bytes and bad grammer

Dahs Codil

Before coming to Uganda to teach, I secretly had this dream of being called Mr. Darcy by all my students and chuckling inwardly whenever they said it. I saw myself prancing through the halls, speaking in a fake British accent while all the students unknowingly referenced a fictional, 19th century Englishman.

What actually happened: I nervously entered my first class two weeks ago and turned to the blank chalkboard and wrote my name on the board. I said my name clearly with extra annunciation and then turned around to face the class. Blank stares. Confused and scrunched up faces. A few students attempted to pronounce it and awkwardly gave up halfway. I repeated my name and tried to get them to sound it out. More blank stares. I quickly gave up and moved on to talking about Canada and the students instantly brightened and began asking questions.

The teachers did not do any better with my name. The best they could do was "Dahs Codil". And because no one can pronounce my name, I am essentially nameless. The kids call me "teacher" or "sir" and the teachers call me "hey you" or "big man". My dreams of prancing were dashed.

Oddities of the system

Despite my lack of a name at the school, I've now been there for about two weeks and have gotten to know the school. Please remember the implications of that sentence. It means that I have braved the road from Mbarara to Kinoni over 20 times; twice a day for two weeks of work. To be fair, the driver I happened to get on my first day is by far the most reckless (that's not to say that other drivers AREN'T reckless, just LESS reckless). I have also ridden in dump trucks, on the backs of motor bikes, in matatus (small mini vans) and, on one glorious occasion, in a Mercedes-Benz with only one other passenger. Besides the one Mercedes-Benz incident, I have never gone in a car in which there were enough seat belts for all passengers.

When I arrived at the school with Loyce on my first day, I first met with the headmistress. She is a fairly cold woman who runs a tight ship but is very passionate about the school. Despite her aloof personality she is said to be quite understanding to students who cannot pay their school fees on time and she tends to take lots of students under her wing to help them succeed. Her rare smile is very warm and her compliments are very sincere because she does not mince words. She too appears to be nameless. Everyone calls her Headmistress or Madame. On that first day she asked what subjects I would like to teach and I said physics or math. She replied, "okay, you will teach English and computer" and it was very clear there was no room for discussion.

Via this mutual decision, I found myself teaching Computer and English to the two Senior 2 classes. I have about 12 teaching hours per week (3 hours for each English class and 3 hours for each computer class). It doesn't sound like much but between prep time, marking and commuting I'm gone most days for the full day. The Ugandan education system has secondary school going from Senior 1 to Senior 6. Senior 2 is roughly the equivalent of Grade 8 but, in what will be one of many oddities of the Ugandan school system, the kids age is not very consistent across the class. Some students are about 12 years old while the oldest are almost 18. This is due to several reasons: 1) kids start school at irregular times once they have the money to do so. Kids may start at 5 or 6 like in Canada, while others start much older; 2) lots of kids fail and have to repeat grades. I'm not sure if this is due to poor teaching or bad curriculum but one of the most likely reasons is that many of the kids are working or farming to help their families or to pay for school. Thus they can't focus fully on their studies; 3) records of birth are often unreliable so the kids may not actually know how old they are exactly.

All these factors mean that some students aren't graduating secondary school until they are almost 30! The oldest student I have met is 28 and she is (hopefully) graduating this year. It also presents strange circumstances because several teachers are younger than the older students.

When I met Mauricio, the tall computer teacher with pants that are always 2 inches too short, I encountered a second oddity: the computer curriculum. I had anticipated being in a computer lab teaching things like typing skills and Microsoft Office. The school has 30 computers (donated via Ainembabazi Children's Project) but that is not enough for all the students in the class and power is intermittent. Because of these two unfortunate facts, most of the curriculum is centred around computer theory, programming and computer function. Mauricio handed me the notes for the class and told me to simply dictate from them to the students. The school was very lucky to get a guy who watches YouTube videos about binary and ALUs for fun. I love this stuff and have a fascination with the inner workings of computers and the math behind it all. Because of this, I think I have been able to make the class more lively than simply dictation of class notes. However, I question the usefulness of such a curriculum for 13 year old Ugandan teenagers living in a remote, agricultural village. Would it not be better to get all the kids into the computer lab even if they were to share a computer? If the power is out, use the computer theory material as a backup to the more practical hands-on skills. Despite my love of bytes and transistors, this knowledge is not at all practical for these kids and probably bored most of them to tears. None of them will ever need to know about hexadecimal numbering systems and other computer theory concepts except for perhaps the rare student who goes on to study computer programming at a far-off university. But maybe there is some merit to it and maybe it's part of the curriculum in Canada for kids these days. I'm out of the loop with what 13 year olds are learning, whether in Canada or Uganda.

