3 Questions 0 Answers

The process of preparing for the new school year and actually starting the new school year is very different here in Mozambique than it is in the States. Cultural differences have shone through and have lead me to ask some bigger picture questions. 

School Schedule

A lot of work goes into making a school schedule, as you can probably imagine. Each turma of students has 6 periods per day. Each turma needs to have each subject for a certain amount of hours each week. Some subjects cannot be had two consecutive days, while other subjects must happen consecutively. Some teachers teach multiple grade levels and others only teach one. All these factors lead to a very long and challenging process of giving each turma a unique schedule that follows all the rules and avoids overlapping teacher schedules. Last year, there was a program that allowed you to input rules and teacher information, and returned a schedule that fit the bill. Nice, right? Right. However, the one person in the whole school who knew how to use it (and whose computer in which the program lived) no longer works at our school. That means this year we had to do it manually. SO FUN! #sarcasm

I am teaching 11th grade, which is the second cycle (first cycle is 8th-10th grades and second cycle is 11th-12th grades). A team of about 35 second cycle teachers and chefes (bosses) all convened to make the schedule. We sat in a circle of desks for a cumulative 16 hours over two days until each of the 12 second cycle turmas had immaculate schedules. While this sounds all nice and team-worky, there were only really 2-3 people working at one time. The rest of us just sat there doing productive things like staring into space, playing time-wasting games on old school Nokia phones, or sitting in smaller groups outside the room straight up shooting the shit. Because the schedule puzzle was so hard to solve as it is, it left very little room for teachers to advocate for schedule preferences (for example, ‘I don’t want to teach on Fridays’). Once teachers realized there was no room for negotiation, they mentally checked out and waited for the schedule to be completed by the chefes.

Contrarily, the first cycle team of about 35 teachers and chefes chose a different route. They assigned a small group of people to create the schedule, which would later be shared out with everyone else. This means that while I was stuck at school from 730am-530pm one day literally doing nothing except watching people argue about the schedule, my roommate got to go home at 11am because there was a designated group of people staying to do all the work. She told me that other teachers in the first cycle didn’t like this method because someone always “got burned” by having a bad schedule. However, after my experience with second cycle and learning that ain’t nobody got time for preferences, I don’t see how any teacher could intentionally get “burned” because they weren’t a part of the scheduling process. 

Clearly, there are benefits to both methods. The way I experienced had the pros of including everyone, requiring at the very least a time commitment from everyone. It also was the first time some of the teachers were working together so it allowed people to get to know each other and build an environment of patience and cooperation. Additionally, it ensured that everyone took responsibility for the schedule so that if there was an error, we would all take equal blame. The con was that more personnel time was spent than necessary, and most of us spent 16 hours sitting around doing nothing. #notideal The first cycle was definitely more efficient, but because everyone wasn’t a part of the process, some people felt like they got bad schedules, and there wasn’t a sense of teamwork involved in the task. Additionally, the responsibility is fully in the hands of the few people who actually made the schedule, which might give room to more errors and/or heavier blame for errors. Of course, second cycle teachers think that the first cycle method was better, and visa versa. #alwayswantwhatyoucanthave Because I am a volunteer and new to the school, I would have accepted any schedule given to me as “good” and “mine” and wouldn’t have thought twice about it. For that reason, I would prefer the first cycle method as to not waste so much time. However, if I were a veteran teacher at the school who felt confident enough to advocate for the hours I wanted, maybe I would choose the second cycle method. I think this really just goes to show that Mozambicans value both time and teamwork, and when it is necessary to choose one or the other, they make a decision, stick with it, and accept the choice for what it is.  In America, where time is money, the first cycle method would definitely prevail, with few—if any— questions asked. However, do the benefits of teamwork, evenly distributed responsibility, patience and cooperation outweigh the cost of time? Maybe, maybe not. 

