WEEK 3 & 4| TEACHING EXPERIENCE

• I have become acutely aware of the challenges we face in education. My experience in this school has opened me up to thoughts that I once closed up. It is one thing to entirely complain about the system and it is another to understand how the system collapsed.

• The culture of teachers being abusive to their students, bullish and only interested in moving to the next thing is still prevalent. How can we build great students this way?  

• Not only are students disinterested in learning, but teachers are also demotivated. In a conversation with one of my colleagues, I told him I was there because I wanted to connect with the students, walk with them through life and inspire them away from cultism/societal vices. He rebuked me, told me that the problem I was highlighting cannot be solved through the school system. He said the problem was bigger than I could ever imagine. He was right about the fact that the problem was bigger than I could imagine, but he was wrong ABOUT WHAT I COULD DO AND NOT DO. Only God could determine the value of what work I could do there.

• Not only is our curriculum outdated, but it is also extremely outdated. I had a conversation with a friend, Sunenna Andrew. He told me he remembers the topics he was taught in Computer from Primary School to Senior Secondary School. He was not wrong, I do too. Our curriculums are still the same and very “basic”. The school system is designed to continually repeat the same thing to us until we write WAEC. And WAEC is the goal, isn’t it? I have a textbook with 16 units. Themes such as “Input” and “Output” are major themes, making 1 independent unit. Can you imagine? So I’m supposed to take a whole week teaching Input Devices, and another week Output Devices. That textbook is for the whole of SSS1 comprising of at least 8 weeks each, with 3 terms. That’s about 24 weeks to teach these extremely boring, irrelevant and mostly unimportant curricula. And SSS2 and SSS3 repeat the same thing.

• What does this curriculum do? It prepares the student for WAEC, NECO, and JAMB. But it does not prepare them for LIFE. Are schools supposed to prepare students for WAEC or for life? If the school does not prepare them for life, then what will? Life itself? And is it a tradeoff that one can only prepare students for WAEC only or for life ONLY, can’t we do both?

• The moment I began considering this question, my whole philosophy about class changed. I have shifted my curriculum already. I’m doing something totally different.

• Due to the challenges I’ve noticed in the system, I began researching educational systems around the world. I’m enjoying my discoveries; I do not know yet where this would lead. I am deeply conscious of how much work we have to do to make things right on this side of God's earth. But I assure you, if we can’t get this right- education, I mean, we will not get anything right.

• Last week, we added our school to Google Maps. Added photos to the map and checked up ourselves on Google. It was the most fun thing they had ever done in class. There were loud cheers and joy at the end- it’s fun to find your school on Google Map. (Is your school on Google Map?). And, these are only simple basic things every 9-year-old should know. What’s my class age average? 15.

• Another important thing I learned over the week is the fact that when we remember our best teachers, we don’t remember physics, chemistry, accounting or literature, we only remember that inspiring figure that wanted the best for us and from us. That figure who reached down and helped us move up to achieve our dreams. That figure who was knowledgeable and shared information to us in an interesting way.

 

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

• I just want to the that figure when all this is over.

• You see, I thought I knew what I was doing when I chose to volunteer to teach. But in a real sense, I was not ready for the things I would find out. Sometimes when God wants to impress a thing upon your heart, the only way he does that is by forcing you into the experience. That’s what has happened to me. Now, I think of these things all the time. I just got off the phone with my secondary school teacher, we finished sharing ideas about education/schooling.

• I now see differently; I’m thinking differently and planning. My reading list has drastically changed, they are all on education! ALL. 

• This educational system will be revolutionized. Change can begin here. It will begin here.