Another happy day on the rural school visit circuit. We saw a very nice measurement lesson, which added fuel to my theory that there’s an inverse relationship between the quality of the teaching and the condition of the school building, as this was another classroom sans-desks where the students sit on dried mud platforms.

I always feel uplifted when we watch a good teacher – it’s inspiring and reassuring, and also a great break from watching students do NOTHING for 20 minutes while the teacher checks everybody’s book, or listening to teachers and students scream “This is a cat. This is a cat. This is a cat.” (The drill approach is very popular in all subjects, but especially English.) Anyway, we saw this wonderful teacher and Meressa, my lesson-observing partner, called some students up to read in Tigrigna (very few Grade 2 students can read in English) and they were all able to read. This was a stark contrast with the previous Grade 2 class where only one out the four students we called was able to stumble through what she had copied into her notebook. As a teacher, I shouldn’t be surprised that there’s a connection between good teaching and good learning, but it is rather gratifying to see.

Furwaini’s brother is visiting from Canada where he has been living for the past three years. He’s complaining about the backwards way people live here: cooking food on coal stoves outside and washing their laundry in basins (even though, as Furwaini says, he doesn’t have to do any of this work himself). Furwaini herself doesn’t mind, and she has brought me into it as a Canadian who doesn’t mind the traditional ways either, although I think with my electric burner and my running water I’d really better stay out of the discussion.

I have no intention of idealizing poverty. Even Furwaini’s life is much easier than that of many people, who have to collect their own water, or go to the river to wash, or who don’t have servants to help them. And there is nothing romantic about water-borne infections, or protein-starved children, or walking three hours a day with a load of wood on your back, or futures disappearing under a bad education system. Yet there is still something about a group of women cooking together, and preparing food from start to finish with their own hands, that I love. There’s something about children playing together on the street with homemade balls and games. People dropping in and coffee being prepared. People walking (or taking the bus) everywhere they go. These are things I love and I wish that I could bring a little bit of them back with me when I go home.

When we visit classes to observe teachers, we always ask the teacher to talk with us afterwards so we can give her or him some feedback on the lesson we saw. So we step outside the classroom, find a rock or something to sit on, and talk. Meanwhile, the 40 or 50 children are left inside the class (no supply teacher coverage!). At first I was quite resistant to this. It goes against my ingrained sense of responsibility and liability to leave children alone in the classroom. Yet after a few occasions it became very clear that the children were perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. Sometimes the teacher leaves a particular child in charge to lead a lesson. Other times the students are just expected to work independently. I don’t know how much work gets done, but the behaviour is always excellent. Once we spoke with a teacher for about fifteen minutes while her class conducted their own Physical Education class outside, playing a game together without any problems. To be fair, I sometimes wonder whether a fear of punishment plays a role in the good behaviour. But I also think there’s a sense of cooperation among the children, and also an independence and self-sufficiency from both the children and the adults’ expectations that I admire and would like to bring back with me.