Education in Mboula

"There is nothing more important than learning to think- except learning to teach someone to think"

Nanci Bell

So I just wanted to take some time and tell you all about my little wonderful elementary school in Mboula, that I have been working so closely with this past year. As my service is rapidly coming to a close, I have been reflecting a lot on the work (or attempted work) I have done these past two years. For me, the most rewarding work I have done is with the students and teachers at L’Ecole Elementaire El Hadji Abdoulaye Mbengue. From educational nutritional talks to planting sunflowers, my collaboration with the teachers and students of Mboula has been memorable to say the least.

 I can still remember the first time I visited the school. It was around 11 am; the teachers were sitting around each other in a circle drinking tea, the children were running around the school, wrestling and dancing like they were high on sugar. As soon as the kids saw me, they rushed at me screaming “Toubab”. I had about 60-70 kids all around me, touching, staring and grabbing at me until one of the teachers came screaming and chased them off with a stick. I thought to myself “Oh god what have I got myself into.” A lot has changed since then. I now can understand what the teachers are saying to me and often join in on their tea breaks at 11am. The kids call me “Fatou” rather than “Toubab” and I have gained many little friends. I have been very fortunate to have very friendly, motivated and enthusiastic teachers who have always supported me and my work. I have also come to love the majority of students in Mboula (there still are some that drive me bonkers) and appreciate them for embracing me as I am, even if I am a strange “Toubab”.

L’Ecole Elementaire El Hadji Abdoulaye Mbengue is what they call a Franco/Arabic school. The students learn all their subjects in French and Arabic. A normal school day starts at 8am and the teachers will have a strict lesson plan lined up for the students with an objective they must obtain. Straying from the lesson plans is not tolerated. There is no room for outside of the box ways for presenting a lesson plan. Creativity is very limited.  At 11am, the students get a little 30-minute break to run home and grab some food to eat. A lot of women in the village will come and sell the children beignets, fatayas, roasted peanuts and cold bissap juice. After the break, the students will switch to either learning their lessons in French or Arabic. I think it is so impressive that these students learn different languages at such a young age. I really wish I had that when I was in elementary school.  School is normally over at 1:30, right in time for the kids to make it home for lunch. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the students have afternoon class from 4-6pm and normally are fed lunch at the school.

There is a total of 6 classrooms at the school in Mboula. It is just like elementary school in America- kindergarten to fifth grade. There is a classroom for each grade level. However, the classrooms look like they are crumbling apart; there are no fans (and during hot season the classrooms are unbearable), and the desks are wooden benches ( I have no clue how the children sit in those seats for hours). Here teachers do the best they can with what they  have and a lot of times that means overcrowded classrooms, not enough qualified teachers, teacher strikes because they haven’t been paid, worn out school books that are outdated, and not enough utensils for the students to use. And yet students and teachers both show up each day ready to learn and teach.

The students here are taught in a very formatted way. A teacher will write the lesson on the board and the students are expected to copy word for word what was written. Students will then go home and spend hours memorizing what they wrote down in their notebooks. It seems like such an outdated and backwards way of learning, but unfortunately teachers and students are not aware of the different ways in which people learn. Students here must conform to the ways the teacher teaches, which is just  memorizing lesson plan after lesson plan. Some students are great at memorizing, while others struggle to learn with that method, in which case they are kind of shit out of luck and left behind. It is hard to imagine how any child  learns in this kind of environment where teachers are not attuned to  their students’ needs. If there is a child who is struggling with assignments, there is no one to reach out and help. There is no alone-time with a teacher to help a student better understand a lesson plan. The students who are most in need of a little extra attention are often times the ones who are cast off to the side. 

Students are not taught to think for themselves but instead are taught right or wrong. This is the way something is and nothing else. It is a system of yes and no answers. There is no room for debate or to ask questions of why. I have rarely ever seen a child raise their hand and ask a teacher “but why”. In fact, most students in class don’t raise their hands at all to ask questions for fear of being ridiculed by classmates (being called stupid for not understanding). However they will always (and are very much expected) to  raise their hands when a teacher asks them a question, even if they do not know the answer; which unfortunately sometimes can result in that child getting his/her hand slapped with a strip of rubber multiple times.

