28th
English Language Improvement for Government Primary School Teachers
Together with Frits Los (my housemate), Emilie Tieken and her husband Richard Hayes, I am giving Saturday morning classes to improve English skills and teaching methods for English teachers from government schools in and around Nekemte. Government school teachers receive hardly any further professional training throughout their careers, and through classroom observations in primary schools – mainly done by Frits – we saw the need to help them update their skills.
Fortnightly, forty English teachers make their way to Nekemte College of Teacher Education for two sessions. Frits and Richard give training on teaching methodology and me and Emilie give English improvement training. Both sessions include a lot of active learning with group, pair and individual activities and in the English sessions we try to improve all four language skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening. In primary - and higher - schools, it is usually only reading and writing that is practiced, often with the students just copying text from the blackboard. We are trying to arm the teachers with plenty of ideas for games and activities that’ll make their lessons more enjoyable and stimulating.
Before the first session, we had no idea how many teachers would attend. Four from each of the ten governmental schools had been invited but it depended on the enthusiasm and reliability of the school heads and also whether the teachers could stomach a workshop for which they would receive limited expenses – we would only be able to provide refreshments and transport costs. Unfortunately, and quite surprisingly, in such a poor country as Ethiopia, people expect a per diem for any training they attend, i.e. they expect to be paid. No matter the importance of the training or the relevance of the content, people will only leave their house if they know they will make money from the endeavour. It feels like you have to bribe people into being trained. Inevitably you find yourself asking the question: ‘don’t you want this professional training? Don’t you want to improve? This is a one-off chance – I’m not here forever!’ But it’s useless because, in Ethiopia, hardly anyone does anything for free (unless it’s for the church of course), which you can understand to a point. If a teacher is scraping by on ₤50 a month, you can understand why they may be reluctant to invest their time in training on Saturdays for virtually no money. I’d had similar experiences in the past but I kept my thoughts to myself.
So initially I was pleasantly surprised when thirty-five teachers arrived on the first Saturday, all in good spirits, many of them elderly. By the end of the morning’s sessions, we felt heartened – they displayed a real eagerness to learn and were great company. Even the doddery guy who stunk of morning booze. Our predictions about low ability were confounded, although there were some stronger teachers. However, the weakest teachers were so weak that they couldn’t make a simple sentence, such as ‘what is your favourite food?’ We also heard the same common language mistakes that we hear from the students, for example, ‘according to me …’, ‘how is the condition?’ and even ‘where are you come from?’ We realised how important this extra practice would be for some of the teachers.
Inevitably, a few teachers brought up the issue of per diems and at the end of the second session, during a stroppy confrontation with Richard and Frits, the teachers soured and demanded more money. Very disappointing. We expected fewer teachers to attend the second session but we didn’t expect so few – only 25 out of 40. Some people told us it was because of the lack of a bigger per diem. After an unpleasant discussion, the teachers reluctantly accepted it and said they would continue to attend. The third session saw only a slight reduction, which could also be explained by a Protestant ‘conference’ (basically an open air shout-a-thon with some bad keyboard music) in town, which coincided with the training. However, those that did attend were a joy and offered lots of compliments after the lesson.
Despite many teachers being in the twilight of their careers, the distance they have to travel and the home chores they are neglecting by coming, these people are as keen to learn as any of the trainee teachers that I usually teach – if not more so. Perhaps it’s because they’ve received so little professional development training during their careers and are glad when it is available. I wish some of my regular, younger trainee teachers could approach their learning with as much heart while they’re at the college, because once they’re dispatched to distant, rural primary schools in the hills, there’ll be very little chance for professional development.
