Question, sir

Our morning tour at Dahin Sheili brought us through each classroom. Children stood and performed songs or dances in unison for us. Then the headmaster released us to roam as we liked among the classrooms, where our white skin and unusual presence left a trail of mayhem. Poking my head into classrooms, I saw our students engaged in spontaneous games of Simon Says, giving high fives and being ogled at. Our dusty, white faces stood out in the sea of brown skin, uniformed in yellow and brown. The nursery students were released to the schoolyard where they congregated in the shade of a doa doa tree, singing and dancing to the beat of their headmistresses drum. She drew them into che che coole, a call and repeat song that had made frequent appearances in my own elementary education.

The middle school students handled our visit with a little more restraint. After greeting us with the school song, students settled back into a math lesson practicing bar graphs by graphing the wins of their favorite football (soccer!) teams. Each classroom held 40 – 50 students, most of whom shared a wooden bench and desk with one or two other students. The walls were whitewashed and bare. Students used their notebooks sparingly, writing to each margin and using both sides of every page.

In a neighboring classroom, students reviewed electricity and wiring. In the middle of the lesson, the teacher stepped out to find a poster to illustrate his topic. The students remained attentive during his absence; one rose to recover chalk the teacher had dropped, another to erase the board. When the teacher re-entered the room, he resumed his lesson without needing to re-capture the students’ attention. Their discipline arose both from a culture of respect for elders, and from liberal use of “the switch.” Students stood to ask questions, getting their teacher’s attention with a raised hand and a soft “question, sir?”

I leafed through the science text and discovered that with a few minor variations, their curriculum matched the scope and sequence of my own: astronomy, chemistry, ecosystems, and natural resources. Theirs included as well an in depth exploration of the life cycle and natural history of the mosquito – a matter of interest in a region where malaria is confirmed in 10% of the population. I was ashamed to discover that I was surprised, by the brightness of the students, their dedication to their education, and the standard to which they are being held. While my relatively lax discipline and reliance on hands-on materials might take some getting used to, any of these students could succeed in my classroom, and even shine. And I know, my own students could learn from their tenacity and pride.