It keeps out late students and early teachers

My vice principal’s latest project at my school is the building of a fence around the school grounds. I wasn’t aware this was going to happen, so, like most projects here, I was made aware it was happening when it started happening.

This week they added the wooden gate that blocks the front pathway onto the grounds. As a school with a student body that has a history of being late for class, the flag ceremony and mandatory club meetings, we were a school that needed a fence. It is the job of the student leaders to open the fence at the end of each class, and then close it again when it is time for the next class to begin in order to put a physical barrier between stragglers and the class in which they are supposed to be.

There is no way to open the gate besides manually. So, once it’s closed, it stays pretty much stays closed. Unless you’re a teacher who has arrived on her bike an hour early for class in order to report student grades. Then, your bike ride as suddenly become slightly fenced out. 

Why these two may be two of my favorite students

“Students at attention.

Students at ease.

Students at attention.”

Florent pauses. He is standing in front of all his classmates at the weekly Monday morning flag ceremony, and after having vied to be the one who calls out the command for the two-person color guard in khaki school uniforms, he has forgotten what to say next.

One hundred and eighty one students, plus four teachers are waiting.

Florent looks quickly to the left and to the right, then at his feet as he waits for the words to come to him. He knows the longer he stands there the less likely this lapse in memory will go unnoticed, or unridiculed. The next glace is across the schoolyard.

In the front row of the class of 5eme, Andre is trying to catch his eye. He is slowly mouthing the words for the next command.

Florent gets the message.

“Attention for the raising of the colors,” he says, and the flag ceremony continues.

Mid-morning study session

I’m sitting in the shade of the school building reading when I see the group of four students who have wandered over from the primary school at the other end of the meandering dirt path that runs north from my middle school. They are standing around the corner of the building where they think I can’t see them watching me. One steps closer cautiously. She momentarily makes eye contact with me then runs back to her friends giggling nervously. I return to the page of We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families I was reading.

Word has gotten around there’s a Yovo at CEG Mayamon. 

First day of class

I did not teach today. The only English I spoke were the random words the kids wanted translated from French after they found out I was an English teacher.

Here, where classrooms only have two walls and a roof, where buildings are surrounded by forest, manioc fields and grasses taller than me, where the line between school yard and bush is a little fuzzy, the first day of school is spent tearing out the grasses and plants that reclaimed the land over the summer break.

Instead of notebooks and pens, the students came to school today with reed brooms and hoes with knotty wooden handles. For seven hours, not including the three-hour lunch break, the students ripped weeds from the ground, swept the plants into a pile and then carried the debris to the edge of the forest behind the school. This was not without many reprimands from the teachers and the headmaster for trying to sneak breaks in the shade of the school building.

This was my 18^th first day of school. It was my first first day of school that involved machetes.  

First job

“I’m looking for the library,” I asked the second person who had acknowledged me on the campus of the middle school near my house. The first had not understood my French with an American accent. The second person had understood that I was an outsider looking for a way in.

“It’s over here,” and began walking with me toward a building on the campus that was starting to spark the memory of when I was here the first time in August.

My escort introduced himself as the director of the middle school. To my credit, this was not the middle school at which I will be teaching English starting on Monday. Two previous Peace Corps volunteers had worked at this middle school; the latest had started a library there last year and had asked me as a favor to watch over it a little during my service.

“But the librarian has come yet,” the director said. “It’s locked.”

“Ahh, but I have the key,” I said.

With the help of the director, I opened the red metal door.

The library was filthy. Three months of summer vacation had not been kind to the room. There were spider webs strung between the chair legs and mouse droppings on the floor. Dirt covered the tops of the tables, and there was a small puddle in one corner that I preferred to not imagine what it could be.

I was happy to be there.

The first time

Their faces star at me blankly. The twenty students of my summer school class have no idea what the Yovo gesticulating wildly and speaking in English has just asked them to do.

I’m stuck.

In my head, all my students understand. All of them leave class loving English, and I have inspired them to want to learn more.

There is a lot riding on this fill-in-the-blank verb conjugation exercise.

Unfortunately, my students are lost. And I’m lost to how to help them find the answer.

I desperately glance at my colleague.

This time, I realize I have to ask for help.

He walks to the front of the room and confidently breaks down the exercise on the chalkboard for the students.

“See,” he says. “It’s not hard,” as the students fill in the first question of the activity.