First Day of School

I don’t teach on Mondays, but this past Monday was the first day of school. On Monday, zero students learned. In the States this actually might be true as well because the first day of school is typically for meeting your teachers, getting to know your schedule, catching up with friends, showing off your totally awesome (but totally not organic) fruit Gushers at lunch, and getting the semester syllabus. If you’re Sarah Braden and in second grade, the first day of school would also including flaunting your sweet pair of kelly green corduroy overalls that are two sizes too big, causing the bottoms to fit like Jenco capris. #bejealous Overalls or not, rarely do students receive new information on the first day. However, on Monday in Manjacaze, students didn’t learn because the classroom doors were locked. Nobody could get into the classrooms to hold a session. Students arrived in their new clean, ironed uniforms and chatted in the yard for some time before home. Teachers came, greeted each other, chatted in the offices for a bit and then went home as well. 

I got to school on Tuesday morning at 6:30am. Usually every morning at 6:45 students line up in their turmas, sing the Mozambican National Anthem, receive a brief update from the pedagogical director and then go to their classes, which start “promptly” at 7:00am. So I got to school at 6:30 to learn that there would be no classes again today— Still no keys. When a look of disappointment crossed my face, a Mozambican English teacher quickly reminded me where I was. He said: “This is how it is here. You all in America are very organized and very serious. Here we are not. Things like this happen and we just have to wait. It’s just how it is here.” He proceeded to tell me that we could get keys to the classes in the next 5 minutes, or not until next week, nobody knows. If we were waiting for District Services to come to unlock the classrooms—and the District Service building is less than a 10 minute walk from the school—why doesn’t somebody just march on over, ask for the keys and unlock the doors? It’s better to start classes late than not at all right? When I asked why we don’t go get the keys ourselves, Rosario said, “it’s complicated” and gave no further explanation. 

Coming from a society that has a very “go-getter”, “do-faster”, “no-excuses” mentality, it was hard for me to accept this.  Where I (and probably you too if you’re reading this) come from, if there exists a solution to the problem, no matter how much work it takes, you do it and solve it and move on. On Tuesday, however, people just accepted the problem as a problem that would halt run of business until further notice; if that means kids show up to school every day ready to learn for an entire week without receiving one actual lesson, then so be it. This reality was extremely hard for me to sit with. I wanted to go out into the yard, gather students from my turma and do something. Even if that just meant introducing myself, explaining where I’m from and why I’m here, and starting to learn my students’ names. However, that wasn’t an option so instead I just sat in the office with the other teachers for a little while before going home, having accomplished nothing. 

Apparently this same situation happened last year: no classes were given the first week of school. Teachers and students came every day, sat around, and left as a result of waiting for someone else to complete a task that they could have done themselves. I imagine it wasn’t just last year, but likely the year before that and the year before that. Many years of a fake first week of school due to the lack of a “take charge” mentality. When I talk to Mozambicans, they call themselves lazy. They are always waiting for other people to do the work for them. This got me thinking: Laziness requires one of two things in order to live: Either a feeling of complacency or at least minimal satisfaction with the current situation; or hopelessness.

If I’m too lazy to cook dinner, then I must not be that hungry. If I am too lazy to make my bed, I must be okay with crawling into an unmade bed at night. If I’m too lazy to teach a class, I must either not care about or be satisfied with my students’ current level of knowledge. If I’m too lazy to vote, I must be fine with the way things are, or not care enough to weigh in. In all these examples, complacency or minimal satisfaction is present, but if replaced with discomfort or dissatisfaction, motivation would take the place of laziness and things would get done.

To my other point (hopelessness): If I’m too lazy to cook dinner, maybe it’s because I know I’m a shitty cook and I expect that I’m going to burn the food to the point of inedibility, so why bother? If I’m too lazy to make my bed maybe it’s because I know nobody will be sleeping it in with me tonight, so who the hell cares? If I’m too lazy to teach a class, maybe it’s because I believe that my students cannot learn. If I’m too lazy to vote, maybe it’s because I think that no matter who wins, no change will occur that will actually impact my daily life. In these examples, if hope replaced hopelessness, motivation toward action would take the place of laziness.

