No More Monkey Business

**Disclaimer: due to technical issues I have been unable to post for several weeks. The next few posts are severely back dated. In real time, my grant in Nepal is finished and I am travelling before returning to the US. If you were thinking about sending me something, just send it to my US address and I'll get it when I come home.**

From February 20, 2014
Friends, I am very happy to announce that Kitini school no longer has a resident monkey! He was picked up by employees from the zoo in Patan. I hope that he lives a long and healthy life under their care.

He is gone now, but in the three days between the first terrorizing event (see here) and his departure the monkey did manage to create havoc in my classroom.

The monkey was consistently entering classrooms, going through kids’ backpacks, jumping on desks, etc. which is disruptive, but I had little sympathy for teachers who this happened to because they left their doors wide open. I worked very hard to make sure that my door and windows were always securely shut.

Well, except the one day when I didn’t notice that the last window was only closed, but not locked.

Naturally, the monkey sensed this opportunity to pry the window open and come in. He sat directly on top of the bench where I lay out all of my materials. On top of the materials. He dumped out the entire contents of the trash can and spread them all over the front of the room. He flipped through my flashcard box and moved all of the g’s to the front. (Monkeys really are quite clever with those opposable thumbs.) He chewed on my colorful pen and every single one of my board markers. Then he walked over to the only student who didn’t hurriedly leave the classroom, climbed onto the desk next to him, bent over, and stared at said student from between its legs. I wish I had been faster with my camera.

 

 

Needless to say, I was quite pleased to see him go. But just because my classroom is all one species again doesn’t mean they always act like it.

What the Number One Teacher Education Program in the State of Michigan Failed to Preare Me For; Or Why I Am a Teacher and Not a Zoologist

I blame the man in the yellow hat for giving me an inaccurate picture of monkeys. They are not mischievous in an innocently curious and laughable way. They are not snuggly. They are not named George.

Just before winter break, an injured monkey took up residence at Kitini School. Since the school was empty and peaceful for a month when it arrived, it seems to have decided to stick around. It’s kind of a milky brown, about the height of a small child when it sits on its haunches. It can be quite fast when it wants to, and it does a nice job distracting students and teachers alike for vast portions of the day. It’s male; which I know because today it sat outside my classroom window and played with itself. In this instance, I was actually happy that my students haven’t mastered questions in English just yet.

Did I mention that the monkey is terrifying? Because it is. It has nasty looking sharp teeth, makes scary noises when provoked, and definitely seems ferocious enough to send a kid (or an American volunteer) to the hospital if it wanted to.

But no one else seems concerned. Most of the students now spend their breaks taunting the monkey. They like to throw food at it and then see how close they can get before the monkey lunges at them. It is a horrible game, but I have yet to see an adult make the effort of approaching the herd of screaming children and encouraging them to leave the monkey alone. I frequently try to warn children by miming a scary monkey biting them. Apparently I’m not very convincing.

Today the monkey (and the mob of animal hating children) were between me and my classroom. It was unfortunate. I worked my way up to the front of the group and then made all the kids go back downstairs…which meant they backed up in the general direction of the stairs. With more enthusiasm I got some to leave at least temporarily. But when I turned around one poor little boy from grade one had been left alone on the opposite side of the monkey. Without the protection of the older kids, he was now realizing that being trapped in a 3 ½ foot wide hallway with a wild monkey between you and the stairs was not an ideal situation. Especially if you are six years old and the monkey probably weighs more than you.

Annoyed that I somehow seem to end up as the only adult around in these situations more than my share, but also sympathetic for the kid, I took on teacher role #1356: human shield between student and aggravated wild monkey.

Getting past the monkey to get to the kid was no problem because I just walked really close to the wall. But escorting him back to the other side meant I was suddenly a full child’s width into the middle of the walkway…a clear invasion of the monkey’s territory. Plus once said child was an inch past the monkey he was no longer interested in matching my calm – let’s not frighten the animal – walking speed and he bolted.

The combination of proximity, sudden motion, and loud footsteps startled the monkey. Obviously. And it basically lunged at me. The few students who remained within sight laughed because I’m pretty sure my entire leg visibly trembled and I may have made a small noise of terror. I don’t entirely remember because the whole time I was just thinking, “what are the nurses going to say if I go back to the clinic and ask for my THIRD post-exposure rabies series?”

All’s well that ends well and, for now, the monkey has yet to actually make contact with anyone at the school. But perhaps Hope College should consider some interdisciplinary courses for education majors like: Animals in the Classroom 101 or Introduction to the Schoolyard Dynamics of Primates and Immature Homo-sapiens.

 

 

Disillusioned

Lately I find myself leaving school with a particular flavor of exhaustion. The more time I spend at Kitini School, the more I recognize that I cannot fix everything. Which might seem obvious, but if you have met me perhaps you will understand how this hurts me. I care deeply about my students wherever I am. It’s what motivates me and what makes me so emotionally vulnerable. I love what I do because teaching is such an intrinsic part of who I am. But that also means that when work is hard I feel it deep in my bones.

 

Right now, work is hard.

