beyond frustrated.

Looking at my most recent post (March 8, 2011) kind of makes me laugh, and is also kind of upsetting. I ramble on about how great my learners are and now they have turned into my biggest source of frustration. I've gone through a lot of frustration while being in Namibia. Ranging from no water to language barriers to an education system that leaves much to be desired as well as classroom management. But these days the one that makes the top of the list is classroom management. I'm going over and over in my head what was different prior to term 2 that made my classes so much easier to bare, even if they were a little out of control at times, and I haven't really come up with an easy answer.

It's mostly grade 5. More often than not I am content with grade 6 (and yet even they are worse than last term). But grade 5 has become a pack of monsters. I can't even find them cute anymore. Their lack of respect and zero desire to learn leaves me exhausted and angry at the end of the day. Perhaps it's this particular group of learners. Because hey, I taught two grade 5 classes last year and they weren't nearly as bad, and I've also received complaints from other teachers about this particular class. (Grade 5 is divided into 3 classes, 5A, 5B, and 5C. I teach English to grade 5C and computer literacy to all grade 5 classes.)

Problems range from learners constantly getting out of their seats, never bringing pens, losing their workbooks, stealing, fighting, shouting, writing in textbooks, ripping pages out of story books, not doing homework, etc. It leaves very little time for teaching when all I'm focusing on is getting them to just sit down and listen and do their work. I've tried different kinds of classroom management. I used to give rewards to groups that behaved the best and earned the most stars on their star chart, I've given punishments to learners acting out (writing, changing seats, forced to leave the classroom, and a visit to the principals office) and none of that really works. Sometimes it will help them behave for the rest of the class period but by the next day they are back to normal. I reached out for help to my superiors at school. They came to my class, had me point out the misbehaving learners, took them to their classroom as if they were going to have a talk, and proceeded to beat them. Made me feel like a really good person (note the sarcasm). Teachers claim this is the only thing that works but even that's not true. The kids might shut up completely for the remainder of the day but then they are back at it the next day. And with one learner it even made the problem worse because he returned to class and for the next few days all he did was complain about how angry he was that he was beaten and how he wasn't going to do any of his work.

So. School has not been going so well for Miss Bennett these past few weeks. I have a week long break coming in two weeks which is not soon enough and I am only hoping I will return to school feeling refreshed and ready to finish the term.

Aside from that things are going great! I am in the process of making post-PC plans. The immediate plans include World Tour 2011, which will be 3 months of traveling with two fellow PCVs. Thus far our plans include traveling up through a few countries in Africa; potentially Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia. Then proceeding by plane to India, Thailand, Bali and the Philippines. As plans get finalized I'll be sure to post.

But for now, I'm just going to dread the coming school day and hope I make it through alive.