Grades

So here in the BF we just finished up with our spring break week. The last two weeks of the trimester are always stressful because that is when we have to calculate grades. While this is certainly something stressful in the US, it is considerably more time consuming here in Burkina. Remember my previous post? 85 kids in a classroom? Now calculate the grades for each of them, for each of your classes, by hand.

Because the process is so time consuming, tests are 100% of the grade. Homework isn't factored in at all (and my students whined when tests were 50% of the grade in the US!). I think I'm the only teacher at my school who has ever graded homework individually, normally profs just corrected it as a class and maybe give plus or minus 1 point on their test if they did it.

The second trimester is also when most schools have compositions, or cumulative tests for the trimester.  Compos, as they're affectionately known, are 50% of the trimester's grade, the other tests make of the second half.  So when the end of the trimester came around, I first had to average the two tests I gave before the compo, then average that number with the score they earned on the compo. Last year, I would do everything in Excel, then copy into the bulletins (report cards). This year, I've realized that Excel actually takes more time than just using a calculator and entering it directly into the bulletins.

An example of a bulletin.  The COEFF (coefficient) is how many hours a week that class is taught.  Moyenne des Devoirs is the average of the tests, Note de composition is the grade they earned on their compo, MOY is the average of the tests and the compo, and Notes Ponderees is the grade*the coefficient.  All the Notes Ponderees are added, then divided by the sum of the coefficients for their overall average (kind of like a gpa).  In the French system all tests are out of 20, grades are given out of 20, and 10 is passing.

So I repeated that process exactly 161 times. The French, English, and Biology teachers teach in every class in the school, so they had to do this about 350 times. Less than fun. After all the teachers are done filling in their subjects, the Professeurs Principals (PP) have to add the Notes Ponderees and calculate the trimester average for one class.  I'm PP for 5e (the lovely class pictured in my previous post), and in addition to calculating the trimester average for each student, I have to calculate the class average and determine the rank of each student.  Not hard, but time consuming.

A completed bulletin from the first trimester. The class average was passing, but barely.  This trimester, the average wasn't passing... :(

So this trimester, my classes grades were a little disappointing. The class average was 9.6 out of 20.  Not so hot. Of the 85 students, only about 35 passed. Of the 32 girls, only 7 passed. 7! I actually had a long discussion with the other profs about why girls seem to do so much worse. No one had any good answers, but it was nice to hear them acknowledge the discrepancy between boys and girls. I think a big reason for the drop in grades (for all students) were the compos. The compos are all done over a two days, meaning that half of their entire trimester comes down to those two days. If they're even just a little off, or a little nervous, they can easily ruin their whole trimester. Not an ideal system.

Also, each page has a carbon copy, so you have to remember to move the cardboard divider after every student. I realize that this was the case for many documents not that long ago in the US, but long enough that this is the first I've had to do it...

You'll also notice that next to their signature, each professor gives the student an appreciation, which is just a quick one or two word remark on the students work. There are standard responses we give for each grade the student achieved. For low grades, 0 up to 10, the comments are Null, Very Weak, Weak, Insufficient, then Average.  If the student earned 10 or higher we have Average, Good Enough, Good, Very Good, and Excellent. Not really all that encouraging in my opinion...

I feel that this blog became a little more technical than I intended, but hopefully it gives a little insight into the amount of time that goes into tasks we have long since simplified using technology back home!

My classroom!

 Ever wonder what 85 students in a classroom looks like? Well, here it is. This is my 5e class (about 7th grade level), there are 85 students aged 14-18 crammed onto 28 benches (3 per bench!) for 5 hours straight every day. Here, students stay in the same room all day while teachers move from class to class. I teach math for 5 hours every week and I have to admit, they're kind of my favorite class. I think I just like that they're younger and that there is less pressure with the younger grades, but they're pretty cute, too :)  You'll also notice that students wear uniforms, at my school boys where all khaki and girls wear a blue plaid/checkered shirt with a navy skirt or pants. 

Copying notes from the board.

