Today I want about my work as a teacher in St. Augustine's College report.
First I tell something to the best school system in Cameroon. With two or three years starting for the children for school life. Started two years Nursery school, struggling with their teaching methods Brigitte, my roommate, is just added. It is ruled as a discipline in a school, the children must sit on benches and it is taught primarily in English.
with at least five years will be for six years in the Primary School. With eleven years the students go to another school, the Secondary School. After five years, followed by two years of high school, according to which one is admitted to the university.
Compulsory education ends after the Secondary School or if you can not pay school fees. The school fees shall be applied solely by the parents.
between the schools there are of course differences. There are government schools, which cost about 30,000 francs (48 €) per year. The are so cheap, because the classes are extremely high. In a class are between 100 and 200 students. The teacher in a government school are also better paid. However, lacking the control of whether and what the teachers teach. The teacher of a public school can thus confidently times insert a long weekend.
Private schools (Catholic, Muslim or Protestant) have a much better education, but if only because the classes are smaller (40 to 60 children). They are also more expensive. School fees can be between 60,000 (96 €) and 100000 (150 €) Francs per year. If we calculate that a teacher in a private school 130 000 francs earned in the month, the tuition is required by two students to pay the teachers. The school fees of 24 students is only used to pay the teachers a year. This includes all other costs for buildings, electricity, etc. come Administration
school materials like books, must of course be purchased by all pupils.
education is thus very expensive, especially when you consider that in the villages, the people only by their agricultural products, live from hand to mouth. Such families are lucky if they have a thousand francs in the month available, because they could sell three pineapples. And thus the school fees of 30,000 francs per year plus books for a child really prohibitive (10 children in a family are not uncommon).
In my school, students are being sent home, have paid their school fees in full. If they come back with money it is good if they can not stay home.
The Diocese of Kumbo financed with the support of the Children and Missions in Germany and the diocese of Limburg, the school fees of 1,800 orphans and vulnerable children a year. This seems very much. But one must remember that there are in the diocese over 7000 orphans. With a total population of 735 000 people is just under 1%.
But now to my teaching: The St. Augustine's College is a Catholic boarding school with 800 pupils, the secondary-school and high school includes. I teach two classes in Form II (the second class of secondary school) mathematics. Besides me, there is a white teacher, a English priest, who teaches English.
The school system here is quite different, but no one says to me what I do. I have a school book (after two weeks) and my schedule yes ... and then get lessons!
Previously, I had to fight in long discussions that I do not teach form III, simply because my English is not sufficient to account for vectors and matrices. But already a part of the mentality here. Many believe that if you're white, you can do and knows everything. The arguments of the teachers were: "Maths and English is so simple, that's the easiest language in the world. ? Where is there's a problem "My argument was:". I am not a teacher, had never taught and would rather do with less abstract topics "After several discussions with the headmaster, I can now; form II teach.
In a class 43 and the other 36 children of eleven to thirteen. Meanwhile, I have found that the children there are just not used to a lead class discussions, or think for yourself! You get everything here written on the board what they learn by heart. I have it but not yet given up, that they be encouraged to find themselves a solution.
A secondary school is less a comprehensive school. The books are but Cambridge level. If students understand what the teacher writes on the blackboard, it is good, if not the student is just stupid and / or lazy. Cares anyway if you have a Test passes or fails. Ultimately, parents decide whether someone repeated the school year or not, because ultimately pay the school fees.
With so many students and especially the speed with which we must move forward in the book, it is actually impossible to respect the fact that all students understand the topic. And that's not just me. About a third of my students have such deficits that one wonders whether it is present in the last three years in math classes were.
although I try sometimes to repeat how to do arithmetic with fractions and multiplied, but this is really no time.
This is something that most likely is brought here to teach the usual way. I participated a few times on my teaching colleague. She is a 23-year-old nun, who taught Form I and III.
It is a small, petite person, but is in a class of dead silence. The most important thing first discipline. If someone comes too late, he must kneel down the rest of the hour before dinner. If someone is disturbing is not loud or busy with classes, there are mind bending, pulling on the ears or the nurse comes to the floor.
That's not so bad. After all, the class is quiet. What I find much more serious is that only the right answer counts. Once the whole class had the Beginning of the hour kneel. Until someone said a correct answer, he was sat down. Over two-thirds of the class were kneeling the whole hour. If one is humiliated or punished for a wrong answer, of course, no one dares to say something.
contrast, my teaching is a circus, though I think the class of 40 students is very quiet. I manage to motivate more students to participate actively in class. But they are difficult to move, to devise their own solution or answer to a question whose answer I did not say before that time or which have just in the book. I always tell my students that it is not bad wrong thing to say. For how can you understand something if you do not understand why it can not be something else.
These are mainly problems of mathematics education. There is always a shortage of math teachers. The result, especially in the lower classes and the Primary school teachers are employed, which probably have no understanding or even enthusiasm for math. The foundations will not just be placed.
something different, which runs through the entire Cameroonian society, that does not reason like something better, more effective, simply can proceed differently. Just ask the question again: How can I build my teaching so that students understand it better? Many teachers follow the textbook (for that has not written a wiser professor) and continue to work with the methods that have taken over their fathers by the colonial masters. This culture, not to question and just do what you have learned or have said, reminds some of the Middle Ages. On the one hand, one can not expect that people have learned here fifty years after the end of the colonial era to criticize the other, it is something I just do not understand how one's life can not even take in hand.
is also the school still far away, to coordinate the curricula of individual subjects to each other. I once browsed in a chemistry book. How are the students the graph representing the change in the density of mercury as a function of temperature, could understand if they draw in math class is not even the graph of a proportional function?
discipline is not only in teaching across the countryside. In our school there is a "Disciplinemaster. Is not a teacher but only asked to punish students and to maintain order. In an offense, the student to "Disciplinemaster" ordered and punished, no matter what he has made. As the punishment looks like in detail, if one is appointed "Disciplinemaster" I've noticed yet, but on the first day I was asked by him if I wanted to have a stick, he would have bought nice new sticks. (The students report that the sticks break often.)
