First Day Teaching

Here I was at the Bamenda Government Technical High School, GTHS. This was the first day of the new school year. All the students gathered together in the assembly area in front of the school. There were about a thousand students, about 90% boys. Several of the girls were noticeably pregnant. Students stood in rows as teachers paced back and forth keeping order. I saw several students get slapped to stay in order or taken out of line and sent somewhere beyond my eyesight. The principal made several announcements, and then introduced me. I was caught off guard, though I shouldn't have been since I was standing in front of everyone and directly next to the man. 

When he finished introducing me, I took a couple steps forward and waved to everyone. I was very embarrassed. The principal shook my hand again, and I think I noticeably grimaced this time. Then I turned around and walked smack into the large rusty sign welcoming everyone to the school. I put a sharp gash in my forehead directly above my right eyebrow. Blood started gushing. I heard shrieks and hollers. The assistant principal, a woman, hurried to my aid and quickly wiped away the blood and gave me some tissue to keep against the wound until the assembly finished. Next was the national anthem. I noticed that more eyes were on me than on the flag, and there were quite a few giggles. 

You remember what the weather is like here, right? It's around 11 in the mornig, and the air is hot and humid. Mosquitos and other bugs are flying around my face. They seem to be interested in the dripping red stuff, especially as it mixed with my sweat. Can you imagine? Thankfully, once the national anthem was over, the assistant principal was able to rush me off to the first aid station, which consisted of a box with some basic bandages and alcohol for cleaning. Thankfully, the wound was quite clean and sharp, so it was easy to clean and didn't require stitches. In only a few days I didn't need to wear a bandage over my eye. I do, however, still have scar just over that eyebrow.

Then school began. I went to my classes and I taught, having practically no time to prepare for any of them, and just learning that I was teaching an additional subject. Thankfully, I wasn't going in completely cold. I had completed 5 practice classes with a group of volunteer 5th grade students, and by chance I had taught them math. And I had prepared lessons for my first day of classes, but I didn't realize that my first day of work was also my first day of classes. No one had told me that. Thus, I did not have my prepared lessons with me, not that it would have mattered. As I discovered over the years, I almost never kept to script, and I always felt stifled when I did. In my mind, I later realized, lesson plans were not meant to be followed, but to be used for planning. Who can guess the individual needs of different students, or how a butterfly drifting through a classroom or a nearby crowing rooster can affect the learning outcomes of a class?

All the students were lined up outside the classroom, and I told the head student to let the other students in. During training I was told to depend on the head student, who was typically the top student, knew everything about the school, and could help me with just about anything. This student would collect the other students' homework, take attendance, tell them when they could come and go, and so on. Whatever I wanted the head student to do, the head student would do. My head student in each of my classes was very useful during my first few weeks. Over time, I took over more responsibilities. 

The only thing that the head student couldn't do was classroom management, or keeping the students in order, quiet and engaged in learning. That was up to me. Wouldn't it be nice if I could just say what I wanted the students to learn and they would learn it like that? Well, that's not how people learn, and thus we have teachers. And I soon learned that I was not very good at classroom management, or at least it took me some time to realize that a noisy class could be good, if the noise is pointed in the correct direction. 

My problem is, I tell jokes when I'm nervous, and during my first class I made some sort of silly joke, probably because I tripped since I was so nervous, and everyone laughed at my joke. They smiled. I liked that. I told some more jokes. They laughed some more. I liked that more. Soon, as you can imagine, my room was noisier than a disco, and other teachers were coming to my rescue. I was so embarrassed whenever a teacher had to "rescue" me, but it was necessary sometimes. 

Over time, I learned how to find balance between noise and engagement, at least from the point of view of the teachers in the other classrooms. In a sense I was lucky that none of the classrooms had glass windows. The windows only had shutters, which were only closed durning downpours. At all other times the windows were open, and since we were at the top of a hill in the middle of the mountains, there was almost always wind blowing through the classrooms, an there were plenty of chickens, goats, birds, and other wildlife nearby to drown out much of my students's noise. 

Well, I went to my maths class first, where I introduced myself and tried to get the students to introduce themselves. I couldn't understand most of them, and they were laughing and playing around most of the time. That class was basically a disaster. The next class I went to was carpentry. These students were a year oder. I approached this class more seriously. the class stil got out of order, but it was a bit better. Then for my final class, I had the younger year of carpentry. These were the same students who were in the math class. So, I was suddenly stuck. I didn't know what to teach. I hadn't yet planned a lesson 2.