Happy Birthday Dr. King! English Class

What a two weeks!  All the kids are here now and have been getting to know each other and the village and preparing for school starting on Monday.

Part of this preparation means that the other volunteers and I have each been teaching four hours of English class every morning for the last two weeks.  WAIT, you say.  Why are you forcing our global language on these vulnerable kids? Good question. Let's go into language in Rwanda:

Almost everyone in Rwanda speaks Kinyarwanda, which I am slowly learning.  Since Rwanda is so small it does not host tons of local languages like many other African countries, and Kinyarwanda (or maybe Swahili on the borders) can get you anywhere.  Rwanda also uses French, especially in school, as a national language which makes sense based on the colonial presence that was here.  English was also an option in school, and has been a national language for 15 years, but was used less frequently.  In October 2008, however, Rwanda's government decided that they would switch all education from French to English (click this link to learn more about the political undertones associated with this switch).

So in any case, while some of the kids here do know some English and some knew none, they all needed to review as much as possible before they were to start all-English classes this upcoming Monday. 

Teaching ESL (a new subject for me) for four hours a day was pretty daunting, especially since I'd started my other job in the acquisitions office as well.  As the days went on, though, I had a great time learning with the kids, bonding with them, and having my respect for them grow.

In class we did everything from parts of speech to persuasive writing.  My classes were for fairly strong English speakers and we had a lot of fun increasing our vocabulary and using grammar rules.  For adjectives I brought in pictures on my computer and they described my friend Paul's tall stature, Chris's beard and Malia Obama's curly hair.  For adverbs they wrote short skits and then had to do them over and over again in the style of various adverbs that the class suggested (a la Bean skit, if anyone knows it).  We sang "Penny Lane," analyzing the intent of the Beatles (almost ALL the kids' first Beatles experience.  Amazing) and writing and acting out our own thoughts on what happens next (after the "fireman rushes in, from the pouring rain, very strange").

My favorite classes were the ones where I gave the kids debate topics and corresponding vocabulary and had them prepare debates for the class.  The topics ranged from "When is the appropriate age to begin dating?" to "Should Rwanda preserve its National Parks?" (Check this debate out in the picture above)  The kids had been very shy and reluctant to speak in English in the beginning of the two weeks but by debate time they were mostly excited to express their opinion, and were too interested in getting people to hear their view to worry about their English.  During the debate "Which language should school be taught in: English, French or Kinyarwanda?" I had to laugh as they explained, quite clearly and eloquently, that English was too hard. During this debate they also wisely pointed out that instead of using English, perhaps they should preserve their culture and strive to make Kinyarwanda the next international language.

Another favorite class I did with the old kids (who were here last year) included analyzing an op-ed by the President of Rwanda about international investment in Africa.  We learned great vocabulary, and then when I asked them to write their own persuasive pieces, I learned tons about the problems they see in Rwanda and the village.  We practiced peer review asking each other "so what?" and "why?" after each statement and discussing whether their pieces embraced the complexity of the issue (or, as I explained when defining embrace, hugged the complexity). 

Today, for the last class, and in honor of his birth, I played the kids the video of Martin Luther King giving the "I Have a Dream" speech (worth another listen, if you feel like getting chills, inspiration and a little teary).  The new kids had mostly never heard of Dr. King, although they did know about racism in the U.S.  Even though the vocabulary was certainly the hardest we'd ever seen they were rapt in attention to the video and they followed along in the text, occasionally cheering!  When the video wouldn't load anymore, we read aloud the end of the text, in the same spirit as Dr. King!  The kids then wrote their own dreams, for the school year, their next four years, and ten years from now.  It was really cool to see them enthusiastically writing many sentences in English when, just a few weeks ago, they're responses to my assignments were often simply no response at all.

One thing that I frequently forgot in the business of teaching two big ESL classes, but was occasionally reminded, was how truly awesome these kids are.  A friend from home asked if they hated going to class.  While they were typical teens, talking out of turn, zoning out, etc, they mostly were happy to be in class or at least trying to be present and respectful to me.  But of course, teaching high schoolers is hard and I frequently had to push them to participate or respect each other.  Once or twice I became frustrated when they would question what we were doing in class - we'd never do that in America, instead we'd just zone out - until someone reminded me how importan it is to have people questioning authority.  And during the debates I had to pinch myself to remember that these kids, who are willingly and passionately discussing complex ideas about development and globalization, are also some of the most vulnerable kids I've ever met, with some of the hardest backgrounds, and that they were having this discussion in their third language.  They are resilient, unique and eager and its pretty humbling to be around them. 

Now it's off to bed for me, as I am going on a picnic to Lake Mugesera (you can see it in the background of my header picture) tomorrow, which means four hours of hiking.  I imagine this also means learning a lot more Kinyarwanda, as sadly, the longest phrase I've learned is "imfite inama ninjoro," which means "I have a meeting tonight."  Too telling. 

 Wishing nzozi nziza (sweet dreams) like Dr. King's to you all!