I want all of my students to be able to write their full names with js and gs and ys that drop below the line. And I know that if I had infinite time with each of them I could make it happen, but I don’t.

I want the tests to actually measure students’ ability to read, write, speak, and listen. Rather than whether or not they have memorized the questions and can regurgitate minute details from a story we read in October. And I just spent four years learning how to write appropriate and meaningful assessments; it’s one of the things that I love most about teaching because it creates a tangible way to go to a student and say “Wow! Look how much you’ve grown!” But I don’t make the exams; they come from a Nepali organization and go to all the schools in the district. Kind of like MEAP tests or PSSAs except they’re the only form of assessment.

I want to stop everything and work with my third grade girls who still don’t have any idea what sounds the letters make. But then what will the other students do? And what about all the other struggling students in all the other grades? Who will drop everything to tell them that they still matter even if they can’t read and that they’re not stupid and that they can learn to be just as good as everybody else?

I want the key to the library to stay on school grounds because I hate that if the teacher with the key is absent then no one can access the resources that other schools can only dream of.

I want my co-teachers to talk to me. To tell me what they like about the way I teach and what they think is silly and what they will never ever use after I leave. I want to ask them questions and I want them to ask me questions. I want them to come to class or not come to class, I just want to stop living in this strange limbo land where I never know how much to plan.

I want to know the words to say in Nepali when I walk into a classroom and find a student crumpled in his/her chair with tears dripping onto the floor. I want to know how to ask if they’re hurt or sad or hungry. I want to know enough to understand when they finally blubber out a response.

I want to be able to communicate to the kid, who hit the grade one student so hard, that his behavior is not okay without making him feel like he himself is horrible.

I want my girls to grow up in a world where their teachers and principals don’t hit them. Because if every male authority figure you encounter beats you, even once, why would it even occur to you that it’s not okay for your boyfriend or your husband to do that too.

I want the things that I learned in college to apply in this context. I want to have a team of colleagues, administrators, and specialists who I can call upon to cooperate and bring so-and-so up to grade level because I’d hate to see him/her drop out at the end of third grade.

It’s hard right now because I want all of these things from the most well-intentioned part me, but the more time I spend at Kitini School, the more I understand why things exist the way they do. And when you start to understand something it becomes harder to wish it away.

I now know how little teachers are paid; probably not enough to even compensate for the work they are doing let alone the work I think they should be doing. I now know that the decision to cancel school at 1:00 instead of 4:00 is far more complex than I could have ever imagined; weighing political factors, policy decisions, economics, and even physical safety threats. In America, the culture drives people to create change and make progress, and I now see the consequences (positive and negative) of a society with different priorities.

This casserole of wishes and realities, this complicated mess of life, is forcing me to let go of my illusions. Which is good because it means that I am beginning to grasp the arrogance of what I hoped to accomplish in eight months as an ETA. But it’s also deeply painful because letting go of what I want for myself includes letting go of things I want for my students. I want the world for them, but my time and my resources are so much smaller than the universe.

So where do I go from here? How do I choose where to invest what I do have to offer? Do I choose the student most likely to succeed in hopes that they’ll pay it forward one day? Do I choose the students who nobody thinks will succeed and swallow the reality that they still might drop out next month? Do I stick with the whole class just to be an example of an adult who follows through or do I drop my classes and switch to intensive small group work? Do I pursue the goals I originally set for creating sustainable change in teachers and administrators or do I focus on making my last six weeks unforgettable for my students?

The teacher voice in my head says “those are great questions!” But the actual me wishes I also had some really great answers. Fortunately winter break is fast approaching and with it comes my American family! Perhaps I’ll become enlightened somewhere between trekking to Poon Hill and riding elephants in the terai ;)

Classroom Management 2.0

I think I am successfully conquering class three.
And the use of the word "conquer" is very intentional because it's been a battle. 



They look so innocent.

After the catastrophic failure of the girls vs. boys point system in grade five and the rapid intensification of behavior management issues in grade three, I determined it was time for a completely redesigned strategy.

Just to recap...I'm working with students who are totally unaccustomed to any kind of classroom management system based on reward. The popular forms of discipline that I have witnessed include yelling at the whole class, hitting students (on their backs, heads, foreheads, etc.) and having students kneel on the cement floors. Although it should be noted that some teachers have managed to develop enough of a rapport with their students that they rarely require serious discipline.

I also wanted my system to address the most frequent problems preventing me from making the most of my instructional time; which has been severely limited due to holidays and bandhs. Problems like frequent absenteeism, constant request for bathroom/drink breaks, talking during class, not bringing a pencil or notebook to class, etc. I needed a way to limit negative behaviors and reward students who were already being awesome, but I wanted to make sure it would not be subjective or cumbersome for me to consistently enforce (part of the problem of the girls vs. boys points system). Based on some fantastic advice via a desperate facebook status, I was reminded that for kids new to behavior management the more immediate the consequences (positive and negative) the better.

And STARS was born.

