Notes from SKO: Teacher Chronicles, Part One

I’ve just completed my second week teaching the English Language to Junior Secondary School Class 3 (JSS 3) students at Government Day Secondary School, Gidan Dare, Sokoto North LGA.

I’m responsible for about 60 students and my performance may determine whether they’ll pass or flunk the English Language test in their Junior West African Examibation Council (WAEC) exams.

I’ve spent the majority of the first two weeks assessing my students' proficiency in the reading, writing, and speaking of the English Language.

The first thing I did was ask them the topics that they had covered in the last term. They told me that they had learned parts of speech, types of intonation, reading for speed, and reading critically.

I then proceeded to use the first comprehension passage in Junior English Project for Secondary Schools (Students' Book 3, UBE Edition) to assess their proficiency.

At the end of the first week, I also gave them a weekend take-home assignment to see how they would do with questions that required them to generate English sentences that described their homes and neighborhoods.

I later realized that I was generating useful analytics on my students' English proficiency. I can tell you who the star students are and who the slackers are. I can even tell you which percentage of the male and female students are in serious need of work.

Also, in order to demonstrate that I am serious and motivate them to participate and do better, I’ve started rewarding top-scorers on weekend assignments with snacks and I’ll be tracking all of them to see who makes the most improvement.

In the first two weeks, I have learned several important lessons.

First: I kind of like teaching. I'm not at the point where I feel totally comfortable speaking to the entire class, but I enjoy the students' energy when they engage with the material and they support each other with responding to my questions and challenges.

Second: I've learned that many of my students have serious gaps in their grasp of the English Language and it's probably because they managed to fly under the radar in their large class. It's hard to get to all 60 students in a single session.

Third: I've learned that I need to throw in a little Hausa in order to add clarity to my questions abd explanations. It's an English class, but if your students don't understand you, you're going nowhere fast.

Fourth: I've learned that I'm probably going to set aside a portion of my monthly allowance to spend on educational materials. They don't have personal copies of the textbook, so I'm probably going to start making handouts. I also have to pay for the prizes I'll be giving out weekly or biweekly.

Fifth: I've learned I'm bad at disciplining students. I'm not a fan of beating students with a cane or whip and I'm also not a fan of yelling, so my class has been rowdy so far. I'm currently formulating a disciplinary scheme that involves making zero physical contact with my students, but ensures that they're well-behaved. I can tell you it involves outsourced corporal punishment for extreme cases and healthy doses of embarrassment, the bane of every adolescent.

This teaching gig really makes me appreciate the fact that I’ve been really blessed with a quality education - until college I’d never been in a class of more than 33 students.

It's also an excellent opportunity to test out teaching strategies I wished teachers had used on me in secondary and primary school, and to improve my own teaching techniques for future opportunities.

I'll keep you updated on how it all goes.