Poetry in motion

Poetry in Motion

After my success with reading Holes to the Grade 12 learners, I was looking for something I could share with the Grade 11 classes that I only teach once a week. We had been talking about ideas of culture; for many of the students, culture consists to a great extent of traditions. Traditions are vivid and palpable for the learners in this very “multi-cultural” school, exemplified virtually every minute of every day by the palette of languages they switch between to communicate with each other. We’d had some discussions about whether traditions were the territory of elders and grandparents (on the whole, yes), and whether culture was static (after some discussion, maybe not.)

I had been reading my Mother’s Day gift from Sayce, Tony, and Petey – Billy Collins’ book of poetry entitled horoscopes for the dead - and for some reason this poem somehow struck me as a possibility for the Grade 11’s:

Simple Arithmetic

I spend a little time nearly every day

on a gray wooden dock

on the edge of a wide lake, thinly curtained by reeds.

And if there is nothing on my mind

but the motion of the wavelets

and the high shape-shifting of the clouds,

I look out at the whole picture

and divide the scene into what was here

five hundred years ago and what was not.

Then I subtract all that was not here

and multiply everything that was by ten,

so when my calculations are complete,

all that remains is water and sky,

the dry sound of wind in the reeds,

and the unflappable heron on the shore.

All the houses are gone, and the boats

as well as the hedges and the walls,

and the curving brick paths, and the distant siren.

The plane crossing the sky is no more

and the same goes for the swimming pools,

and the furniture and the pastel umbrellas on the decks,

And the binoculars around my neck are also gone,

and so is the little painted dock itself –

according to my figuring –

and gone are my notebook and my pencil

and there I go, too

erased by my own eraser and blown like shavings off the page.

The students seemed fascinated by the novelty of an entire book of poems, especially one that seems to be talking about predictions (one of our “prefix” words) for dead people. But as I start to read, even the little shufflings and chair-scrapings that perpetually populate the room cease, and I realize that virtually every eye is following me as I slowly walk the room, pronouncing each line very deliberately. When I finish, the silence continues and I have a moment of panic. This is a almost unprecedented – silence doesn’t come easily to these students. Were there too many words or images they didn’t understand? Have I offended somehow? Did it just bore them into somnolence??

But then hands start to inch into the air. This, too, is unprecedented – raising hands to be acknowledged, while a skill encouraged by the Namibian teachers, seems to be an awkward motion to many. When I point at Saul and nod, he rises slowly and says, “Miss, would you read it again?” As I smile in relief and signal “yes,” all of the other hands subside - I can’t help but think “ like the motion of the wavelets.”

This time they look eager, some even leaning towards me and turning as I move around the room. When I finish, I put a few words on the board.

We talk, first, about the things they know – the dry sounds of wind in the reeds (there are many at the Omaruru riverside), how clouds shift their shapes, about subtracting and multiplying and dividing, about hedges and, of course, about sirens.

Then we talk about how reeds can “curtain” something, about docks and herons (they love me standing on one leg), and try to find examples, in a room full of uniform navy and white and grey, of what colors “pastel” could possibly be (mostly on me.)

Now they are nodding and talking to each other, some even writing down a word or two in exercise books. I start to say “Should I….” and before I even finish, there is a loud chorus of “Yes, Miss!”

As I read this time they are clearly with me; a few have their eyes closed, several look at the blackboard as I say something we’ve talked about, and some are murmuring a word or two with me as I come to a line they remember. This time, when I get to the last lines about erasing, I mime writing with a pencil and blowing the eraser dust off the page.

When I look up, they are all looking at me expectantly. Expecting what, I have no idea – maybe to read it yet again. Sakaria raises his hand and says, “Miss, you must write this for me.” (The “you must” construction in Namibian English is really more equivalent to “would you please” and we have had to get used to the imperative from these requests seem to take.) Knowing that the end-of-period bell is about to sound, I promise to make copies for all, but ask them to write a “response” before they go.

The students seem completely puzzled by my request. I’m internally guessing that “response” is probably familiar to them as an answer to a “letter of complaint,” which they have been working on as one of their writing tasks for upcoming exams. Their enthusiasm has been replaced by questioning looks. Anxious not to lose the momentum we seemed to have built, I write a few prompts on the board: “When I heard this poem, I felt….” Or “The poem “Simple Arithmetic” made me think….”

Here are some of their reactions:

“I feel very good and somehow bad when I am reading this poem. Bad because the tradition is fading away and the men as well.

