As I was walking home from my workout at the Teufaiva gym this morning the air had that clean feeling that comes after a rain shower. The sun was up; a few clouds mingled with the blue sky. It rained again just after I arrived home, just another brief shower coming out of nowhere, which seems to happen a lot in Tonga.
We’re back from our 12 day trip to New Zealand’s North Island, a comfortable reminder of our former life, and beginning the second half of the school year. The schools are back in session, but I have this week to prepare. The Tongan Winter is so much more pleasant than the summer; temperatures in the 70s most of the time, with some nighttime lows dipping into the 60s and even the 50s. A consistent breath of fresh air, and the odd day that does climb into the low 80s only stays there for a few hours.
Whatever “honeymoon” there may have been when we began our work here is long gone. Our experience this first five months of teaching has revealed that in our current assignments we will have little lasting impact on our Tongan colleagues or our schools. The integration into our various schools has revealed some stark realities of working here. The education system in Tonga, with it’s overarching emphasis on rote learning and knowing the “right answer” (rather than how to think) makes it very difficult to effectively engage students in a discovery learning process. A big surprise has been the behavior of many primary and secondary teachers. There is little discipline or accountability required of them; Many teachers often arrive well after the school day has begun and some frequently do not show up at all. Particularly vexing is arriving at school to find out some event or another (“Didn’t anyone tell you?”) has completely disrupted the schedule and put you another day behind.
Which is not to say that there aren’t many fine and dedicated teachers working in Tongan schools, women and men who can be counted on to be there every day, who will cover the absent teacher’s class whenever necessary without complaint, and who seem to respect the students as learners. These teachers are not responding to any external rewards or stimuli, they just seem to care more, particularly for the kids. However, it is “the Tongan way” to not complain about the inequities, and the absent and/or indifferent teachers’ jobs are not jeopardized.
As Kathy has so eloquently described in a previous post, it’s the children who are responding to our efforts and who will be the primary beneficiaries of our efforts, not the system. Especially at the primary school level they are a lot of fun and can be very responsive, but that frequently depends on how controlling their regular classroom teacher is, how much permission they feel they have to speak up, to be creative, to do something other than try to figure out what the “right answer” is.
It was eye-opening for me to come to the end of my first term with college students with the realization that I really hadn’t done much toward expanding my Economics students understanding of the world. The last few weeks were all about getting ready for the end of term exam, memorizing concepts to parrot back and then just as quickly forget. The few application questions I included and tried to prepare them for bombed. Time to rethink my approach.
When I taught Economics before, I could rely on my students possessing some basic knowledge and background experiences. They would have all held jobs and received a pay check, paid taxes, maybe lived on their own, held a driver’s license and owned a car and bought insurance. They would understand basic budgeting concepts. My Tongan students have none of these experiences. Most live at home or with a relative and have never worked for a wage or paid income taxes, Budgeting is a foreign concept. Given their life experiences and different methodology is necessary.
So this week I’m scratching my head and researching “critical thinking” materials and lesson plans in an effort to create a learning environment that will cut way back on how much economics content we will cover and focus more on developing some basic working understandings about the way the world—and Tonga in particular—works. Wish me luck, and I’ll keep you posted.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's a . . What?
Kathy has been teaching her primary school kids about animal groups, and now they all know about how birds are vertebrates that have two legs, feathers, and can fly. Of course they learn that there are always exceptions, like chickens that are birds that don’t fly. (Then there are bats which do fly, but aren’t birds, but that’s another story.) Until I came to Tonga I had no trouble with this knowledge myself, but I have now witnessed several events of actual chickens flying. The most recent one almost caused me to crash.
I was riding along on my bicycle when a chicken started to run across the road in front of me. No big deal, chickens are everywhere, even in downtown Nuku'alofa. A car was coming along a bit too fast toward us, so the chicken flew up to avoid the car, but her timing was a bit off and she was hit by the car’s windshield. Feathers went flying, but most alarmingly the chicken was now hurtling out of control toward me. I ducked, managed to stay upright, and with racing heart got stopped safely. I don’t know the ultimate fate of the chicken from this encounter, but she did get herself up and run off. So you have it from me; Tonga chickens can fly, so be careful out there!
