I will have to begin by saying that the last week was the most hectic thus far, though I would say that our time is not going to get any less busy. We found out the previous Friday that July 3 would be our last day at S.O.S. Needless to say, we knew at that point that we would not be able to get through all of our instructional material in the time we had left. Thus, the week was spent changing around the order of lessons and finding out exactly what the students wanted to learn. That turned out to be ratios and proportions, area and volume, and percentages. I tried to go through those as best I could in the time I had left, and the students were adamant that even though I had to rush because of my time constraint, they learned. That was comforting.
Given the time constraint (I only have 9 instructional days left) and the nature of the students’ background in math at Koalabata, what I want to teach and what I have time to are two very different things even though I have a full 5 weeks there. I cannot review concepts like decimals or percents if they were not taught in the first place. This week I introduced decimals. The task was daunting, because here is a concept so pervasive in math, and I am the one telling these students about it for the first time. I tried to make the approach as holistic as possible, incorporating everything technical about decimals and trying to introduce basic word problems. My concern is often that if I teach too much new math in one day, they will not retain as much as if I stressed a few very important concepts. As a result, I have had to sift out what seems to be most important, both on the test and overall, and focus on that. I do not have the time to teach everything that I see these kids need to know, and that change in this program has made the teaching more difficult. Because it became more teaching intensive than review intensive, I wish I had more time. It is no one’s fault and I love what I do everyday, it is just the territory that comes with arriving somewhere and assessing the situation. Since there will be more on the PSLE than I have time to cover in depth, my solution is to leave Koalabata with a detailed list of the topics I have found the students to excel at, which ones they need help on, and which ones I did not get to but that they can address before the test in October. I will continue to work on stressing basics along with application, and I am hoping to have a class on how to solve word problems on Monday. These students are incredibly hard-working. They come to school at 8:30 A.M. every day and do the two sets of homework we assign them. I am certain that if I work with the teachers after departing, they will have all the necessary skills and mathematical foundation they need as they go into high school. And this is just a quick little update – tomorrow is my introduction of percents, so I truly hope that goes well, because as I perfected plans on the topic I realized that it is somewhat the ‘scary monster’ of primary school math – tying together fractions, decimals, and percents, teaching that they can all be written as the other, and attempting to teach a few ways to solve word problems that you know can be solved several different ways. Fun stuff, I must say. I love it; I just hope they do too.
Another plan we have instituted at Koalabata is the provision of two scholarships for students. While I talk often of the need for math review, the truth is that the principal revealed to me that in any given year, roughly 75% of the students will go to high school. While still not anywhere near the ideal percentage of 100, the principal also says that it is generally funds, not test scores, which stop the students from being able to attend. The reason for that is that the scores on the PSLE are divided into 3 categories by a score of 1,2, or 3. A 3 is the lowest passing score you can receive, but it only requires a 40% correct performance on the tests. As a result, very few students fail all of the tests, but often many do not have the money to attend. So, Danielle and I are going to provide two scholarships to students we feel have the ability and drive to succeed in the future, with the prerequisite that they also do not have the funds to attend next year.
We made large headway on the testing event this past week, meeting with Kick for Life, an organization that has agreed to come and have a mock Confederations Cup with the kids at the event. We continued working on logistics and feel like everything is going to come together very well. My only concern is the time constraint, because we may tentatively test 114 people in 3 ½ hours. But, the social workers at Baylor have assured us that they will make it happen and there is no need to worry. We still have to finalize some pamphlets that we are working on for the event, and we will be spending our afternoons doing HIV education at Koalabata, so while we are far from finished, we are in the middle of it all.
The last thing I want to share, albeit emotional, is my amazement at the rapidity with which the time here has passed. I love Lesotho very much, and if I could spend more time here, there is not a doubt in my mind that I would. I try very hard not to think about it, and I have no doubts that this week will be busy enough that it will hardly pass my mind.
Extremely cold and happy,
Amit