End of Stage

Wednesday afternoon art club at Model School

Last week we had the closing ceremony of Model School, and the swearing-in ceremony in which all of us trainees will become official Peace Corps volunteers is this Friday. At the closing ceremony yesterday, I gave a speech on behalf of the education trainees (in French…) in which I talked about what we learned from our experiences teaching at Model School, and how it helped us prepare for the next two years teaching in Cameroonian classrooms throughout the country. There were some fun times, like playing Jeopardy with my students to review Excel and types of networks, and some less fun times, like writing and grading exams and filling report cards. Model school really was a great way to prepare the education volunteers for the upcoming school year. It is a real school, with real classrooms full of students and real report cards, but we have the support of our trainers and model teachers while we learn how the Cameroonian education system works. It’s an ongoing exchange of ideas, where we share some of our teaching techniques with them, such as activities and ways to involve the students in active learning, and they share their techniques for effective classroom management and cultural norms that we as teachers must abide by, in order to gain the respect of our students and be effective.

My 4eme class wins the award for rowdiest students, while my 1ere class (the equivalent of about 11th grade) gets special recognition for asking me for bonbons every single day. I finally gave them cookies on the last day because they all passed their Informatique exam–which means it was too easy because according to the standard here, about half of the class is supposed to fail. I had to curve the 4eme exam to get half the class to pass though, so that one was too hard. We’ll get them right eventually.

It’s exciting and a little unreal that training (a.k.a. stage) is almost over and soon we will say goodbye to our host families and move to post! We’re in Younde for a few days to do banking and admin, but also to indulge in some big city treats like pizza and milkshakes! Very expensive, but so worth it.