English is stupid

We all know deep down how stupid English is. But it is not until you teach it that you realize just how stupid it really is. It's just so stupid. Every rule has so many exceptions that it might as well not be a rule. There are often many ways to say the same thing and sometimes they have subtle contextual differences that are difficult to pin down. So many synonyms and homonyms and grammatical nuances.

This experience has made me question why "I had learnt to be kind" sounds wrong compared to "I have learnt to be kind". It is subtle differences like this that I have to explain to a group of Ugandan kids with limited conversational English. And, I mean, why say "I have learnt to be kind" at all? Doesn't "I learnt to be kind" have roughly the same meaning? But it doesn't, right? But how would you explain to these kids when it is appropriate or "right" to use one over the other? I don't even know. Does anyone know? I'm pretty sure even Peter, the smiley and energetic English teacher, doesn't have a clue. He handed me the text book the first day and said in a jokingly somber way, "good luck."

I've also learned (learnt?) the names of some grammatical constructions. Perhaps I learnt these things (have learnt?) long ago in elementary or junior high school, but they've long been forgotten. Perfective aspects and past participles are now my specialty. It has been at times embarrassing when I am in class and mix up verbs, nouns or adjectives. The students have a tough time with this and apparently so do I! For example the difference between obedience, obedient, and obediently. Which one is the noun or the verb or the adjective? (Trick question: none of them are verbs). Man, it's just a minefield; a grammatical war zone that would leave my past English teachers shaking their heads in disappointment.

If it's not clear already, English has been a challenging subject for me to teach. But it has nonetheless been enjoyable. It has been great to see the students go from being shy at the beginning of last week to a much more talkative bunch this week. They answer my questions and are very curious about Canada. If I ever run out of things to teach (I am terrible at judging time and never put together enough material for a class) I can simply get them to ask me questions about Canada.

What?

Yes, they can ask questions. Yes, they can answer my questions. But do I understand them?  Perhaps the most embarrassing aspect of teaching so far is my apparent ineptness when it comes to deciphering their accent. I'm not only grappling with an accent which includes bizarre pronunciation but also straining my ears to hear them as they often shyly speak barely above a whisper. I ask them to repeat once, twice, three times and by this time the whole class is shouting the word and I'm STILL not understanding. Many times I'll resort to them spelling it out letter by letter.

On my third day, I was teaching students about how a computer stores memory in RAM when one student put up his hand and asked, "what is bahseek?" I didn't understand and asked him to repeat. Soon other students were all joining in until the whole class was shouting in unison, "BAH-SEEK!" I'm sure I looked like a fool as I turned to the chalkboard and had them slowly spell the word "basic" out for me. The question was all the more confusing because it had nothing to do with the material I was teaching; he simply didn't know the meaning of the word and wanted a definition. Many times in the computer class, my lesson lapses briefly into an English class as I explain the definition of some word I've used.

I think I have gotten better at understanding them. This has been helped by them being bolder and more confident in asking the question. But this process of me asking them to repeat, the whole class yelling the word, and me dejectedly resorting to having them spell the word happens at least once a class. Perhaps this highlights my inability to understand the accent but it may also highlight their poor English.

English is the language of instruction in school and yet the students' proficiency of the English language is quite abysmal. All the work in all subjects is submitted in English but, as I soon discovered, the students writing skills are pretty bad and their conversational English is much worse.  Their vocabulary is surprisingly diverse though and I'll admit that there is a huge range in language proficiency. Some kids speak very well and can easily hold a conversation with me while others struggle to say basic greetings (bahseek). I don't know how they pass English class let alone classes like social studies which require reading and writing essays or science classes which involve learning a whole new vocabulary of physics, chemistry or biology. It is partly a generational problem as many of the teachers (including local English teachers) do not have a firm and commanding grasp of the English language. Peter, the English teacher, speaks the best English I've seen but he still makes some errors here and there and prefers to speak in local Runyankore. It is a strange environment when all the teachers in the staff room jabber away in the local language but then go instruct their classes in a non-native tongue. Everyone - teachers and students alike - would prefer to speak Runyankore if given the choice. And as a result of this preference, English remains a weak substitute throughout the country despite it being the official language of Uganda.

The students do seem to understand me quite well though and every time I leave each class they say in unison, "goodbye, sir and have a good day". And then they usually erupt in applause or laughter. That makes me chuckle anyway, even if I am not Mr. Darcy.