There is not much to report in Thaba Bosiu this week. The most significant update I have is the adjustment I made to my teaching style. Previously, I wrote notes on the board, had the students copy them, explained them, and then had an interactive activity or went through a few practice problems. However, I noticed more and more that we were running out of time during class and missing valuable information. I was getting frustrated that we weren’t covering the topics I had planned, and the students were understandably frustrated when we had to go overtime. Something about class just felt slow, and I knew I had to make a change. While puzzling over what to do to save time, I thought about how long it takes my students to copy notes down. It takes them a long time, and I mean a really, really long time (I have literally had to ban rulers so that they won’t waste time underlining every title and separating different sections with perfection). I then tried to save time by explaining concepts while they copied, but it became evident that they did not retain the information as well when I did. I thought about printing out the notes for them, but I was afraid they wouldn’t pay attention as much if they already had the notes in front of them. Finally, with Brittany’s help, I decided on a compromise. I tried printing out the notes with blanks for important words or phrases for students to fill in. The result was fantastic. I had considerably more time to explain each topic, and could cover much more information in my allotted three hours without needing to extend class. While the change in style now requires that I go back and change all of my previous lesson plans, it’s really not much additional work because I lost all my lesson plans when my hard drive crashed. I guess I owe Macintosh a thanks for forcing me to rewrite all of my plans anyway.

While this new teaching method saves time and allows for more interactive demonstrations and fun activities, it does come at a price. With projects in low-resource settings like this, one must always consider sustainability. When making this change, I had to decide whether the amount of paper I will go through is worth the benefits the students receive, and whether it compromises the sustainability of our course. Before, I was only using chalk, a chalkboard, limited paper, and notebooks we purchased for the students. I will now be going through more paper and relatively expensive toner from their copying machine. However, given that our task is to prepare these students in six weeks for an exam that will determine their ability to apply to a university, we also have to be realistic about the limitations. We are already time restricted, and are considerably limited by the materials available to us. Given our resources, I decided it would be worth it to continue printing out notes. By the end of this internship, we will have a course that comprehensively reviews the basic concepts of math, biology and physics at a 12th grade level using nothing but some basic household items, paper, a copier with toner, and a classroom.

I should have done this a while ago, but if you have any comments or additional ideas for our course or my teaching methods, please feel free to contact me at ere1@rice.edu (and forward the link to our blog to all of your friends :)). We are also constantly on the hunt for scholarships for our students, so I would truly appreciate any emails with resources you may know of.