Practice Teaching

As part of the Peace Corps training program in Lesotho, we have practice teaching. The school year ends at the end of November, so students have the option of spending the first 2 weeks of their summer vacation in school. I taught two maths classes (they call it maths vs. math) and co-taught one life skills class. We also had volunteers, trainees, staff and teachers watching us to give feedback. It was a lot of work, but a good introduction into what teaching will be like.

School in the United States and school in Lesotho are set up slightly differently. High School in Lesotho is equivalent to 7th grade to 12th grade in the US. They call grades “form” A, B, C, D, and E.  I will be teaching at a secondary school, which is only form A, B, and C. The national exams are taken after form C and form E.

The largest differences and probably one of my biggest challenges as a teacher here are the school cultures.  In order to pass to the next grade, you don’t need to pass every class, so many of the students don’t even try at maths. If you teach higher level classes and the student has failed the year prior, it makes it even harder to teach them and they end up falling more and more behind. Also, in order to pass a class, students need to get more than 50% on the tests/exams so even the students who are better at maths still have a small incentive to do well according to American standards.

The students who attended the summer school session were the students who want to come to school, who like learning, and for the most part are the best in the class. At the end of the classes, we give a final exam and award those who perform the best in the class.  During the form B exam, I caught two of my students cheating. I had to keep them after the exam to give a lecture about cheating. They both apologized and one of the students had tears in her eyes….I haven’t even started officially teaching yet and I already made a student cry!

Overall though, it was a positive experience – I feel comfortable teaching to students who barely know English, I‘ve gotten a feel for how the lesson planning and scheduling works, and I think the students still like me….