As for resources available for me and my 85 students, there isn't much.  My school is lucky enough to have textbooks for every student, but many of the books are full of holes from termite damage. There isn't a teacher's manual, so for each subject I teach, I asked for a student's notebook from the previous year. That way, I can compare the notebook to the textbook and hopefully get an understanding of what topics need more explanation or which topics I can skip if we get into a time crunch.

All of the textbooks are from the early 1990s, and while the curriculum for each class has changed some, the textbooks don't reflect that. In math and physics/chemistry the books are ok, but I know that the biology books aren't used at all. There are some locally printed biology books that are pretty good (because they actually reflect the curriculum), but because they aren't the official textbook students (and teachers) have to buy them with their own money.

While this isn't an ideal situation for any school, we make it work. The other P/C teacher and I work together to plan experiments and buy (or make!) needed materials ourselves. The one resource I have in abundance is time, so I also schedule extra sessions with my classes to prep for tests (or for 3e, the test year, to simply get through all the material).

Side note: Notice how the classroom has a drop down ceiling? It's really nice for cutting down noise when it's raining, and it helps keep the room cooler (barely), but the space between the ceiling and the roof is a nice place for rats/bats to hang out.  I can often hear them scrambling around up there and it kinda smells, haha.

Education Win.

So I have Super Great News! I found out a week or so ago that my school had the best national test results of all public schools in our region!!!  Yaho (my village) is in the Boucle de Mohoun, a large region northwest of the capital, and I think there are about 150 schools in the region.  The test consists of Math, French, English, History/Geography, Physics/Chemistry and Biology and is given to students the last year of ‘college’ which is kind of like middle school, but more like the first half of high school.  The students have to pass if they want to continue on to high school.  Last year I taught Physics and Chemistry for the grade that took the test, and over 70% of my students passed.  By American standards 70% is less than great, but here the national average is less than 50%.  Last year was an especially rough year, as many schools were striking for over two months (my school missed two weeks when the government shut down all schools, then another week when my students striked).  But in spite of the strikes last year, we rocked that test!

I have to admit; at this point in time I’m pretty used to the standards of teaching and learning here, but they are drastically different than the majority of the US.  For example: students here have detailed lessons of chemical reactions that they’ve never seen involving chemicals they’ve never heard of; and they have to be able to not only describe what happens during the reaction, but also describe how to test each substance to prove that it is what we say it is.  Very in depth things, that are only explained theoretically with little to no hands on or visual application.  Students have 3 years of biology (starting with cells and invertebrates, ending with human anatomy) without ever once using a microscope or actually seeing a cell!  They study geography without once seeing a globe, study the piston-type motor in a car while many of them have never actually ridden in a car, and learn how to calibrate a voltmeter without ever actually seeing one – or occasionally without ever seeing an electrical circuit in use.  Many times they learn French (and English) without access to books, only by what the teachers have written on the board.  And all of this with at least 70 kids in the classroom, though more likely closer to 100.

But despite all of these monumental challenges, there are students who are succeeding, and it makes my heart happy.  These students work their butts off and fully comprehend the value of their education – something I can guarantee that many American students have forgotten.  So while I may get frustrated as my students struggle with a concept I’m explaining for the fifth time, I just need to remind myself how far the really have come – with little to no support to get them here. 

The group of schools recognized for the results last year only included 6 schools and 4 of them were private. Private schools cost about 10 times as much as public in Burkina and many times have a foreign sponsor on top of money made from tuition.  The fact that my school in a rural village is able to compete with these schools is pretty dang impressive :)

Also, we got this really sweet certificate.

Mali

So here is my belated holiday post!  Next year I’ll be in America for Christmas and New Year’s!

This year I went to Mali for the holiday break.  A few days before Xmas, my friend Val came to visit my village.  Her town is just 20k south of the capitol, and she commented how much colder village was and how many more stars are visible at night :)  We went for a bike ride around the area, had lunch with my favorite professor’s family and had drinks with the president of the local PTA.