Yes, corporal punishment is allowed here and boy do they use it. Each time I am at the school I see numerous children getting hit for various reasons: talking, not answering the question and even getting the answer incorrect.  There was this one occasion where Fae and I were painting the map of Africa in one of the classrooms during an Arabic class. For some reason that I do not know of, the teacher in the classroom (who is generally a really nice and great guy) took his strip of rubber and started to hit these two girls hands really, really hard multiple times to the point that both girls started to hysterically cry. He then made them stand in front of the classroom, in front of their peers until they stopped crying. It just seemed so unnecessary and cruel.

I do not believe in corporal punishment and it kills me sometimes to see the teachers hit their students, but unfortunately that is how teachers here gain discipline and respect. It very much is an environment that feeds off negativity, but then again that is really how Senegalese culture is. There are no encouraging words or positive reinforcement from teachers or parents. Students don’t have someone cheering them on in their corner saying “Well done” or “Good try”.  However, people here have no problem pointing out your flaws. Parents or teachers are quick to call out if a student is “stupid” or (as they like to phrase it) “has no usefulness.” It is phrases like these that students hear on a daily basis. A student who is not making the grades and passing on to the next grade level will not get any extra encouragement or help, but instead will most likely be pulled out of school by his/her parents and put to work in the fields or some other technical work. Why would parents spend money on a child who is apparently not smart enough to go to school? Obviously it was not God’s will for that child to learn. They have no one to believe in them but themselves. I think it is commendable that under such conditions, children even show up to school. Even though the teachers in the school are great and positive people, they don’t encourage their students the way that teachers in the U.S. do; and I think that that makes a big difference.

I remember when I was in school, all of my classrooms were decorated in brightly colored arts and crafts projects and pretty educational visual aids that lined the classroom walls. There was always an endless supply of pencils, pens, glue, erasers, crayons, markers, paper, scissors and staples. Teachers always had fun interactive lesson plans and all the resources needed for those plans.  I can remember having a world culture day at school in which my Mom cooked her Indian Curry for all the children to try just so they could get a taste of a different culture. In second grade, my teacher Mrs. Sivennen, had us read about seven different versions of the Cinderella story from all over the world, and then she recreated our classroom into Cinderella’s Ball. All of the girls brought their dads as dates and all the boys brought their mothers. I can still remember waltzing with my Dad in one of my flower girl dresses and feeling like a princess that day!

We had it all in school- the books, the supplies, the fancy classrooms, the qualified and inspiring teachers, not to mention all the afterschool programs . There were so many afterschool clubs and teams that you could participate in. I remember being on the basketball team, track team, Spanish club, chorus and video production. I even participated in one of the school plays. I was a singing flower in the background. Everything imaginable was at the tips of our fingers. Education was so available for us. With that being said, and with the time that I have spent working with this elementary school in Mboula, I can’t help but feel  like I took my education for granted. I think of all the wonderful opportunities I had right at my fingertips and I don’t think I ever truly appreciated them until now. I still remember all the countless mornings my parents had to force me to get up and go to school. All the wasted temper-tantrums and fake sick attempts I tried, just to get out of going to school all seems so ridiculous and pointless now. Having seen how few opportunities there are for children in Senegal, it seems silly for children in America to go to such lengths just to get out of all the amazing opportunities that are provided for them at school.

At the elementary school in Mboula, there are no classroom decorations or pretty educational visual aids hung around the classroom walls. The classrooms don’t have an endless supply of pencils, pens, markers, glue, crayons or glue. There are no art classes for kids to participate in or school plays, or after school clubs or sports teams for them. Besides, the only sports team they can really participate in anyways is soccer; it would be pretty hard for them to play basketball in the sand. I think the most interactive and fun the students have had is when Fae and I organized a school relay day in which we set up relay races for the kids to participate in. And yet everyone is content. Teachers and students are grateful and appreciative of what little they do have. My teachers have never asked anything of me. They have had plenty of opportunities to ask for things like “Fatou, give us some supplies,” or “Fatou, build us new classrooms.”  But I think that is one of the main reasons I have really been motivated and enjoyed working with them -because they don’t expect anything.

Some of the work I have done with the school in Photos

School Correspondance             The kids wrote letters in french to my old highschool, South Fork back in Florida, talking about their lives in Senegal. They also received letters from students back home (Thanks a geat deal to Mrs.Ralicki for helping to make it happen)

Sun Flower planting at the school.

Educational Maps in each of the 6 classrooms

Educational discussions: Handwashing/ Diarrhea and Nutrition

My Wonderful School: L'Ecole Elemenataire El Hadji Abdoulaye Mbengue

and it's amazing teachers...