians.
Early Saturday morning, I woke up to go to a school meeting that began a fatigue that I haven't yet recovered from and plan to try to begin recovering from right now...
Peace
John
05/06/2004
I've had two GREAT extra sessions with my students these past couple of days. They're getting to the really curious parts of Biology where they're understanding the concepts and they're understanding them well enough to ask logical questions, bending and twisting the rules to see how far they'll get. I talked about twins and the genetic code today, and I got questions about Siamese twins, two sperm possibly fertilizing the same egg, why nucleotides are grouped in 3s and not in 4s (efficiency), etc. For the first time, I feel like they not only understand it, but they can and want to take it further. Maybe I should build on this pioneering spirit and give a challenge question every week or so in some centralized location - or maybe just ride the wave and have them keep asking me good questions.
In one of the quiz reviews I gave today, it occurred to me how few questions I really give them and how much it helped me as a student to have tons of questions to try out. But I also remember not having these study sessions to go to in high school - not that people would have gone.
I've given some serious thought lately to pursuing a Master's in Education and using that to teach in all sorts of different places in the world. I'm not sure whether that's just a pipedream or on the other hand, too short-sighted and something I eventually wouldn't be satisfied with, but the way things in the States are going, I'm not sure I want to spend too much time there, doing much of anything besides being politically and socially active. Maybe I could study in Europe. Yeah, pipe dreams.
But I want to try so much, and now I want to do it in so many places, that it seems a shame to pigeonhole myself. I've still got a few months to figure it out.
Peace
John
In one of the quiz reviews I gave today, it occurred to me how few questions I really give them and how much it helped me as a student to have tons of questions to try out. But I also remember not having these study sessions to go to in high school - not that people would have gone.
I've given some serious thought lately to pursuing a Master's in Education and using that to teach in all sorts of different places in the world. I'm not sure whether that's just a pipedream or on the other hand, too short-sighted and something I eventually wouldn't be satisfied with, but the way things in the States are going, I'm not sure I want to spend too much time there, doing much of anything besides being politically and socially active. Maybe I could study in Europe. Yeah, pipe dreams.
But I want to try so much, and now I want to do it in so many places, that it seems a shame to pigeonhole myself. I've still got a few months to figure it out.
Peace
John
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