Here's how it works. Students earn stars for various good things and spend them as they choose -- either by choosing to misbehave during class or by cashing them in for tangible rewards. I use a marker to draw the stars in the front of each child's notebook which means that suddenly I no longer have kids forgetting their book at home. Miraculous! I always have markers in my bag and it takes me less than a second to draw a star so the day-to-day doesn't require me to bring any extra materials or remember who earned what yesterday.

A lot of people have asked, "But don't the students add their own stars to get more prizes?" which is a really legitimate concern. So far I haven't had any problems. I talked about it on the first day and told students that if I caught them cheating by drawing their own stars I would take away ALL the stars. I said it really dramatically and even let my co-teachers translate the warning into Nepali. I usually use the markers that I brought from the U.S. so the colors are slightly different than the standard sign pens you find in Nepal. I told the kids that I could look at the colors and know that it wasn't from my marker. In reality, the kids just aren't that good at drawing stars so it would be obvious if they tried to add their own.

All students get four stars just for showing up on Sundays. In retrospect, it's a little bit high considering they can start earning prizes at five stars but it was a worthwhile decision to get the system going. Plus it encourages kids to show up at school on the first day of the week which is also the day that I am most likely to start something new and the higher the attendance the less re-teaching I have to do later in the week.

Each day I try to offer at least one opportunity to earn a star during class. Sometimes we play a team game and everyone on the winning team gets a star. Sometimes my co-teacher assigns homework and anyone who has it done, BEFORE class, gets a star the next day. Sometimes I forget and there aren't any opportunities for a star but when students ask I'm just honest and say "maybe tomorrow."

Of course students can also spend stars during class. It costs one star to go to the bathroom or get a drink during my class. For me, this is huge. I hate deciding when kids can and can't use the restroom. It's not okay with me for everyone to need to go at the beginning of class, but I'm also unwilling to arbitrarily decide who gets to go and who doesn't. As a friend likes to say "it was only four years ago that these kids were toilet trained" and I certainly don't want to be the one responsible for a kid who really really has to go not quite making it. In another miracle, the 25 tiny bladders that used to be nearing an explosion two weeks ago have suddenly synced to the school schedule and I rarely have anyone asking to leave the room.

Students can also spend stars by choosing to create disruptions during class. Most of the time it's enough for me to walk towards the offenders and take the cap off my black board marker (thus indicating that I am about to cross out someone's star.) I always have the marker in my hand when I'm teaching anyways and I love that it's a non-verbal method. The students stop what they're doing to disrupt class and they don't even get the satisfaction of interrupting my train of thought or forcing me to stop giving directions. Perfect.

For students who opt not to misbehave, do assignments, and regularly come to class stars can be spent on prizes.

• 5 Stars: choice of pencil, eraser, or sharpener
• 10 Stars: new notebook
• 20 Stars: lunch with Miss Rachel

Pencils, erasers, and sharpeners are all pretty cheap. And I don't mind spending money on them because it means that I no longer have trouble with kids not having a pencil. At the very least, there's always a friend nearby who has an extra. Similarly with notebooks, I know that finances are not great for all my students and this gives them an easy way to get the supplies they need. I don't care if they use the notebook for my class or someone else's. I have also learned that kids LOVE drawing copies. These are just notebooks without lines, but most parents don't spend their money on them. So students can now decide whether they want a lined copy or a drawing copy (they call notebooks copies because they are mostly used to copy whatever the teacher has written on the board.)

The prize of getting to eat lunch with me is admittedly a bit vain. But it's also a huge hit. I had two boys in fifth grade cash in all 20 of their hard earned stars for this last week. I met them for lunch and we walked to a nearby restaurant and shared some momos. Feeding myself and two students cost me all of... one dollar.

In an effort to get students to save their stars, (another good life lesson to be earned from a classroom economy), new prizes will be unveiled the next time we have school.

• 15 Stars: a medium sized chocolate bar (based on a poll of students' favorite candy.)
• 15 Stars: a small box of colored pencils (a nice addition to the drawing copy.)
• 25 Stars: a printed photo of me and the student (because I would love an excuse to take pictures with my kids and as a child I would have jumped to the moon with excitement to have a picture with me and any of my student teachers.)
• 30 Stars: an English picture book

I anticipate that the story books will become a fast favorite based on student reactions when I bring mine to class. What more could an English teacher want than students on their best behavior clamoring for the opportunity to earn a new book?

For now, I'm extremely happy with the STARS system. Since I get paid WAY more than the average Nepali teacher I have the funds to support a system based on store-bought prizes. Normally I work hard to avoid doing things at the school that the average teacher wouldn't have the resources to do herself. But I have two solutions for this: 1) prizes for this system don't have to be store bought and the next time I do a teacher training at the school we're going to talk about some ideas for no-cost rewards. 2) I have seen prize distributions after school games days where winners of the banana eating contest go home with three new copies and two pencils...so somewhere in the tangle of bureaucracy and lack of administration there is money to purchase things that the school thinks are important.

Why are your cheeks so puffy? Oh because you just ate a whole banana at once.

Now I just have to convince the headsir that supporting a classroom management system might be more beneficial to society than rewarding the kid who can shove a whole banana into his/her mouth the fastest...

Sigh, only one enormous institutionalized problem at a time.