So, at least in my opinion, this first-week-of-school laziness can either be attributed to hopelessness or complacency/minimal satisfaction. But which is it? Are teachers fine with starting off the school year a week behind and having to play catch up all trimester? Do teachers believe that even if they tried, they wouldn’t be able to get classes kicked off on time? Do teachers just not care enough about their responsibility to teach their students to put in the extra required effort? Have teachers just accepted the fact that this is the way it is, because this is how it’s always been, and we just have to shut up and deal with it? I don’t know the answer, and I will likely never find out. (How do you ask questions like that without getting slapped?) It could be all of these speculated reasons, or none of them. I think I’ll just have to be okay with not knowing, and starting classes a week late.

Uniform Requirements

On my first day of school, this past Tuesday, students came together at 6:45 and sang the national anthem and the Pedagogical Director briefly spoke to them (before classes didn’t happen and everyone went home). At the end of his talk, he pulled two boy students with subtle mohawks to the front and publicly told them that they would not be allowed to enter the classroom until they cut their hair. Their peers laughed at them and they lowered their heads—while still maintaining obvious smirks—and said “yes sir” and went back in line. Surely they will return only after they stop looking like hoodlums (one of the boys was wearing a frayed denim vest over his uniform and I secretly appreciated his Mozambican version of the Patrick-Swazey-in-Dirty-Dancing look). This was not surprising to me, because this hair expectation (short and simple) is well-known here. The boys were likely expecting to get called out about it, which is why smiles stayed on their faces even after the reprimand. They probably planned that little show before school started and were happy with the attention. 

Following the boys, three girls were called to the front. Girls are expected to wear white button-down shirts and black skirts that fall below the knees. The three that were called to the front were all wearing white button-down shirts and black skirts. One girl was told her uniform was perfect and that this is what all the girls should come to school looking like. One girl had a skirt above the knees, and she was told that she would not be allowed in the classroom with a skirt that short. (Totally understandable. Remember, no female over the age of 10 leaves her house showing knees). The third girl, however, had a black skirt below her knees and a nicely fitted white button down. I assumed he was going to tell the students that this was an acceptable look as well, but he didn’t. He told her that she could not come to school like that because her skirt was pleated. She was not showing knee and the colors were correct. However, he explained that if everyone didn’t look exactly the same, they wouldn’t be able to assimilate information (he actually used the exact work assimilate) and therefore she shouldn’t even bother coming. This probably made me more upset than it should have. That’s like telling a student in the States that if they came to school with a blue pencil instead of the standard orange one, they wouldn’t be able to learn because their pencil didn’t match everyone else’s. Are you kidding me? That girl will really be sent home if she shows up to school again with a skirt than has unwanted pleats? Not cool. I understand the benefits of uniforms, but when an inconsequential variation of a uniform becomes a barrier for student learning, I have a problem. I also understand that letting students get away with little things runs the risk of students trying to get away with big things that may actually cause distractions in the classroom. But in a country where some families cannot send their children to school because they can’t afford a uniform, this instance seems more than a little bit ridiculous. 

I don’t really know where to draw the line in terms of school uniforms, or other school requirements for that matter. I don’t know how much trouble I would get in with my bosses if I allow students to stay in my class without proper attire. This skirt example also lead me to thinking about other things: if students come without a notebook, do I send them home? What about without a pencil? What about without shoes? In a place where resources are scare, is it morally right to send someone home who is likely lacking supplies because they simply do not have the means to acquire them? Or will sending them home one day push them to find a way to get what they need a be there? The huge risk is that if I send them away once, and they cannot fix the issue overnight, they won’t come back. Is losing a student worth a notebook or a pencil or a pleat? I don’t think so.

All of these insights all before my first real lesson given! Although quite nervous, I cannot wait to stand up in front of my first turma, introduce myself, and dig into the first topic (which happens to be Mathematical Logic). Maybe that happens tomorrow, or maybe next week. All I can do is prepare, and wait to cross the Start Line.