Teaching 101

Quite a number of you have asked about the teaching aspects here in Sierra Leone and the truth is, we are still doing rather little of it.  Coupled with the fact that we started the term over three weeks late, and that we are currently closed through the 26th of this month for the Sierra Leone presidential election on the 17th (which could very likely extend through the first week of January if there is a run-off; which is expected), and one scheduling problem after another, I have only met three of my five assigned classes thus far.  So, what am I teaching you may ask?  Here is my schedule this semester:

• LIT 331 – American/Sierra Leone Prose (Monday and Thursday @ 8:00 a.m.)
• LIT 441 – Euro-Western Literature Seminar (Monday and Thursday @ 10:00)
• ENGLISH LANGUAGE 101 (Tuesday and Friday @ 10:00 a.m.)
• ENGLISH LANGUAGE 202 (To Be Announced—not scheduled yet)
• LIT 631 – Cross-Cultural Literary Studies (Scheduled to meet on Bo Campus Tuesdays) and
• Chairing five doctoral dissertations

I’ve never taught anything even close to these classes before but it is refreshing to dig into new material and offer a fresh perspective on their tried and true courses.  For example, after the first of the year we will be reading Pushkin’s poem “Eugene Onegin” in LIT 631 and then I’ll be showing them Tchaikovsky’s full-length opera of the same title on DVD.  That’s not something anyone on the faculty here would have conjured, for sure!

 

What other challenges are there?  Well, here is my class of first-year English students; by the way, Snake Man Musa (from last blog entry fame) is leaning forward in the front row with the white shirt. 

 

 

Every time we meet, and this is true for all my classes, it is in a different room…that’s because there are no room assignments.  It is first come, first served.  You just go to the Faculty Building and hunt for your class or set it up to have one of your students call your cell phone and tell you where they have congregated. 

 

 

In fact, this room on the fourth floor was totally empty when we arrived and, like little ants, the students, uncomplaining, went up and down the outside veranda hallway grabbing empty desks from other classrooms and dragging them in here.  Once a room is found, there is the constant problem of no chalk or erasers and the chalk boards are generally plywood painted black so they are as rough to write on as they are to erase. 

 

One thing that is very different from the U.S. is that Peace Corps hired me to be a lecturer.  At first, I just thought it was the British version for the word “professor”, but here, they MEAN for you to lecture.  I know Dave Brown is rolling his eyes…but it’s way they do it here!  I am to present material for the entire class period and the students gladly take notes the whole time.  After class, the students go back to their rooms in the hostels and assiduously study their notes in expectation of the final examination (the ONLY evaluation there is throughout the term).  The truth is, I’ve got students in my classes that I know are not officially registered for class (we haven’t been issued class lists either) but if they make payment by the end of the semester, then and only then can they sit for finals! 

 

Another unexpected snafu has been the expected difficulty of the students having no materials.  As I mentioned early in this blog, they simply cannot afford to purchase books after they’ve strained their purse strings on tuition, room, and board.  So institutionalized is this situation, we don’t even have a bookstore here on campus.  So, how do they get books?  Well, I won’t be tapping your own generous offers to donate funds across the sea.  It turns out there are underground, duplicated copies of all the books we are to teach floating around and they just magically appear when needed.  Along with the students sharing and some finding books on the internet for free, we’ll just have to see how this plays out as the term unfolds but so far, it’s working!