Back to school...
... is the motto for that year. I'm spending my voluntary service in my placement the Collège Saint Gabriel. Now that I am really inside the school, I would like to report in detail about school life, about my dear students and colleagues and about my personal challenges.
The private catholic school was founded in 1954 and accommodates today students from the 7th to the 13th grade. The Collège is attended by both boys and girls, regardless of their religion, so Muslim students are integrated into school life as a matter of course. However, all parents must pay school fees for their children, which is different from public schools, those ones are free. After the 10th grade, the students receive their "BFEM", which is comparable to the middle school leaving certificate. After three more years, the students receive their high school diploma. The entire school system is very strongly oriented towards the French system. For example, students can choose between a literary and a science degree.
My fellow volunteer Caro and I support the teaching staff in German classes, whereby we have divided the classes among ourselves so that we always accompany one teacher at a time. This means that we do not teach a class alone, but we help the teachers during and after the lessons. For example, we take over practice units or prepare lessons. We see our strengths, for example, in pronunciation or in correcting class work. The rough organization of the lessons and explaining complex grammar points is then done by the teacher. The average class size is 50-60 students, and the teaching materials are limited to a blackboard and worksheets, which the teacher hands out from time to time. So the daily school routine here is confronted with very different challenges than the ones I know in Germany. On the one hand, it is difficult to reach so many students at the same time and to keep them on task, and on the other hand, the lessons can be very long, since copying the blackboard takes a lot of time. Books or worksheets are rarely used, so all exercises and lessons have to be copied by the students.
The school has about 2,800 students, with seven grades and six to seven classes per grade. The school ground themselve is accordingly very large and also has little to do with German school buildings. In a sandy playground, between huge trees, there are seven long buildings. They contain classrooms and a few offices. Of course, there is also a huge soccer field, but handball and basketball can also be played here on their own courts. Classes run every morning from 8 a.m. to noon and in the afternoon from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., with a long lunch break in between when all students go home to eat and rest (the midday heat here is not to be underestimated). The school year is divided into two semesters, like in Germany. There are big summer vacations from July to September, one vacation week at Christmas and two at Easter. It is quite normal here in Senegal to wear school uniforms, which I actually like quite a bit. Each school in Thies has its own colors, so that I can tell right away on the street which school the student goes to, or if he is in a class of mine - because that is not so easy to remember. In total, I have about 300 students in my classes, so remembering their faces and names is a real challenge.
Due to the partnership of the diocese of Thies with Bamberg, more importance is now given to the teaching of German in the school than, for example, to the teaching of Spanish. All 8th graders start with German and after one year they are allowed to choose if they want to continue it or if they want to choose Spanish as a second foreign language. So in almost half of our lessons we teach German for beginners, and in the other half we have more advanced classes. I teach 18 hours a week and I also prepare lessons and exercises or I'm correcting tests. With the youngest students we start with greetings, times of day or very simple short sentences, in higher grades the students already learn the difference between dative and accusative. The level of grammar is higher than I expected, but at the same time I notice that the students have problems with speaking or writing independently. They don’t have a feeling for the language, because in class they focus more on grammar exercises or text comprehension. Creative writing or spoken dialogues are rarely covered, which I find very unfortunate, but that is not part of the curriculum.
In addition, the teaching here is almost exclusively frontal, the center of the lesson is what the teacher says or writes on the blackboard. Group work or presentations, which I know from my own school life, are rare here - but with a class of 60 students on average, such projects are also difficult to implement. For us as teachers, it is therefore difficult to focus on individual students, so it is more important to pull the masses along. For me, this was a bit frustrating at times, but I also had to learn that some German teaching methods might work better in theory, but you can't implement them everywhere. So I try as much as I can to bring in my strengths here and to help where it makes sense to me to give the students here their best possible education.
In the meantime, I have settled in well to everyday school life. I have survived the first ups and downs, and I still don't get out of learning. At the beginning, I was in the position of an observer, because I had to understand first how school life works here. How are the lessons structured? What do I know from my school career and what is new to me? How does the teacher interact with the students, and more importantly, what kind of relationship should I build with the students myself? This is a question that is still bothering me as I try to find the balance between being the nice volunteer and the strict teacher. Of course, I want to make learning "fun" for the students and motivate them to try their hand at the German language. But at the same time, it feels wrong to build up too friendly a relationship with them, because I am still an authority figure for them, who should be respected just like the other teachers. So with each new day at school, I learn more and grow more into the role of a German teacher. Even though I know that I don't want to go in this direction professionally, I am still happy about every good or bad experience I gain.
Among other things, this also includes hitting. Quite often in class, I witness the teacher giving the students firm kicks to the head or sometimes hitting them on the head with a ruler. Exclusively I observed that boys are beaten. At the same time, however, I also noticed that the students are already used to it and it seems to be part of everyday life here. We volunteers find ourselves in a rather uncomfortable position, since such behavior is actually unacceptable for us. Nevertheless, I do not intervene in such situations, although I would like to. Education in Senegal is different than in Germany and I don't want to tell people here what I think of this style of education. Even though I deeply disagree with this measure, I have to acknowledge that it is now part of the educational culture here. As a volunteer, I don't want to play the do-gooder, but simply set a good example myself or seek objective discussion. But I also remember that things were no different in German schools a few generations ago, and Senegal is just on the way to changing. I have already discussed this with friends and many of them were of the opinion that it is time to ban these methods from school. Officially, teachers are also forbidden from hitting.
Despite some frustrations, I really enjoy working at the school, especially after I really fit in. Many students are very cool and they have an incredible energy, which is actually very exhausting, but also refreshing. Of course, there are still the troublemakers in the back row, but I'm learning to control them as time goes on. In the playground, they no longer shout "Bonjour" at me but "GUTEN TAG" (this is German for Good day!) and if they dare, they even follow up with a "How are you?" in German. On the other hand, they are very enthusiastic or even amused when I answer them with my broken Wolof. The openness and joie de vivre that I have come to know here in Senegal is also reflected in my students, so all in all I feel very comfortable. On the last day before the Christmas vacations, a party was organized in every class and Caro and I actually managed to drop by almost every one of our German classes. We celebrated and danced with all of them, because there was a great atmosphere and loud music everywhere - just like it is usual in Senegal.
The last day before the vacations! Teachers and students celebrated properly and at the end there was a legendary soccer game: the married teachers against the singles...
Another highlight of the school is definitely our colleagues, who we have really taken to our hearts. About 60 teachers work permanently at the Collège, but there are also many temporary teachers who are only there a few times a week. The average age of the teachers is definitely lower than in Germany, and there are also more male than female teachers. Everyone was very curious to get to know us and we were immediately accepted into the "family". I am so grateful for all of this and I already know how much I will miss the everyday life here, even though the return is still in the distant future.
All in all, I'm very happy with my placement and I'm already looking forward to the moment when the students hold their graduation certificates in their hands. For me, the best thing at the end of the year would be to hear from the students that they enjoyed the school year with German and that they were able to learn something from it - because then I will have the feeling that I could really give something back here!
Slideshow with more impressions:
