Teach English in Beiyuan Zhen - Weinan Shi

Teaching in this essay, refers to educating students on skills, methods and techniques of various subject matters, Joseph Campbell states ‘’The job of an educator is to teach students to see vitality in themselves’’. As a teacher, the impact on students extends farther than the classroom. Teaching is a skill that can't be acquired in a day or in a month or in a year, it is constant and never ending. No matter the level of learners being taught teachers inspire, educate and change their lives for the better by adding knowledge in any shape or form. Teaching brings out so much in an individual from how to communicate effectively, engage properly, handle tough situations and how to organize things. In Nigeria, after a young individual graduates from the university, they are required to undergo a mandatory ''National Youth Service Corps’’, the idea is to interact with other individuals from different ethnicity and states. As an individual, you are posted to a different state where you are not originally from and which must be a governmental institution. In the year 2016, I was posted to a community secondary school in Suleja Niger state which can be said to be a rural area. The role was to teach Mathematics and Physics to grade 9 and 10 which proved more difficult than expected. Teaching in a third world country was very tough due to a lack of infrastructures, resources, lack of structure and lack of motivation by the staff and students. The community secondary school had nothing, no library, no cafeteria, no facilities or amenities. The school had a medium sized building with over 20 classrooms enough outdoor space to fit in a recreational activity but there was nothing on it apart from a black board, few desks, chairs and tattered roofs in most classrooms. The attitude of the principal and teachers were very lax and nobody cared because there was a culture of ‘we are not being paid enough to care’. Some teachers never stepped out of the staff room to teach, they stay there all day and do whatever suits them. As a temporary teacher, the guidance received from other staff members were “do what you can and leave”. There was a discouraging atmosphere looming everywhere, things were bad and they were not going to get any better. This was the entire attitude for the whole year I was present there. In terms of education, students come to school only because they were forced or had nothing else to do at home and the belief is that they have nothing to gain from it by being there. The struggle to get them to care about what was being taught was surreal; it was hard for them to understand subject matters because most of them had different coping methods and some were too far behind on the syllabus. How do you motivate a group of students who haven't had breakfast or dinner from the previous night? How do you get students to care about subject matters when they can't even imagine a future for themselves? How do teach a group of students you know won't turn up for the next few months or even turn up until the term ends? How do you teach a group of students who haven't had a Math teacher in 6 months and where do you start from? These were questions I was faced with during my one year of teaching. Students come to school in the morning and leave because they have to take care of their parent’s store or shop; some students don’t show up until 2 pm because they were stuck on the farm. Attendance was always low due to certain economic barriers and socio-cultural norms. Attending school I imagined for the students was more of an afterthought than an actual frontier. Regardless of it all, I was present at classes and taught math and physics showed up everyday even when I was scheduled for three out of five days, I tried to make classes as fun as possible and also encouraged students to come to me with personal problems. What was needed was for the students to have a positive experience despite all the chaos taking place in an environment that was supposed to be their safe haven. According to UNICEF, one in every five of the world’s out-of-school children is in Nigeria. There are no rights protecting out of school children, hence parents are allowed to do whatever they want with their children. In a third world country, a child's level of education can only be as good as the parent or the government wants it to be. Improving teaching and education in areas like these include implementing proper laws to ensure underage kids are mandated to go to school until graduation from a secondary school, proper structure and more resources needs to be provided; from free breakfast meals to an accessible library. Also, limiting the number of government/community schools in that area, and focusing all resources on one or two schools, this would make it more centralized rather than dispersed. More adequate mandatory training should also be provided to public school teachers who I believe are really not qualified and are in it just to make a living. Overall, my personal teaching experience was sad, discouraging and had a lot to do with lack of infrastructures and resources rather than proper experience. REFERENCES https://teach.com/what/ https://www.unicef.org/nigeria/education