Xmas eve morning we made the trip from my village to Bobo and you could definitely tell it was a holiday!  The trip took about 2 hours longer than normal…  That evening we went to a new bar/grill right down the street, watched an xmas movie and went to bed.   There were about 20 volunteers there and xmas day we made dinner and watched movies all day (I definitely watched movies more than helping with dinner)

The next morning Val and I left at about 6:30 for Mali! We went to Mopti, a city where the Niger and Bani Rivers meet.  The bus ride there was about 14 hours, but we had a remarkably uneventful trip up there.  Our first morning there we had a tour of the city – saw their markets, a local mosque, the ship builders and just some of the side streets. I know that I can’t really compare Mopti – a tourist city – to my rural village, but I was surprised by the amount of development surprised me.  Mopti is between Bamako, the capitol of Mali, and Timbuktu and the city has been a part of the trade route for centuries.  We saw some of the big chunks of salt that is mined near Timbuktu as well as lots of smoked fish, all ready to be shipped one way or the other on the rivers.

Salt mined near Timbuktu

That evening we went on a sunset canoe ride around the area.  There were a couple islands right across from the city so we got off and walked around a couple of them.  We saw fish being smoked (they cover a pile of fish with grass, then light the grass on fire) and the evening nets being dragged. 

The evening catch.

The next day we sat around the pool reading with a walk along the river.  The rest of our group got in that evening – two other volunteers (from MN!) and their four friends visiting from home, one of whom works about two miles from my house. Craziness.  Our guide for the hiking portion of the trip also got in that evening, so we figured out the last couple details and headed into Dogon Country.

Dogon is an area of south eastern Mali – just north of Burkina Faso – where the Dogon people lived in villages built into the cliffs of the Bandiagara Escarpment.  Our tour started on top of the cliffs and ended a couple days later at the bottom.  Our guide, Oumar, is Dogon and was both super knowledgeable and super awesome.  He spoke English and you could tell from different phrases he used that he had definitely spent time around Americans.

In each village we passed through Oumar would explain different parts of the village and its significance in the culture.  Each village had several “town halls” where men would go to resolve disputes.  The parties in conflict would go in with several village elders and no one could come out until they reached a resolution.  And not a strict democratic, 51% say yes 49% say no type conclusion, but a resolution where everyone was in agreement.  They would talk around and around the issue, each side trying to convince the other of their validity.  You’ll also notice how that the ceiling is very low on these buildings.  The reason is so no one can stand up in anger and make any move to hurt another person.  A kind of cool concept.

The 'town hall.'  It sounds like the US could've used a couple of these this past year...

As I said, the Dogon lived in cliff villages: today the villages have all been rebuilt either above or below the cliff.  We were able to see an ancient village, though.  Oumar informed us that the Dogon weren’t the ones to build the villages; they moved in after a people called the Tele left them.  The villages consisted of mostly houses and grain silos.

One of the ancient villages on the cliff.

In the last village we visited we were able to see a mask ceremony.  While these are typically just preformed for tourists today, traditionally they were done at funerals to guide the spirits.  Each different type of mask represented a different person or belief in the traditionally animist culture.

Giant Mask! He was also doing these awesome spins and dips and i thought he was going to fall or take someone out, haha.

After our 4 days hiking we made our way back to Mopti, then back on into Burkina.  Our bus ride back was equally uneventful as the one out, which really is a quite surprising in West Africa.  We got back to Bobo where I was able to hang out with some volunteers from Ghana.  We ran into them in Dogon, then again in Bobo.  Also, they were from MN!

Overall, we had a really great week and it was pretty great way to ring in the New Year.  Happy 2012, friends! 

Aubin

Tuina Aubin.  He's 15 and a student in my 5e Math class, 3rd in his class overall, and he passed away this week.  When I showed up at school Thursday morning, the director was talking to the Bureau des Eleves (student council) and when he was done he came up to me and said that he had some bad news: a student had died.

When the director told me the name, I recognized it, but couldn't put a face with it immediately.  And that killed me.  I've spent about 4 months with these kids now, and I doubt I could name 10% of that class.  I knew what area of the class he sat in, I know that I recognized the name, meaning it was someone who participated, but I couldn't picture his face for the life of me.  It wasn't until a couple hours later when all the professors sat around talking about him that I was finally sure I was thinking of the right kid.  It just felt like i was doing him some sort of injustice by not even being able remember him.

