Greatest Hits -- Year One

So I have somehow managed to make it through my first year of teaching. Classes are finished, exams are almost graded, and once I fill out a few hundred report cards I will officially be on summer break...except there's no “summer” here so I guess I will just officially be on holiday. To commemorate my first year of teaching, I have decided to share with you some of my favorite answers to essays and exam questions from this year. Grading is a long and tedious process, but every once in awhile I come across answers that make me stop and laugh and then wonder how Peace Corps let someone as immature as me become a teacher (like when kids write “Fart North” instead of “Far North”. Hilarious). A quick disclaimer: maybe it is not the most professional thing in the world to laugh at my students, but they (and pretty much everyone else in Cameroon) in turn get a lot of enjoyment out of my mistakes in English, French, Fulfulde, and Mandara (actually, most people don't even laugh at my mistakes in particular – they just laugh every time I open my mouth, no matter if what I'm saying is grammatically correct or not), so I feel like it's a pretty equal exchange. Also, we talked a lot this year about how it's okay to make mistakes in my class, and about how what's important is to TRY and to say SOMETHING. We try not to take our mistakes too seriously in Miss Rose's English class, so in that spirit, here are some of my favorite answers from this year:

Response to a question about the achievements of Hillary Clinton:
“Three things are Hillary Clinton has achieved are: elected to the U.S., to pass legislation, and terrorist attacks.”

Introduction to an essay about someone you admire:
“He is popular, he sing very well and he name AKON.”

Essay: Write a letter to a friend you have not seen in a long time, asking what has happened in his/her life. Use the present perfect three times.
“My friend OBAMA, I have not seen you for a long time. What have you happened in your life in U.S.A.? Me I have was very well and you? Please has called me this is my number: xx.xx.xx.xx. Goodbye! Your friend ABDOU.”

Introduction to an essay on “The Importance of Music”:
“Music is a factory of dance.”

On a matching section:
g) to have self ______ vii) sex
(I think the correct answer was “self-confidence”, but this works too)

An essay on the advantages and disadvantages of using cell phones:
“Some people can be gaven the atomic bomb. The cellphones have been killing the many persons.”

An essay on an important woman you know:
“Titan is man who I knowed since old ago. His head is like a town. His eyes sind like a ball put down under the table. He eats a lot of food like a cow. He cannot run very fast. He stink like a butterfly.”

And finally, one my personal favorites...The essay prompt was “Girls make better leaders than boys. Discuss.” But this student copied it wrong, and wrote “letter” instead of “better”. He was obviously pretty confused, but tried really hard anyway and wrote about the differences in the letters girls and boys write. This is an excerpt from the two-page essay he wrote (which was actually one of the better ones I received, despite not being on topic...):
“Women's, particularly the girls, interested every time the letters. They use them when they want to speak their grooms....because they haven't courageous, they feel ashamed, they used the letters to resolve their problems. It is true when we say 'the girls make letter leaders than boy'? The boys cannot make the most?”

Joking aside, I would like to say that my students really are an amazing group of people. They are smart and funny (often on purpose!) and motivated. They travel long distances (often as much as five or ten kilometers) every day to get to school. They live in a place where education is not normal or valued – most people in the village haven't been to school, most students' parents don't read or write; many don't speak French. These kids don't have running water; a lot of them don't even have electricity, and all of them have plenty of responsibilities outside of school (cooking, cleaning, caring for their younger siblings, fetching water, working in the fields, selling at the market, etc...), but they have recognized the way education can improve their lives, and so they find the time, money, and energy to show up and learn. There are so, so many obstacles to learning in Cameroon (even once you find a way to attend school): lack of teachers; lack of desks (many students sit four to a desk); lack of money to buy pens, notebooks, textbooks, etc.; illness; language barriers (many kids are less than fluent in French, even at the higher levels); different ages and levels of students (I have 16 year olds and 23 year olds in Seconde; 10 year olds and 17 year olds in 6eme); a standardized curriculum that encourages memorization rather than actual learning and has unrealistically high expectations...etc. etc.

I often feel like students are set up to fail, and grading these last exams has been pretty discouraging. The majority of students fail, and it's easy to get discouraged when yet another student gets 6/20 on their final exam. But I've been trying instead to focus on the success stories – the group of girls in 6eme who have gone from getting 7's and 8's/20 to 11's and 12's (these are passing grades) and who now raise their hands to answer questions and come to write on the board. The twenty premiere students who showed up to my night classes and spent three extra hours each week taking practice exams and asking questions about the English language to prepare for their national exams. The seconde student who asked me every break if he could borrow my textbook, and then brought me back pages and pages of exercises he had done independently and wanted me to correct. I realized early on that there is no way I can help every student; there is no way I can tackle all the huge problems they face. I can't make kids study or learn or pass their exams. But I can create opportunities for learning to take place, and from that perspective I think I can call my first year more or less a success. It's a start anyway. When I applied to the Peace Corps, two years seemed like a ridiculously long time...but now that I've finished my first year, all I can think is “Thank God I have another year. I can do this better.” So that is how I will spend my summer, and then next year: looking for more and better opportunities to help learning take place.