Teaching, for me, always has its good days and bad days. Sometimes the kids have no trouble at all with the material; sometimes, even if it's a challenging concept or activity they'll give it the ol' lyceé try. It happens. You can be probably figured out, though, this wasn't one of those days. Even though all but one class went smoothly, one section of the the 6th grade-ish level drove me to the point of inexpressible rage. I would have dramatically walked out on the class, had it not been time to leave anyway.
Though there are a few good kids mixed in, imagine roughly 70 students who have collectively assembled a mental Great Wall of China (perhaps the Palestinian wall is more accurate?) between themselves and the enemy: the English language. Nothing is too simple that they won't tell me it's too difficult; nothing is so spelled out for them that they won't scream out that they don't understand. They're already far behind the other section of their grade, but I can't seem to make any headway when 98% of the class doesn't recognize the verb "to be" and for whom the present simple tense ("I eat rice") poses too complicated a challenge. There really isn't anywhere to go from this point but to start over, again and again, like a Groundhog Day sequel from hell. Until we fix something in their brains, we can't move forward.
Today I attempted to talk to them, in Malagasy of course, to get to the bottom of the problem. What's preventing them from retaining even the most basic information? How many years will it take for them to learn the words for mother and father? How many years will it take to see "is" before you associate it with "to be?" (By the way, if you ask them to conjugate the French equivalent, être, they stand up, close their eyes, and recite "je suis, tu es, il est, nous sommes, vous être, ils sont" without pause). One girl responded: "It's hard to pronounce." A boy said "I don't know how to read English."
Sure these seem like valid and well-thought out complaints. And yes, English is hard to pronounce sometimes. But when you consider that pronunciation is never something they're graded on, none of the words we use are that complicated, and really can't be the focus of a class with 70 students, it's pretty evident that she actually just wanted to complain. Nothing about "grand-fah-ther" is stopping her from passing her (written) exam. Also, I agree with the boy that reading English probably is really difficult if you don't know any of the words. Unfortunately for his argument, I've taught and reviewed and reviewed and re-taught every word on the board.
What I really learned today is that these ids will go to any length not to learn English and that at this point are perhaps unteachable. Others, I'm sure, could get through to them but I lack the patience or desire to teach them. I'm a few failed lessons away from turning their class into a 7-month long game of Heads Up Seven Up.
