Indeed, it's been quite a year.
12 months ago, I was saying goodbye to you all, and wondering how the heck I would arrive at teaching classes in a language I'd only studied for a few months.
10 months ago, I visited my school for the first time during training, and then managed to pull off a decent intro class in "model school".
8 months ago, I went to my first teacher's meeting and hardly understood a word.
6 months ago, construction in our computer lab finished, and I finally got to start class for real.
4 months ago, we finally got moving, after strikes and weird cancellations calmed down a bit.
And it's really within these four months that most of the work has gotten done. I had mentioned final projects in my last post-- those are all graded now, and we had an end-of-year ceremony this past week. Some of the students did a really impressive job: one wrote 19 news/opinion articles on his blog, and another used Excel to do a pretty solid breakdown of how much of the expenses from building a house stay in-country, complete with a blueprint of said house (Dad will appreciate this). I really enjoyed the family histories that many of them wrote on Word, and will have to translate a few into English to share.
The pace of life has been pretty furious up until about now, between all the grading, planning and other business. So, I'm hoping to finally get some pause to reflect on how to make next year even better. In the meantime, selling and fixing computers as a fundraiser for our lab has been a success I'm not quite sure how to contain... if you're reading this and happen to have an old-but-working laptop, there is someone here who will buy it!
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Friday, April 19, 2013
Finals month already?
Hard to believe, but true! My last update was in February, when we were midway through the second trimester. We had a week and a half of spring break at the end of March, and have just finished the second week of the final one, which finishes in mid-May.
Burkina trimesters, however, aren't created equal as they are in the States. The fall trimester is usually pretty laid back, with very few papers and tests, and some tolerance for interruption. The second semester is when everyone attempts to catch up. And the final trimester seems to be chock full of evaluation. The students in Terminale (12th grade) and 3eme (9th grade, last year of middle school here) just had their practice exams last week for the BAC and BEPC, tests that they must pass to advance to university/high school. There is high demand for computers during off hours-- students come and do research for their assigned papers. Everyone is much busier than they were back in October.
Our "finals month" started off with finishing up some business from last semester. Earlier in March, I had everyone choose a topic related to IT to research-- from the Apple II to Google Glass. After their research, they prepared a Power Point presentation, and I graded them on the quality of their research, their written presentation, their oral presentations, thoughtful questions they asked of other presenters, and how well they responded to questions that they recieved. It was a lot of fun-- the idea of points for asking good questions really got everyone involved (and embarrassed the ones who didn't do their research). I could turn this into something like a game show next year.
Correct! One point.
The students now have the rest of the month to do a final project of their choosing (based on a list of suggestions that I provided). Some examples:
Pictured: Bernard Bacye, working on his story Le dernier gardien de l'arbre. (The last guardian of the tree) The paper at the bottom right: an illustration he drew. We took a picture of it today, in the absence of a working scanner, and it's now on his cover page.
Pictured: Rania Koala, writing an account about her family titled L'origine des Koalas. If you look carefully enough, you might notice a picture of a koala on her screen.
Pictured: Véronique Sondo imagines how she might start up a restaurant. After coming up with a complete list of startup expenses, she is thinking about how much she might get away with selling a plate of riz sauce for.
Pictured: Alassane Diabaté is hoping to find temporary work this summer as a secretary, and is shooting for 30-40 wpm (a little harder on French keyboards).
Pictured: Wilson Traore uses an improvised light table to trace some
pencil-sketched comics with a dark pen. We used the photo below to
transfer his drawing to the computer.
And so the fun continues. It's really a pleasure to have a group that now knows the basics of how to use a computer-- that was something that I struggled with at first, coming from a place where that sort of knowledge is assumed. There are a lot of ways I could improve the class next year, and I'm looking forward to having June off to reflect on the curriculum. But I'm excited to see what comes out of these projects! Really proud of this group after a long, full week of work.
And lest I forget...
Some students (not pictured) have started a blog as their project and are putting up local news stories. If you're versed in French, or care to take a chance with Google translate, here is the link:
Burkina News Network
Burkina trimesters, however, aren't created equal as they are in the States. The fall trimester is usually pretty laid back, with very few papers and tests, and some tolerance for interruption. The second semester is when everyone attempts to catch up. And the final trimester seems to be chock full of evaluation. The students in Terminale (12th grade) and 3eme (9th grade, last year of middle school here) just had their practice exams last week for the BAC and BEPC, tests that they must pass to advance to university/high school. There is high demand for computers during off hours-- students come and do research for their assigned papers. Everyone is much busier than they were back in October.
