Prepared to teach in Africa

I am pretty sure I'm well prepared to teach in Africa or whatever, based on how I am used to my teaching environment being sub-par. Not that I am currently planning to go teach in Africa, but you know, it's always an option. I am envisioning that in Africa they have no electricity, a dirt floor, and a chalkboard, and maybe each of the students have a little slate and a slate pencil to use. I could work with this, I really could. Let me tell you all the ways I have adapted.

The walls of my classroom are falling over. I have two temporary folding walls that separate my classroom from the rest of the world, and recently they have started to slant. This is because we used to have carpet in the school, but last summer the carpet got ripped out and replaced with tile. So now that extra half inch or whatever of cushion is gone, and it was needed to keep the wall secure. I've had to do things like go next door and push our wall in to make it straight. I'm sort of waiting for the day it opens and slants so much that the kids can use it as a doggy door and escape to the next room. I mean, if we were in Africa, the school walls would probably be made of mud or thatch, and at least the kids could work on fixing it during recess.

Ants have infested our room. I am sort of hoping this won't happen again this spring like it has in the past, due to the new floors we have. But for the last two years, armies of ants have invaded our classroom. Part of the problem is that we have no cafeteria and have to eat in our classrooms, and the kids leave crumbs. The ants jump on these immediately and carry them off. I'm sort of waiting for the day a kid has hot Cheeto powder permanently stuck to his fingers and the ants just come and carry the entire kid off. The main problem with the ants is that they distract the students when we are sitting on the rug or whatever and the scream about it. If we were in Africa, bugs would not be a distraction to the students, because they would be used to seeing them in their houses all the time.

I was twice expected to teach in the dark with nothing but a flashlight. The first time I only had to do it for forty minutes, the second time I taught in the dark for four hours. Maybe this wouldn't be such a big deal if your classroom had at least one window. Mine doesn't. We have absolutely no natural light. The administrators were well aware of our cave like conditions, but I was asked to carry on as usual. I am very good at improvising and thinking fast, so we managed pretty well. But if I taught in Africa, at least I could count on the sun shining through the holes in our roof to give us light. We wouldn't have this problem.

This kid wanted to look like Spider Man, but the teacher in charge of the face painting booth thought a geography lesson would be more educational.

Clocks are wrong on the days you need them the most. For the first two weeks of school in September, our clock was totally wrong. Both the hour and the minutes were incorrect, so you couldn't do things like think it was just three hours ahead. The clocks are all controlled by some panel (I have yet to know where it is located; it seems like this control panel must be stationed at the district office or something, since no one at our actual school is ever able to fix the problem). Let me tell you, it's very difficult to make sure you are on time to PE or lunch or whatever when you haven't a clue of the time. Also, when the power goes out, the clocks go wrong. I came back from Christmas break and our clock was wrong. It was our first day back and we were all out of routine, so a clock would have been really helpful. I mean, if I were in Africa, at least I could use a sun dial consistently.

Copier goes berserk at least once a day. I basically can't count on the copy machine working on the day I need it, so I try to make my copies the day before, after school. You know, at six o'clock at night when no one is there except the custodian. The copier in high usage from 7:55 to 8:30 am (right before the kids come), so you can count on a line of teachers, a bit of cussing, and a paper jam. Only these paper jams aren't just one paper. Oh no. You have to hunt through like, eight compartments and pull out all the misfed sheets. The problem with teaching in America is that all the kids expect worksheets to do and all the problems to be written out for them. If I taught in Africa, I'm fairly certain I could just write on the blackboard and the kids wouldn't complain about copying it down. As it is, I have kids who take about ten minutes writing one sentence down or copying five multiplication problems. They groan the entire time. If I taught in Africa, I doubt my kids would request paper. We'd probably just write in the dirt with a stick. Heck, a chalkboard would probably be considered high technology.

In conclusion, I am just sort of wondering if the past 2.5 years of my teaching career has just been God's way of preparing me for even worse conditions. Though you may have realized, as I have, that teaching in Africa might actually be easier.