Teacher Mr. Daniel

    Monday was the last day of classes before exams at Kip Keino, and at the morning assembly the teacher who talked to the students urged them to make whatever final preparations were necessary to be as successful as possible with their exams. From class five up the exams are standardized, I think nationally, and for eighth graders how they do on the exams plays a key role in determining how good of a high school they are able to get into, something like a more determinative version of the SAT. Roger had English with the fifth graders first thing in the morning, so after the morning assembly we headed to their room, and he told me to wait in there while we went to get some papers from his room. When I entered the room, the kids were still coming and getting their things organized so I didn't have 30 kids standing to greet me in unison, but even as they put their things away and prepared for class they watched me warily. To my fascination and fright, after they had their things organized they stood next to their desks looking at me expectantly. I continued to lean on the teacher's desk quietly as the last one's put their things away and joined their comrades standing, trying to look calm and collected and like I was in control of the situation, but inwardly frantically thinking what I was supposed to do or say. When all of them were standing I greeted them, "Good morning class," to which they responded in perfect unison, "Good morning Daniel," with some of them who weren't sure of my name faltering there. "How are you this morning?" "Fine, thank you Daniel." Every response they gave to any teacher always ended with the teacher's name, and it seemed to me that some of them were uncomfortable even just calling me Daniel, worried that that wasn't respectful. I told them to take their seats, to which they replied in unison, almost mechanically, "Thank you Daniel." I asked them if they were prepared for exams, to which they in unison responded yes. I gave them some advice on preparing for exams as far as sleeping and eating, but was quickly running out of my very limited list of useful things I had to say to a class of fifth graders and was wondering where Roger was. The thought flashed through my mind that maybe Roger had left me expecting me to give them some tips on English from an American perspective, but I brushed that thought aside as nothing terribly useful came to mind and I remembered Patrick beating Heather at scrabble and wondered if these kids were more well versed in English grammar than I was, five years removed from my last grammar lesson. Now it was I who wished to disappear through the floor. I had just started into a stumbling and round about compliment to them about how impressed I was with the ability of Kenyans to speak English and Swahili so fluently, as well as learn their mother tongue, when finally Roger arrived. He started class by talking about the World Cup game from last night, which I immediately kicked myself for not thinking to talk about myself. He praised the women for playing a great game, not flopping (faking fouls when they get bumped, which if you watch very much soccer, and especially the Europeans, you will see a disgusting amount of it), not arguing with the referees, helping each other up, and also playing the game at a very high level, all of which was very true. Since it was the day before the exam they had a review lesson, going over the concepts that kids called out as being ones they were struggling with. I realized in a lot of cases that I could fix the sentence or statement that was in error, but couldn't tell you anything about what the rule or concept was of why the sentence should be that way, other than that it sounded right.

During break Roger asked me if I wanted to head out for PE with the third graders, which I said I would love to, so he pointed out the teacher who was taking them out that I should go with. I was glad to do PE as much as I could, because so far it had been my best chance to connect with the kids and have fun with them. As we headed out though, the teacher asked me what I wanted to do with them. All of a sudden I realized that both her assumption and Roger's was that I would teach the class, which formed another pit in my stomach like standing in front of the fifth grade class. I quickly came upon the idea though that I could teach them all the running warm up drills and stretching I did, and the more I thought about it I got excited because it was yet another opportunity to maybe inspire of these kids to run when they wouldn't have done so otherwise. Also, this was something I'd done before with Missoula Youth Track Club, so my confidence was building by the minute as we walked out to the small field near the dormitories. The teacher gathered the kids up and announced that I was going to be teaching the class, which seemed to me to be met with a mix of surprise and excitement and confusion. I gathered them up and did a quick explanation of what we were doing, but I wanted to get moving quickly, because this was PE class but also because if you expect third graders to pay attention to you for more than a minute while they're standing around outside you're probably going to end up pretty frustrated. I ran them through the set of warm up drills that I always do before workouts and races. They were a little bit tough to corral and keep on track and most of them weren't doing the drills quite right, but they seemed to be having a good time and were getting good exercise, and I hoped maybe remembering some of what I was teaching them. I started to show them how to stretch different muscle groups at the end, but we ran out of time, which I can't say I really had a problem with because I was just glad things had gone smoothly so far. I went back with them and stood around outside their classroom as they took off their PE shoes and headed into the room. Several of the students came up to me to shake my hand and thank me for the lesson. I wasn't sure if they were told to or if they just did because they've learned to be respectful like that but either way I was impressed that third graders were doing that on their own. I asked the teacher if I could sit in on their next class, which she said was fine and asked me if I wanted to say something to them, to which I replied that I most definitely did not want to say anything to them, just sit and watch. Their next class was Swahili, so I sat in the back of the room and watched. I'm afraid that I was a distraction for most of the class, as I saw a large number of the kids constantly turning their heads to see what I was doing. I was able to understand the grammatical aspects of the Swahili they were learning, but not the Swahili the teacher was using to explain the concepts to them. At first I thought this a little odd, but I realized it's no different than in American schools. Everyone comes to school able to speak, but teachers still have to start at the very basics when teaching proper grammar. The teacher was an energetic lady who was great at interacting with the kids. She would ask them if something was right, making sure to sometimes tell them something was right and sometimes something that was wrong to make sure they were really thinking about it. There were several times where the students started giggling a little bit when she said something wrong because it just seemed silly to them that their teacher would say the wrong thing. In my education all the way through we were drilled to raise our hand to answer a question individually, but here the norm seems to be for the whole class to answer together in unison. From when I'm greeted entering a classroom to the group poems at the talent show on Saturday to the way class is conducted, speaking in unison is done by the class regularly. In a classroom setting speaking individually seems to be the exception rather than the rule. I would imagine this gradually changes as they move through the system, but it is still there far more than it ever was for me, and I think for Americans in general. Several times she had to leave the classroom to talk with people and whenever she did she instructed the students to read the terms she had put on the board, which from what I gathered were phrases concerned with matching plural subjects with plural adjectives and singular subjects with singular adjectives, or something along those lines. Towards the end of class it seemed they were given time to work on their workbooks, at which time several kids came over to me to ask questions. I didn't want to be a distraction, but the teacher didn't seem bothered they were out of their seats so I went ahead answered all of them. They had a big world map in the room so they wanted me to point out where I live. It's been interesting seeing how familiar people are with the US when I try to describe where I live. Some don't know anything past "USA", some know the names of the states, so I can tell them Washington and Montana, but Montana isn't well known, understandably so, and Washington is often confused with Washington D.C. Very few know Seattle, but quite a few know Los Angeles and some know San Francisco. I think the most common city names I've heard that people ask me about or are familiar with are Los Angles, Chicago, and New York. With a lot of the school kids, who I figure are probably learning about the world and learning geography, I ask them if they know where the Pacific Ocean is, to which many enthusiastically say yes. I tell them that I live right next to the Pacific Ocean and right next to Canada, all the way up in the corner of the US. I don't know how much that sticks with them, but that's my best shot.