As to how he died, no really knows at this point.  He was sick this last week, he had come in to school Tuesday to get the Medical Notebook (they have the local health clinic sign it to justify their absence from school) and he apparently had some sort of local medicine on his forehead (used for headaches) and he was sweating a lot. So it could have been anything.  And apparently the situation escalated over night, and being that my village is at least 2 hours from a hospital, I doubt anyone thought to take him there.  Or they thought it wasn't that serious.

After hearing the news that morning, the school staff and the bureau des eleves went to his family's house to give our condolences.  And it was the hardest thing I've ever done.  As we approached the house we could hear the crying; as we got closer we saw the roughly 30 women sitting around under a hanger.  The women were all crying: heavy, pained, anguished crying.  In this cultural it is not acceptable to cry unless someone has died.  Meaning that small frustrations and struggles we often cry over in America are dealt with in silence here.  Part of me wonders that because a death is the only time they can cry or let out their frustrations, they take it to another level.  Another part of what makes it so different is that in the US, mourning families are supposed to maintain some level of self-control.  It's often considered uncouth to be overly distraught in front of others.  Here, they don't care that anyone is seeing their grief: their child just died, of course they're grieving.  That's how they see it, and that's how everyone else sees it, too.

After a couple minutes the person standing in front of me moved a little to the side and I noticed that their was a bundled blanket in the middle of the women under the hangar.  It took me about two seconds to realize that it was his body.  He was just wrapped in a simple fleece blanket - the same blanket every market sells and every home has one or two of - and was laying on a straw mat.  I found out later that my director asked if we could see him, but they declined.  I later learned that the body was washed the next day as part of the burial process, and it is at that point that men also join the wake.

When we got back to school the biology teacher just kind of walked slightly away from the rest of the group and simply states "that was too hard."  He was the one to ask why only women were there.  None of the professors are the same ethnic group as the village, but our secretary is Bwaba, so she explained some of the customs to all of us.  As we were sitting around talking the biology teacher once again speaks up, "just this week, I used Aubin as an example of one the good kids we had in 6e last year."  The french teacher commented that if there were too many players for soccer, he could always ask Aubin to wait for the next half and Aubin would never make a fuss about it.  He was polite, kind and smart.

I've talked to a couple other volunteers about this, and I think that most volunteers experience a student death in their two years here.  Pretty sad statistic and I wonder how it compares to a lifetime of teaching in the US.  When I was student teaching at DCIS, one of the teachers was talking about his motivation for joining the Peace Corps and he said that he did it because he wanted to see dead bodies.  Not in some disturbing morbid way, but just that he wanted to live a life closer to edge of life.  A little less protection between you and the realities of life and death the world over.  And whether or not that is something I was expressly looking for in my service, it's certainly true.

Burkinabe Sliders

This post is a while in coming, I took this pictures this summer, but I still wanted to share them with you!

Back in about August, I was sitting with my neighbor, Sita, when a woman passed selling bean leaves. As i've said before, leaves of various plants are often mixed into sauces and provide a good portion of the nutrition value to food here.  Sita bought the leaves and said she was going to make a special dish with them.  She started that afternoon by making corn flour, but a little thicker than the corn flour typically used to make tô.  Then she washed the leaves, and pounded them into a very green mush.  Mix flour with leaf mush and you've got dinner.  She also pounded some fresh peanuts (very different taste than roasted, more of a fresh green bean or pea taste) and added those into the mixture.

The mixture: corn flour, bean leaves, pounded fresh peanuts and water.

At this point, Sita ran off to get something from a village elder.  She came back with a big bundle of a special kind of sticks that she fitted into the pot over the fire.  She poured water over the stick bundle and let it heat up.  As the water was heating, Sita started to form the mixture into oblong balls.  She placed the balls onto the sticks in the pot, then covered it again.

