Responding to Kristof

It has been very exciting for me to read through Nicholas Kristof’s Teach for the World article in the New York Times and the various responses that have followed it considering that I am kind of doing exactly what he is proposing. Or almost, since I will only have spent six months as a volunteer in this school, not a whole year. But not just that. The article seemed to respond directly to a thought that has been going through my mind for a while now.

When people think of ‘poor schools’ in developing countries, they usually think of the poor conditions: not enough desks, no electricity, no books, no writing materials. And there are plenty of NGOs or organizations that deal with the goods. Donating books, desks school supplies… But what these schools really need is people. More teachers. There are just so many students – up to seventy in a classroom – that it is just too easy for too many of them to fall behind.

I take this issue to heart almost every day, as part of my apprenticeship activities has been to lead library activities with students needing extra help with ‘lecture’, reading. At first I envisioned the typical, circle time, let’s each read a page and try to understand the story type of thing. And that works for certain groups of students. But when I realized that so many of them really just couldn’t read at all, and that many these students couldn’t read because they didn’t even know the alphabet (these are students in their fourth year in school), I decided I needed to modify my plans a little. Instead of telling the students to show up with their livres de lecture, I told them to come with their ardoises (mini chalk boards) and, taking a few tricks from what I’ve spent the past five months observing in the younger classes, I’ve started reteaching them the alphabet. But it just pains me to think that when I leave, these students will be completely on their own again. Their teacher is “too busy” to do the tutoring himself. And I can’t think of any one in the school community who would be able to take my place. Will they somehow manage to finagle their way through their exams in two year’s time and continue? Or will most of them drop out after just a few years in school, as certainly isn’t uncommon, without having ever learned how to read or write? › Continue reading

Tags: education, nicholas kristof, teach for the world, teaching, volunteerism

When I leave….

A major question that we fellows have been set out to answer ever since day one is: how much of a difference will we be able to make, if any at all, in each of our host communities and work places?

For I think we each left California in September with the idea pretty well hammered into our brains that with our age and level of experience, we were learners not change-makers, despite the catchy titles and phrases on the GCY website that had lured us each. At the US training we were also introduced to the idea that volunteer and aid work in the developing world can not only fail, but even have unintended negative effects, such as when it leaves a population or a community dependent on an inflow of donated goods and volunteers, rather than sustainably self-sufficient; or when projects are abandoned before they can be properly concluded…

Arriving in Senegal in October, and finally to our apprenticeship placements in November, our powerlessness as young, foreign individuals certainly became more apparent to us, and for a time we even felt more like burdens to our hosts than helpers. But I think we all passed this stage pretty quickly and soon found ways to be of use whether by simply lending a hand in the every day tasks and chores of the schools, farms and health posts to which we were assigned, or by coming up with a few supplementary projects to support the general activities.

Now already in March, as time has started ticking away much faster than it should, I find myself thinking back to all these important lessons and questions about impact, and thinking critically about my own apprenticeship activities.

For though I still fully stand by this idea that we are here to learn, study and grow, more than to ‘make a mark,’ I am all too aware, especially as the ‘when I leave’ question has started to come up, that I am an exception to my own belief. I would never claim that I have in five months done anything that constitutes ‘making a real difference,’ because we all know that that sort of thing takes years, even decades, and involves addressing the root of a problem rather than trimming its leaves…But in a totally practical, superficial, everyday way, in certain domains of the school community in which I am a volunteer, I know that my absence will be felt. › Continue reading

Tags: apprenticeship, education, impact, takeaways, volunteerism