"When I hear the poem “Simple Arithmetic” I think of how perfect it was in the past. The silent and natural sounds of life, the wide open space on the land. I feel like being there without any noise and disturpence. "

"I feel so happy after listening to this wonder poem. I am one person who does not like poems but I loved this one. Especially the part “the plane crossing the sky is not more and the same goes for the swimming pools, the furniture and the pastel umbrellas.”

"The poem “Simple Arithmetic” made me feel empty because the words used are very lonely which take all the attention of a person. You mood, it even describe the nice sentences."

"This poem just draws my attention nearer. I even like this part “erased by my own eraser and blown like shavings off the page.”

"This poem makes me think about home, how I would be living without the intervision of my tradition, without having to worry about eating from a pot, sweeping out the house at night or having to marry without notification of my elders.”

"When I hear this poem I feel like in that person. The person takes all my attention just having the words said if there is nothing on my mind but the motion of the wavelets and the high shape shifting of the clouds. And the last paragraph of the poem is more heart-broken, it’s a great poem I ever hear. "

I wish I could write a poem to Billy Collins and tell him what a profound effect he had on this group of Namibian students.

Teaching and Learning at S.I. !Gobs

S.I !Gobs, Chapter 3

So, what is it like in an “English second language” classroom at S.I. (or “Samuel Immanuel” as some kids have told me) !Gobs Senior Secondary School? Let me try to give you a picture.

The kids “queue” up outside, standing below the level of the walkway in a paved space between two classroom buildings that face each other. Girls and boys stand separately and, by convention, the girls are usually allowed to enter first. A colleague at another school was reprimanded when she let the boys enter first one day, but our school doesn’t seem too hidebound about that particular convention. The classrooms have heavy metal doors that are locked with a variety of locks which provide some level of amusement, as keys are continually lost, and learners are often sent to transfer sets of keys from one teacher to another. One day when the key to our classroom couldn’t be found, one of the boys gave the lock a good chop and it broke right off. Consequently I don’t leave anything of value in the classroom, even when it is locked.

The students, again by convention, stand behind their chairs and wait to be greeted by the teacher before they sit. I usually say “Good morning, 9A” or whatever the class section is; they are delighted when I use Japanese instead – I’ve taught most of them some rudimentary greetings. Since almost without exception the learners speak at least three languages, pronouncing Japanese comes spectacularly easily to them. They sit, making an abominable racket because the legs of the chairs are metal and the floors are concrete. I won’t miss that particular shriek when our time here is done – or, maybe I will. They chat like most teenagers do, although they know that I want them to quiet quickly. Sometimes I enlist the class captain to help me calm them, but usually putting my hands over my ears gets the message across. If I want to sound like my Namibian colleagues, I shout “silence!!”

To help me, I’ve had them make little “tent” nametags out of folded index cards, using the foam letters and markers that friends in the U.S. helped me collect pre-departure. This was a very popular activity, and they don’t have any sense that it is babyish or beneath their station as high school students. Today the teacher I work with said that he feels bad because I know the names of more of the students than he does – it is fairly typical for the teachers not to call on students by name, although some certainly do. (Women teachers seem more prone to knowing students’ names than male colleagues do.) They will point, or address them as “brother” or “sister,” but there is not much of a convention of raising hands and waiting to be called on. Thus students who don’t want to participate are usually easily able to stay “camouflaged,” and they can be a little nonplussed when I call on them unannounced. Even with the nametags, when I see the students outside the classroom, especially after they have changed clothes for Afternoon Study, I can be counfounded all over again about who is Ndilimeke and who is Annastancia. (One of my students was delighted to know that her name, Imakulata, is the name of the university where I teach; another boy, Erickson, shares Petey’s nickname, although not the exact spelling.)

The students have a textbook series called “English for All for Namibia” which is actually quite good. In the first couple of chapters for Grade 9, they address such things as bullying, civil rights, heroes and heroines, and, as those of you involved in our e-mail project know, families, sometimes nuclear but more often infinitely extended. The book offers lots of graphic organizers (so popular with US teachers) as well as plenty of opportunities for self-assessment. This was something that seems difficult for the kids. Although they write very candidly (about teachers, school, their families) in their exercise books, and I have read about accidents, drinking, beatings and even a rape and murder – they don’t seem comfortable with evaluating either themselves or their peers orally.

