Reflections Part 1

The first day I was given class one.  Fresh off a very poor training by the Peace Corps, I really was not prepared in the least for teaching and managing my own classroom.  At the outset, I had no preference for what class I would teach.  That first day, I will always remember the head teacher taking me to my class, giving me the keys to the room and saying, “this is your class” and then he left.  All of those little tykes were staring at me.  I had barely unpacked my things nor had I even come close to acquiring the essentials to even prepare a meal.  Yet there I was, standing before ten children and all eyes were on me.  Here is what I have learned:

Most days I will have prepared a lesson plan.  But I must admit its hard to do.  We are supposed to prepare “schemes of work” that are stamped by the head teacher.  It is sort of an official document that states what the children in the class will be learning.  A “scheme of work” is like an outline or a schedule for how the teacher will present different topics and subtopics.  Such an outline needs to be made for each subject: science, math, social studies, etc…  Initially, I did them but it became incredibly hard to follow when most of the time I was just trying to manage the classroom.   Add in a teacher’s strike that lasted two weeks, several pointless teachers meetings during the middle of the school day, and random events that were “more important” than class and no one ever told me about.  And of course I have never taught anything at any level before, so I did not know the best way to go about it.

1. Visuals

I have learned that teaching deaf children is absolutely 100% visual.  Of course, I have realized this through my own personal experiences.  Any visuals I had when learning something, helped me tremendously.  I like to think that even fully hearing students like to have visuals as oppose to solely listening to the teacher drone on and on.

I still do not believe I will ever fully understand how a deaf person learns.  This is my greatest challenge.  How do you teach a deaf person to read? How do you teach them English?  Hearing students are taught how to say the different sounds to each letter and when those letters and sounds are put together, you’ve got yourself a word.  But since they can’t hear those sounds, how do they put a word a together?  Even now when someone fingerspells a word to me, I am saying the sounds to each letter in my head because it is easier for me to figure out the word that way.

To echo the words of fellow PCV Paul Blair, “the blackboard is the enemy.”  Many if not most of the Kenyan teachers resort to writing things on the board and assume just because it is written on the board that the students understand it.  Unfortunately, resources are limited and the blackboard is the most reliable visual.

2. Testing

Kenya places an emphasis on standardized tests.  I disagree with standardized testing, even in the way it is used in America, I feel that a person’s knowledge and ability is not accurately measured by taking a test.  The students are tested at the beginning, middle, and end of each term.  However, we never tested our students at  the beginning because of the teacher’s strike and mid-terms never happened either.  We did have exams at the conclusion of the term.  In preparing for the second term, I have gone through a variety of tests for different classes and different subjects.  Some of the questions are wrong.  They are either asked in the wrong way, or the correct answer is not listed as one of the four multiple choice answers.  This is frustrating!

Additionally, there is an exam called the KCPE which is taken by all of the students in class 8 throughout Kenya.  This exam is a huge deal and a monumental step in a student’s education.  Their success on the exam determines if they go to secondary school.  Again, Paul wrote a great post about this exam in which he describes how it is an inefficient method to test deaf students.  He cites past test scores at deaf schools.  The highest score on the test last year was something like 125 out of 450.  The test is a multiple choice test with four possible answers for each question.  If they scores are consistently around 25%, how do you know if they are not just guessing?

This is something that I struggle with because the test clearly is not a good measure of a deaf student’s ability.  And the tests that I have seen are not necessarily a good measure of knowledge at least from my point of view.  So should I teach the students what I feel they should know and is important, or should I prepare them for the tests?

3. Sign Language

I thought I was doing pretty well with signing among my fellow trainees during training.  But I was shocked when I came here.  My signing skills need a lot of work.  It is challenging because KSL is still developing.  So the signs have changed over time.  The KSL Research Project that develops KSL should stop changing signs for various things.  The form of signing that is used here at my school is a combination of ASL, KSL,  and Signed Exact English.  So there are many different variations of a sign which makes it all the more difficult.

4. Make Class Fun and Interesting

When I could make the students laugh, I could keep their attention longer.  Also, it is imperative to come to class prepared otherwise the students will eat you alive.  They need things to do and more importantly they want to learn.  I try to come up with as many interactive activities as I can.  Some examples include: cutting out and decorating shapes, a word wall, writing numbers in word form, etc…I try to decorate the room with visuals as much as possible.  Again, resources are limited here so I need to be creative.  I keep everything I have because I hope to maybe use it for a lesson someday.  I am even saving all of my water bottles because maybe I can use those for a lesson.

These are just some of the basic concepts that I have learned in my short time here.  I have also learned that I can really get through to a student if I work with him/her one on one.  This is something that I love to do as it is very enjoyable and rewarding.  All of the students are on different skill levels and furthermore, it is a great way for me to learn more about them and for them to learn more about me.

I apologize for as you can tell I wrote this pretty quickly and I would include more but I’m tired and I have to get up early.  Tomorrow I head to Machakos with my school for a competition among the deaf schools in the eastern province.  I am excited because 1) I think my school will do very well, 2) I need to get out of this place, and 3) I get to meet up with some PCVs that I have not seen since we were sworn-in in early January.