The balls were cooked by the steam, and they hardened and now had a somewhat meatball like consistency.  When done, they are not served on a miniature bun, but instead served covered in oil and salt. (close enough, right?).  I had tried something similar during my training, but that was made from bean flour, not corn.  The corn flour made this a little lighter, and they were pretty good.  They don't have a strong taste at all, meaning that they oil and salt you drizzle on is where most of the flavor is coming from.

Steam cooked to perfection.

I have to admit, any food that is different from the rice, pasta, and tô that i normally eat is a more than welcome treat.  And when i don't have to cook it myself, even better :)

Year 2: Well under way

So I just finished a (long) weekend in Ouaga, and I had every intention of writing two or more blog posts and here we are, less than 12 hours before I’m going to leave with nothing written… :)

The school started at the beginning of October, and I certainly hit the ground running this year.  I left for my vacation to Paris not knowing what classes I was teaching or even how many hours.  I got back to village on a Monday, got my schedule Tuesday and was teaching Wednesday!!  Definitely a big change from last year.  I remember how stressed and nervous I was last year, spending the whole month before school started just sitting and worrying about what I was going to do.  I’m glad this year wasn’t that difficult.

I am teaching an additional class this year, and I actually have none of the same classes as last year, which means that all the hours and notes I made in my lesson plans were made in vain, haha.  I’m teaching 5e Math (a friend recently asked what the “e” means after the number, and it’s the French equivalent the “th” at the end of 5th), 4e Physics/Chemistry and 3e Math.  I had 4e and 3e last year (but the math and p/c were switched) and I was a little nervous about teaching 5e because they are younger.  It turns out that 5e is my favorite class: they are young enough to still crave teacher attention and reinforcement that older grades pretend they don’t need.  5e is my largest class – 85 students crammed onto about 30 benches in one large smelly room – but it doesn’t really feel that different.  I certainly notice the difference when it comes to grading tests, but the day to day isn’t that different.  My 4e is only about 40 and my 3e is 29.  That’s right, 29!!  All my friends here are really jealous of that one, and honestly I know some American teachers who would be too.  Unfortunately, that small class size is due to the fact that only about 11 out of 56 passed the previous class last year :( The other students were recruited from other areas, which means that they probably took 3e last year but didn’t pass the national test and now have to repeat at a new school.

I just graded my first test from my 5e class, and I noticed a HUGE difference between the scores of boys and girls.  (Quick background on grading tests here: Tests are always out of 20 pts.  Always.  10 out of 20 is passing, and only about 50% of the students are expected to pass.  Very different mindset from what we have in the US. ) The class average for my test was almost exactly 10, pretty standard.  But when I averaged the scores of boys and girls individually, I saw that girls only averaged 8.2 points and boys averaged 11.  That seemed to be a huge difference to me, so I went back and compared them to my 4e math scores from last year and the scores by gender never differed by more than 0.3.  And here they differ by almost 3.0!!  I know not everyone is a big math nerd out there, but I assure you, that’s a big deal.  I’m not sure how I’m going to address this disparity just yet, but I’m certainly going to do something.  If you have any ideas, let me know!

The first few weeks back in village were very mellow, just getting back into the routine of the school year.  Then all of a sudden, I was out of village for four weekends in a row!  I still don’t know how that happened and traveling that much gets old really fast.  I head back to site tomorrow, and I plan on staying there for at least two weeks straight! 

Cold season (aka temps in the 60s) is just starting and nights are already getting nice and chilly.  I can sleep with a blanket!  But cold season also means dry season, so there is dust everywhere! I currently have a sinus infection (not fun ever, less fun when in Africa) and I blame the dust.  The air is so dry that most Burkinabe put shea butter up their nose to help with the dryness and dust, last year I privately laughed at them; this year I’m doing the same thing.

Back at the beginning of September a new group of volunteers started their service.  I helped with training so I’ve been talking to a few and answering questions as they figure things out for the first time.  It is so crazy how much of a difference you feel between your first and second year.  I’m confident that I asked every question they are asking and shared every concern they have right now, but after a year of living here I’m pretty comfortable.  Every day isn’t the challenge it once was.  With less than a year until I’m back in the states, my new worries are the challenges I’m going to face readjusting… :P