About the bats: early on in her experience at her school Kathy observed a teacher doing a lesson, in which she was talking about Tonga’s “flying fox,” a pretty good sized bat that we saw a lot of when we were in Ha’apai. The teacher was going on about the bat, and concluded by saying that because this creature can fly, and using big arm motions to demonstrate, categorically stated that therefore “A bat is a BIRD, because BIRDS can fly!” She then proceeded to have the children mimic her, flapping their arms, reciting “A bat is a Bird because Birds can fly!”
These sorts of situations in schools pose some tricky dilemmas. Many Tongan teachers are not particularly well educated, and there are tremendous gaps in their knowledge, particularly of geography and biology. (Segue: When Kathy and I were doing some of our initial research about Tonga before we came, we learned that the peka (the flying fox bat) and another smaller bat are the only mammals native to Tonga). And of course one cannot just jump in and try to correct them. Later on when Kathy was teaching about animal groups as part of her English lessons she taught the correct information in a very straight ahead, factual manner; the teacher was in the room during the lesson, and nothing further has been said.
The domestic animal life really is something here in the Kingdom. In our "city" neighborhood pigs are all around. Even though we have a fenced yard, there are several holes that a very young pig can get through, so we've had to do some chasing lately as we don't want them tearing up our our little bit of grass and molesting Kathy's newly planted vegetable garden. One of these little guys was killed by dogs who must have followed the pig through the hole into our back yard. Not a pretty sight. Dogs roam the neighborhood freely, and while they do have owners they are not kept as pets and are not well cared for. Not to mention that many Tongans think roast dog is quite a culinary treat. They can be a menace to bike riders as well as piglets, and I have been bit on the foot by a neighborhood pack that decided to chase me on my bike one day. And then, of course, the chickens. We don't mind them being in the yard because we have heard that they like to eat the giant stinging centipedes (molokaus) that occasionally come snaking into the house and scare the bejeezus out of us. And anyway, after all, what can you do when as we now all know "Chickens are Birds, and Birds can Fly!"
I was riding along on my bicycle when a chicken started to run across the road in front of me. No big deal, chickens are everywhere, even in downtown Nuku'alofa. A car was coming along a bit too fast toward us, so the chicken flew up to avoid the car, but her timing was a bit off and she was hit by the car’s windshield. Feathers went flying, but most alarmingly the chicken was now hurtling out of control toward me. I ducked, managed to stay upright, and with racing heart got stopped safely. I don’t know the ultimate fate of the chicken from this encounter, but she did get herself up and run off. So you have it from me; Tonga chickens can fly, so be careful out there!
About the bats: early on in her experience at her school Kathy observed a teacher doing a lesson, in which she was talking about Tonga’s “flying fox,” a pretty good sized bat that we saw a lot of when we were in Ha’apai. The teacher was going on about the bat, and concluded by saying that because this creature can fly, and using big arm motions to demonstrate, categorically stated that therefore “A bat is a BIRD, because BIRDS can fly!” She then proceeded to have the children mimic her, flapping their arms, reciting “A bat is a Bird because Birds can fly!”
These sorts of situations in schools pose some tricky dilemmas. Many Tongan teachers are not particularly well educated, and there are tremendous gaps in their knowledge, particularly of geography and biology. (Segue: When Kathy and I were doing some of our initial research about Tonga before we came, we learned that the peka (the flying fox bat) and another smaller bat are the only mammals native to Tonga). And of course one cannot just jump in and try to correct them. Later on when Kathy was teaching about animal groups as part of her English lessons she taught the correct information in a very straight ahead, factual manner; the teacher was in the room during the lesson, and nothing further has been said.
The domestic animal life really is something here in the Kingdom. In our "city" neighborhood pigs are all around. Even though we have a fenced yard, there are several holes that a very young pig can get through, so we've had to do some chasing lately as we don't want them tearing up our our little bit of grass and molesting Kathy's newly planted vegetable garden. One of these little guys was killed by dogs who must have followed the pig through the hole into our back yard. Not a pretty sight. Dogs roam the neighborhood freely, and while they do have owners they are not kept as pets and are not well cared for. Not to mention that many Tongans think roast dog is quite a culinary treat. They can be a menace to bike riders as well as piglets, and I have been bit on the foot by a neighborhood pack that decided to chase me on my bike one day. And then, of course, the chickens. We don't mind them being in the yard because we have heard that they like to eat the giant stinging centipedes (molokaus) that occasionally come snaking into the house and scare the bejeezus out of us. And anyway, after all, what can you do when as we now all know "Chickens are Birds, and Birds can Fly!"
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