Our "finals month" started off with finishing up some business from last semester. Earlier in March, I had everyone choose a topic related to IT to research-- from the Apple II to Google Glass. After their research, they prepared a Power Point presentation, and I graded them on the quality of their research, their written presentation, their oral presentations, thoughtful questions they asked of other presenters, and how well they responded to questions that they recieved. It was a lot of fun-- the idea of points for asking good questions really got everyone involved (and embarrassed the ones who didn't do their research). I could turn this into something like a game show next year.
Correct! One point.
The students now have the rest of the month to do a final project of their choosing (based on a list of suggestions that I provided). Some examples:
Write a children's book using MS word!
Interview family elders and write down some of their stories.
Imagine that you had 70,000 FCFA ($140) to start a business. Come up with a list of expenses and revenues, and estimate your monthly profits over the course of a year using MS Excel.
Improve the speed and accuracy of your typing. Try not to look at the keyboard.
Pictured: Alassane Diabaté is hoping to find temporary work this summer as a secretary, and is shooting for 30-40 wpm (a little harder on French keyboards).
Come up with an art project using GIMP.
And so the fun continues. It's really a pleasure to have a group that now knows the basics of how to use a computer-- that was something that I struggled with at first, coming from a place where that sort of knowledge is assumed. There are a lot of ways I could improve the class next year, and I'm looking forward to having June off to reflect on the curriculum. But I'm excited to see what comes out of these projects! Really proud of this group after a long, full week of work.
And lest I forget...
Some students (not pictured) have started a blog as their project and are putting up local news stories. If you're versed in French, or care to take a chance with Google translate, here is the link:
Burkina News Network
Saturday, February 23, 2013
2013
54 days into the New Year might be a bit late to be writing a post like this... but there's been a lot going on to write about!
I kicked off the year with a nice bike ride through the savannah with my host brother, Mohammad:
Then I joined a couple of other volunteers to treat ourselves to an entire day of American-style home-cooking in the capital!
After that, it was down to business. Classes started up again without too many of the usual interruptions (strikes, surprise holidays, etc.). It's been a routine of sorts, but with enough variety the Peace Corps values of patience and flexibility a necessity. I like it that way.
How else could...
...one celebrate Christmas in mid-January, when everyone's packages finally arrived!
... someone bring in a 14-year old laptop and expect you to fix it?
... you attempt to teach 30 teenagers how to use the internet on a 128 kbps connection (hardly enough to stream video/Skype for just one person)?
... find a good plate of beans for 100 FCFA ($0.20)
... or buy 600 fresh, organic tomatoes for 5000 FCFA ($10)
... and then stay up 'til midnight turning it all into tomato paste.
That's a project that's been keeping me from having days off... in-season tomatoes aren't going to wait for us! I'm finally giving myself a weekend this time around, so I have more time than I'm used to, to reflect (and sleep late).
I'm headed off the Bobo-Dioulasso this morning (Burkina's 2nd largest city), but will be back in time to Skype and fill you in on these and other stories tomorrow night!
zero.eth
I kicked off the year with a nice bike ride through the savannah with my host brother, Mohammad:
Then I joined a couple of other volunteers to treat ourselves to an entire day of American-style home-cooking in the capital!
After that, it was down to business. Classes started up again without too many of the usual interruptions (strikes, surprise holidays, etc.). It's been a routine of sorts, but with enough variety the Peace Corps values of patience and flexibility a necessity. I like it that way.
How else could...
...one celebrate Christmas in mid-January, when everyone's packages finally arrived!
... someone bring in a 14-year old laptop and expect you to fix it?
... you attempt to teach 30 teenagers how to use the internet on a 128 kbps connection (hardly enough to stream video/Skype for just one person)?
... find a good plate of beans for 100 FCFA ($0.20)
... or buy 600 fresh, organic tomatoes for 5000 FCFA ($10)
... and then stay up 'til midnight turning it all into tomato paste.
That's a project that's been keeping me from having days off... in-season tomatoes aren't going to wait for us! I'm finally giving myself a weekend this time around, so I have more time than I'm used to, to reflect (and sleep late).
I'm headed off the Bobo-Dioulasso this morning (Burkina's 2nd largest city), but will be back in time to Skype and fill you in on these and other stories tomorrow night!
zero.eth
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