And I am confronted with situations that you will find no home in Europe.
a teaching situation once was: I try to explain exactly a new topic and suddenly jumps to half of the class: "Sir, can we depend on our clothes go? "
My reaction was first" No, we have classes, "" but it starts to rain! ". So what else can I say. So I stop teaching for a quarter hour to let the children depend on their clothes.
And how will evaluate the students in Cameroon? I asked another math teacher, as the staff was there. First I had to explain that in Germany there is a rating system from one to six and I just do not know how it is handled here. In response I get: "Maybe a points system to 14 or to 20 That you can choose you. are available for the exam it shared a common system that I know now but maybe not. ... ???...
What is a big problem yet: the name! First, the African or English name in itself. And then all look the same. The same school uniform, the same close-cropped hair. In the beginning I only recognized on the trousers or skirt, whether it's a boy or girl. Now I can differentiate the faces already.
You meet but often on German names, such as Matilda, Elizabeth, Wilfried, Agnes, Herbert, Clothilde, Johanna, Stephanie, are also very close to German.
Friday afternoon I still have a German club, where I teach German. The club is voluntary and there is still hissing other clubs to choose from that are at the same time. But which is the greatest? The German club.
110 students sitting there without any textbook or instructional materials and want to learn from my German. It works pretty well, because in the repetition, the students are great. The students are also very interested to learn them German. Partly because of the college's partnership with St. Ursula in Geisenheim, but also because many Cameroonians dream to come to Europe or to study in Germany.
It's really fun to teach German and thanks to the German book that I brought , I also know about how can I build my teaching.
The chapel, the most important building
Then I like to imagine the daily routine of a student. The day of a boarding school student is planned down to the last minute:
is up this morning by 5 clock. Students have time to wash themselves and their clothes. Clock is at 6:15 Mass. Of course, everything required, even for the non-Catholic students. They must not pray with, just be present. There are definitely many students with a different religion in church schools. At 7 clock is breakfast, a piece of sweet bread and English tea.
clock at 7:20 is "Morning Assembly", morning roll call. All students are arranged in rows by class and gender on the large square in front of the school. Monday, all teachers must also be present. First, an Our Father and Hail Mary prayed and then sang the school song, the Vatican flag is hoisted. This is followed by the Cameroonian national anthem, hoisted the understanding that the flag of Cameroon.
now makes a speech, first the head teacher, then, different teachers or the school spokesman something . Reported Mostly it's about rules that were violated, the school fees, which have not been paid or the upcoming trials, etc.
A rule, for example, that students may have no electronic devices. Way, there are also outlets that are accessible to students.
begins after the morning roll call at 7:45 of the teaching clock. Each class has its changing room and the teacher after 45 minutes. Every day, everyone, no matter what grade, 8 hours continuously with a 20 minute break after the fourth hour.
Each student has his own desk, where his school would be. - It is difficult to be seated to change. That was the only time where I lost control of the class, namely, when 40 children at the same time pushing her desk by the class and begin to argue about who sits where .-
At 14 : 10 clock it goes to lunch, every day there is the same: rice with sauce.
After a longer break, where students have time to sleep or to watch their laundry, and all must be in their classes at half past three and resume there the afternoon studies. This means do homework and learn. In this time mainly the class representative responsible for ensuring that the class is quiet and learn.
at 5:45 it goes to the evening service in the chapel. Then there is dinner, the same as for lunch. Then be resumed at half past six the night to study at 9 clock.
At 9:30 clock is dead silence, dead silence. The students live in different houses by the way: for example, St. Andrew, St. Joseph, St. Anne, a bit like Harry Potter. The houses also carry football games against each other.
house perhaps too much has been said. A house consists of a room that is a bit larger than a classroom and in the tightly packed bunk beds are made of wood. This sleep around 100 students, old and young mixed, because the elderly need to maintain order in the dormitory. Each house has a small bathroom. On one wall, ten rows from the other ten showers toilets and in the middle a couple of taps.
dining
The sports field
Tuesday and Saturday afternoon, the students sport rather than studies or "Manual Labour "Community work in the field or as the dining room clean. Friday is "Club Time", where there are, among other things my German club, dance, music, or art clubs. On Sundays, the students, after the show, of course, to learn time and in the afternoon even free! When I asked
why the students have so little free time, had I been told that the students are here to learn and not to have fun. And anyway, the students get to eat here and do not have the afternoon to work on the farm.
Now I have a lot written about the things that are different than in German schools and the school situation perhaps a bit too is negative. Again, there are
normal children as well as German, laugh a lot and have fun. You do not think that they learn better or more motivated, just because their parents, the school cost so much money.
is also equipping the classrooms not bad. In the chemical and biological areas in the higher classes to practical work and experiments carried out. Especially the computer lab with 20 computers and the Internet offers the possibility that in all years, the subject "computer" can be taught. This will include the benefits of a private school.
The chemistry lab (even the new water connections installed, so the ground ripped open) and the chemistry collection
the beginning it was very difficult to find your way around, especially since I have found not only an entirely foreign school system, Sprachekonfrontiert the problems was another, and have received no instructions to teach as I do.
I'm still not sure if it's good that I teach, as high school graduate with no experience. But if I compare with other teachers or the success of my teaching with her own benefit, the students certainly from me.
Greetings from Kumbo
Maximilian
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