Making a Difference
Just
returned from my COS (close of service) Conference in Siavonga, Southern Province
on Lake Kariba. I had a wonderful time with
all of my intake but it’s hard to believe that there are only 2 months left in
my service. Time has never flown quicker.
I wrote the following a week ago in my village and it seems appropriate
to this moment.
When I started my Peace Corps
application over three years ago most people wanted to know why on Earth I
would want to devote two years of my life to a place in the middle of nowhere,
far from home to work with people I did not know. People told me that I would not make a
difference- there are so many problems in the world that my contribution would
be just a drop in the ocean. I would be
lying if I said that during my service I have not had similar doubts. I have had many projects start and fail for
one reason or another and I have had more than my share of self-doubt.
Over the
past two years, I have been working as a teacher. I came to Peace Corps with little
teaching experience except for a semester stint of being a teacher’s assistant
while at university. Baring a brief three months of Pre-Service Training, all
of my experience has been gained on the job. In the first few months, faced
with an unfinished school building and limited resources I was unsure of my
ability to do a good job teaching the large classes I was faced with. On top of
this, the head teacher gave me the grade 9 class to teach English. At the end
of the school year the grade nines take a test that determines whether or not
they will progress on to high school.
Faced with limited resources and training, I seriously wondered if,
instead of helping these teenagers, I was doing them a disservice.
However,
with each term my confidence grew. My students and I became more comfortable
with each other and I became more comfortable teaching. During Term three, we spent hours together three
times a week after school doing extra English, Math and Civics work to prepare
them for the exams they were taking in November 2013. The results finally came
in this week and I have never been more pleased, surprised or proud of my
students. Out of the forty students that show up to class regularly thirty-four
of them passed English, three of them with merit. Twenty-three of them received
marks high enough overall to go on to high school. To put this in perspective, before I began teaching
grade nine, the previous class had only 8 passed on to high school. This year,
in the two neighboring schools of similar size only 5 passed on to high school.
I don’t for a moment think this was
all down to me. The pupils worked so hard, asking questions during class and
prep and coming back to study in the dark classroom with flashlights and
candles long after us teachers had gone home. It’s nice to know, however, that
in some way I helped 23 students to grow and go on to high school, when maybe
otherwise, they would have not.
