The Smell of a First Grade Class

The smell of a first grade class – all chalk, freshly sharpened pencils and paper straight from the mill. The excitement of knowledge, learning, activity, language, numbers, maps, rulers. Desks to organize, pencil boxes to fill, sharpeners to hold just so, crayons to line up just in the color order you want.

Do you remember first grade? The sights and smells of Christ Aid Academy are just a bit different. While there is paper, pencils and sharpeners, the dominating scent of the room is possibly the musty, wet dirt on the floor, whatever the breeze is bringing through the room – possibly the cow passing by the window, the scent of falling rain - or the odor of unwashed bodies and clothes. Pupils huddled together four to a desk, no space to claim for your own, everything is shared except your student exercise book. Groups of 8 to 10 cluster themselves around a few textbooks, each student hoping to get the best view of the day’s lesson. Students write with pencil nubs, bent over their books with intensity as they copy from the board. One student pauses, takes out a razor blade from her bag, and begins to whittle her pencil to a sharpened point.

No one possesses a writing utensil with color to it – no crayons, no colored pencils, no markers. All work is in black and white – there are no worksheets to write on, no pages to color – there is no copier and no copier paper. The most colorful part of their work is the pale blue cover of their student exercise book. There are no textbooks where blue and red jump off the page at you to stimulate your thought and hold your attention. Chalk is white because Fort Portal bookstores have no colored chalk. There is no homework because there is nothing to take home.

But they are learning – they are spelling and counting, adding and multiplying, writing and reading. They sit with great discipline at their desks, some dressed in uniforms, others in rags and barefooted, most attentive and bright-eyed, hands shooting into the air to be picked to answer. This Sunday we have a parent meeting to discuss school issues of fees, uniforms, next year, growth, changes. The P1 students are copying a letter to their parents – in the process they are learning pronunciation, reading, spelling, and writing. Their charge? Copy the letter in your student book, take home to your family or guardian, and read the letter of invitation to them. The end product the proof that they have learned to spell, read, write and pronounce correctly…all in Rutooro…because the parents cannot read or understand English.

The teachers work diligently to pass on knowledge – all without the instruments of modern education. If the lesson or the teacher does not hold the attention of the class, there is no recourse to videos, computers, learning stations, calculators, flash cards. The classrooms at Christ Aid Academy have posters created by the teachers – large pieces of construction paper with the alphabet, words in English, multiplication tables…and a blackboard. The knowledge being shared is the same universally…the pace is a little different without resources and the ability to send work home.

Recess brings activity and snack – but snack only if they carry a plastic carton filled with a banana or chapatti. Some homes care, some do not. Some homes can send, others cannot. Some students eat, others do not. We are working on a program for next year to supply at least one nutritious snack/meal during the school day. Whether they eat or not, each student finds a place at self-proclaimed activity centers – soccer matches where students run through fields where cows have just enjoyed lunch and other activities, jump rope, drums, singing and dancing. There is no adult supervision – according to the headmaster, they know their limits. I have joked with him that the police would come take him to jail in the United States if he weren’t out on the playground area overseeing to be sure no one was hurt, stolen, or lazy.

A return to the classroom brings more lessons with teachers drilling students with numbers and words. Repetition and memorization dominate this educational process – and we acknowledge that these are important – but we have seen very little room left for creative or individual thinking. With a classroom of 50-60 pupils, we assume there is not enough time to address an original thought that deviates from the plan for the masses. We are beginning to wonder how much talent is left untapped in Africa…who will never know they could solve an international crisis, who will not become the leader of a spiritual community, who will not know they could be an Olympic athlete?

But the flip side brings hope – which child in the village of Kicuna will find out they are a talented orator who can inspire their people to great accomplishments? Will Amos discover he can manipulate numbers to solve problems of energy and technology? Which young boy will see the simple glimmer of hope to be able to provide a future for a family? Will Dauphin want to learn to heal the sick who dominate a culture ruled by disease?

We are an odd mix here at Christ Aid Academy…educated teachers pulling and straining like little tug boats churning in the water to pull the big vessel out of the chains of the dock to the freedom of the open sea, trying to get a community to break free from past bondage in ignorance to the wide open opportunity of education. Parents who need to go to market and will keep their students home at the drop of a hat to feed the chickens, tend the goats, or watch guard over the family garden. And Americans who are the product of decades of commitment to the passing on of knowledge and Godly principles which sustain a nation. Certainly they must look at us with puzzlement as they listen to our pleas for commitment to the school. Heaven knows we try to hide our bewilderment when we see they don’t understand…