The biggest obstacle, however, is that the learners don’t seem to have mastered the skills necessary to understand the information in the appropriate grade’s curriculum. Just recently in the newspaper, there was an account of a conference held in Namibia where speakers were decrying the lack of competent teachers of English in Namibia, and saying that this accounts for their lack of progress in the world. There are a couple of things wrong with this argument. First, the teachers of English, at least the ones that I have seen, are not unqualified. Unlike Japan, where the lack of native speakers of English really presents a problem, Namibia has many people who are quite capable of teaching English IN English. (In fact, they are supposed to be teaching all subjects in English, so in many senses, the English courses might be considered easier than, say, agriculture or entrepreneurship (also a required course!)

Secondly, although as WorldTeach volunteers, many of us are enlisted to teach English, we are augmenting the regular teachers, not providing something that otherwise doesn’t exist. I think the truly multicultural nature of Namibia, and the facility with multiple languages here, is what keeps the “numbers issue” (of teachers, anyway) from being the biggest problem.

From my perspective, it is systemic issues that prevent really effective teaching of English. First, the class periods are only 40 minutes long. By the time you get the learners into the classroom and settled, you realistically have, at most, 35 minutes; if you have any “housekeeping details” (a terms I’ve taught most of my classes) you have even less. This means that you have to parcel your teaching into really short segments and, if you want the students to write regularly, the assignments have to be quite brief – otherwise you can’t possibly review them during the class the next day without taking the entire class period to do so. Class periods are also truncated or interrupted for innumerable reasons; colleagues don’t hesitate, as one did recently, to stop in to ask a favor (“would you edit this letter to the Ministry of Education for me”) or summon a student for any number of purposes. Today a colleague kept my students in her class for about 10 extra minutes, because she had started a video and wanted them to be able to see it through to the end.

As I might have intimated in a previous entry, planning can be a real (pardon my, well, not French) crap shoot. Trying to keep a group of Grade 9 learners on generally the same schedule is well-nigh impossible. So you end up with some classes that have had more time on a particular topic than others, and you just have to keep going. Just as in the United States, there is a great deal of pressure to “cover the syllabus,” often at the expense of all the learners understanding the content.

Then there is the issue of homework and the exercise books. Just last week my Namibian English teaching colleague told he had adopted the “American style” – meaning that he is buying lined paper and having students write homework on that instead of in their exercise books. This eliminates the need to carry stacks (when you have 37 they are almost exactly 2 feet high) of exercise books to and from your apartment or, alternatively, to walk up to the classroom buildings in the evening to mark books. The management of when you have which class’s exercise books is in exercise in itself. If you don’t give them back the very next day, the learners have nothing to write in!

Students are not expected to provide supplies of lined paper – they do buy (or, sometimes, the school provide for students who can’t afford them) the exercise books, but once those supplies are procured there really is no expectation that students will continue to replenish things as the term wears on. Students are generally expected to write in pen, and woe if anyone should take another’s pen – high treason. Thus, although there is a fair bit of candy-wrapper litter papering the “campus,” you rarely see a pen (a working one, that is) orphaned on the sidewalks. Even cheap “Bic sticks” are carefully kept track of here.

Students will share pens (and protractors, calculators, etc.) if necessary – alternating writing and waiting, and they will also ask the teacher (if you are perceived as a “soft touch” as most Americans seem to be) to “lend” one, as in “Miss, are you having a pen for me?” or “You must borrow me a pen, Miss.” Although this sounds a bit peremptory to our ears, this is “Namlish” (Namibia English) for “Do you have a pen I can borrow, Miss?” As noted above, however, you are quite likely not to get back anything you “lend” – this is more or less expected.

Last and certainly not least, there is the issue of class size. None of my classes has less than 35 learners, and as I might have mentioned before, there are almost never enough desks for all the students, and sometimes not even enough chairs. Not only are there a lot of them, but the students range in age from 14 to 21 in one of my Grade 9 classes. The older ones are not necessarily more mature, nor can you expect that they have had more schooling. Sometimes they have failed previous year’s exams, sometimes they have missed school for myriad reasons, but you almost always have a range of backgrounds and achievement levels that would confound most teachers in the US, and with so many in so little time, you constantly worry that you are not addressing someone’s need.

Lest anyone think this is a giant rant, it’s just meant to give you some context. It’s a good think we’re here for two months; any shorter and we would not have been able to figure out how to address these things. As it is, I feel like I have a far better handle on how to work things. I may just have to come back to put all my new-found epiphanies into practice!