The world is my classroom -- a mud hut is theirs

Part of my ever-evolving job description here in Mubiza is to assist with teaching life-skills classes both in school and as part of the JFFLS after-school program that I’m working on. Grif and I decided to team teach life-skills for grades 5-7. Each class meets forty minutes once a week, which isn’t very much time to cover the list of topics that we need to teach during the school year! Especially when the grade 5 learners hardly understand a word we say. Grade 5 is the first year taught exclusively in English; up until that point, classes are taught in a mixture of mother-tongue (Silozi) with English lessons given to prepare them for the switch. Even still, you will find that most Caprivian teachers will revert back into Silozi even with the higher grades – an option that Grif and I don’t have. There are times when it would be helpful in order for them to know what’s going on to briefly give an instruction in Silozi before switching back into English, yet I guess they will just have to adapt to our “English-only” teaching style.

Classes did not start until a couple weeks into the term, due to the schedule not being ready and the principle’s continued absenteeism. In the end, Grif and the other new male teacher were instructed to draw up the time-table for the entire school, even though they are the new teachers with no experience ever having done it. I should mention that there’s a host of much more qualified female teachers that could have done this, except for the fact that, oh yeah, they’re women in a male-dominant culture. Quite frustrating! Even now, a month and a half into the school term, notebooks have arrived, so learners are not able to complete any work or take notes, which is a very ingrained system here due to rote copying/memorization being the primary method of teaching.

The school is made up of three cement block building and two mud huts used for additional classrooms. Grif exclusively teaches in the mud huts (teachers rotate classrooms while each grade stays in their classroom), one of which is currently flooded with 45+ broken desks crammed inside. It’s the most squalid learning environment I have ever seen and more than slightly overwhelming to step inside to face 42 grade 5 learners, who haven’t eaten breakfast and then be expected to teach them.