In the afternoon I headed over to small store along the road with Hayato to get a drink. The novelty of pop in glass bottles absolutely hasn't worn off and sitting there with him out in front of the store relaxing, enjoying the sun, and sipping on coke out of a glass bottle seemed to me like the kind of thing that Coca-Cola could shoot for a commercial. I was glad to have some time to talk more with him, because he seemed like a great guy but I hadn't really gotten to find out anything about him. It intrigued me that he stayed on the farm, because that meant he had his own little world out here that didn't involve much more than the school and the farm if he didn't want it to. I could see that being either wonderful and peaceful or extremely boring and I was interested to hear his thoughts on that. From he said it sounded like he found it more boring than anything, but I couldn't tell if he didn't mind it too much or if that was just his Japanese politeness masking his dissatisfaction. He said the biggest thing he was disappointed with of the whole experience was what a good school Kip Keino was. He had come on this trip because he wanted to be able to bring sports to kids who didn't have that, which definitely wasn't the case at Kip Keino. At Kip Keino he was something of an accessory, who they found work for but didn't really need. This echoed a sentiment Roger had mentioned earlier, that Hayato was "wasted here". There are many schools out here who have no PE or recreation at all, he said, which is what he really wanted to help with. He said after the break he would try to find other schools he could volunteer at, but he would have to keep volunteering at Kip Keino because that was the school his organization was partnering with. He had been here for a year and had another year to go before returning to Japan, where he said on his return he would look for a teaching job there. He had finished a four year degree to be an architect but then got a two year degree in sports education, or something along those lines, and seemed to want to do that. We talked some about Japan and America, then sauntered back over to school, stopping for a while to talk with the guard at the gate before heading back in. Maybe it's just because I don't have any responsibilities, but the pace of things here seems much more laid back than I remember elementary and middle school being.

I decided to venture down a new side road on my run, which was one I had avoided before because it seemed too crowded, but I could see the hills beyond so I suspected I could quickly get onto some wonderful dirt roads and my familiarity with the area had greatly increased to where I was confident I could find my way home just based on the lay of the land, even if I was in an unfamiliar area. My guess proved to be a good one, as I ran for maybe 10 minutes up crowded streets waving at laughing groups of children, but then suddenly I was up onto a broad dirt road along the fields that vanished into the distance. As I made my way along it, I was filled with an unbridled joy and excitement. It was probably about 5:30 so the sun was still bright but brought less heat than earlier in the day and the road gently rolled through the countryside. I remember thinking that at any point during that run you could have taken a picture of me with the road ahead of me and put it on of those inspirational posters that every high school teacher has about 10 of in their classroom that says something like, "The race is not won by the swift, but by those that keep on running." I felt like I might just burst out of my skin it was such a beautiful sight and such peaceful surroundings. On my way back a group of teenagers out in an empty field were kicking a soccer ball around and yelled and waved at me to come play with them. I was near the end of my run and there was still a decent amount of daylight left, so I headed up across the field to join them, which I think surprised them that I actually came. After basically no introductions we continued just casually kicking the ball around until a couple more guys showed up, then a couple took off their shirts and we started playing shirts vs. skins, probably about 7 on 7. For the first minute I was completely lost trying to figure out which way we were going because everyone seemed to be going everywhere. After a little bit I figured out we were basically just playing keep-away, rather than trying to score. I was grateful for the soccer background I had, but it was still far from sufficient for me to be able to keep up with these guys. I missed a couple of passes completely and was definitely the worst player out there but I wasn't totally incompetent, so it was a good time. It was fun to play with some high schoolers, since all the soccer I had played since being here had been with kids third or fourth grade or younger where I was just trying to play at whatever level would keep the team even rather than struggling to keep up with the flow of the game, so it felt good to play at a much higher level. As the sun was going down I headed out, thanking them for letting me play. They told me to come back and play tomorrow, to which I said that I wasn't sure that I could come back tomorrow but that I'd try to be back eventually. On my way back into town I noticed that coming in from this side you could clearly see the mosque near Roger's house, and it looked beautiful, especially as the sun began to set. I came back and did my running drills and strides then lay out on the grass outside watching the light fade from the sky and the stars start to come out as I stretched and listened to the evening call to prayer from the mosque. This, I thought, is how life is meant to be lived. All felt right with the world.