“You’re not dodging only your marks eh, you’re dodging your life. This is your life.”

Week 5 marked yet another disruption in my ill-fated class schedule. Surprisingly, this was one of my most enjoyable days since I’ve been at site.

It all began on Wednesday afternoon when I noticed a handwritten bulletin announcing a “Staff Meeting” on Thursday. “Please attend as the matters to be discussed are important”, the note read. There was no time mentioned, only the day.

Naturally I went to school on Thursday knowing that this meeting was supposed to occur sometime on this day. I got caught up teaching two double sessions of math and physics that morning and come midday that meeting was one of the last things on my mind.

Around 12:20 in the afternoon, one of my colleagues informed me that the meeting was about to begin and that I should head into the staff room immediately. From my short time in Uganda I know that nothing begins immediately when they say it is going to. I used the restroom, washed my hands, got a drink of water and headed into the staff room. Quite surprisingly, this meeting started about 20 minutes later at around 12:40.

Lunch was at 1 so I figured ok great, 20 minute meeting then we will eat lunch and continue on with the rest of the day. The meeting ended at 6:30.

This was my first “official” Ugandan workplace staff meeting. It was quite an unexpectedly enjoyable experience. It was convened by our head teacher, the official “Chair” of the meeting. Ugandans are incredibly formal in their meeting style. Everyone thanks everyone all the time and uses formal language when making a statement or contribution. The meeting began with a reading of the agenda. Which consisted of the following:

1. Prayer

2. Opening Remarks by the Chair

3. Reaction to last meeting’s minutes (from 11 Feb. 2010) – open forum

4. Term II Strategy and Way Forward

5. Closure

6. Prayer

Now I said the meeting was incredibly formal, I didn’t say it was well organized. The meeting began with a prayer followed by our head teacher communicating his concerns about the conduct of our school and the way it was being run. He ran quite the gamut on issues ranging from teacher attendance to student discipline and nutrition.

I was happy to see that he was acknowledging some of the shortcomings of his institution and making an effort to tackle them.

People say that Ugandans are an indirect culture. I couldn’t disagree more. Ugandans are very direct, especially in large meetings. They repeatedly shut each other down or calling each other out on issues. Hey, at least they tell it like it is. (Caveat – this is all just my experiences, others may disagree but this isn’t their blog so yeah)

My head teacher basically lavished praise on me for doing my job – starting my lessons on time and attending every day. And asked the other teachers why it was so hard for them to do the same. This of course made me extremely uncomfortable but nonetheless I tried to pull off the most humble/non-offensive/subtle disagreement expression on my face for fear of backlash later on from my annoyed colleagues.

After opening remarks, four typed pages of meeting minutes from 11 Feb. were read WORD-FOR-WORD, reacted to and disputed for about an hour. Some of those in attendance disputed the attendance record of last meeting and declared they had very good excuses for not attending in February. The chair neutralized this complaint by telling them to document their excuses in writing and deliver them to the secretary promptly after each meeting. Their objections were noted, a common response throughout the entirety of the discussion.

We deliberated for about 3 hours and concluded with item six around 3:45 but then had a short break and transitioned to a follow-up meeting with all of the S4 students in their home classroom. It consisted of a panel of about 10 teachers (myself included) sitting on stools in front of about 90-100 students aged from about 18-20. We had sort of a miniature town hall meeting in which the S4s could air their concerns and complaints about the conduct and supervision of the school, put forth suggestions for solution, and hear reactions and solutions from us, the teachers. (Democracy in action at the lowest levels! Fantastic!)

Ugandan students are so disciplined…and yet they’re not. Their persistence to learn is astounding. They’re thirst for knowledge runs deeper than most people I know. The S4s were incredibly participatory and vocal in the open forum that was laid before them with the panel of teachers. So brazen, but collected, in their responses. These are the S4s, the overly confident teenage elite of the Ugandan education system. Not many Ugandan 18 year olds make it this far.

But then they dodge class, or they’re late, or they fail to turn in their workbooks for marking. These offenses usually result with the students getting beaten by the teachers with a handful of sticks (also known as being caned) – illegal in Uganda by the way. It is these offenses that led my counterpart to admonish to some students sitting in the grass one day, saying, “You’re not dodging only your marks eh, you’re dodging your life. This is your life.”

It is these inconsistencies that were the topic of discussion throughout the day. I gotta say that if my teachers at Roland-Story High skipped classes every week I’d probably skip too. So I can’t really blame the students to a certain extent. The conduct can only be attributed to those that run the school, in my opinion. It is a reflection on all of us as educators and administrators.

So we’ve somehow established a new path forward from here on out, as teachers, as students, and as professionals. I’m interested to see how it turns out.

When the meeting concluded, we were jubilant and clapping, shaking hands, and smiling with a great sense of accomplishment and relief that the light at the end of the six hour tunnel had come.

I’m called a barrage of names from my colleagues, I actually find it quite comical and just roll with it most of the time. I understand my name is hard for them to remember/pronounce. The assortment ranges from Mathias to Matheeus to Matthew. I actually find Matthew quite hilarious. For some reason they just started calling me by my surname, it works.

Earlier I mentioned the students’ eagerness to learn. I had a young lady from S4 approach me asking for my copies of the practice UNEB (Uganda National Examinations Board) UCE (Ugandan Certificate of Education) Exam. Basically this is the biggest exam of these students’ lives. It determines whether they’ll get to move on to Advanced (A) Level schooling and have a shot at getting a decent enough education to leave the village and get a good job (assuming the jobs are there when they graduate).

I asked her why she had not gone through the proper channels to check out the exams (AKA our lab master who is caretaker of all those documents). She said he would not issue her a copy because she didn’t have some “identity card” which is apparently a necessary requirement to check out past exams.

I on the other hand was able to procure all the UNEB UCE practice exams from the last 4 or 5 years two weeks earlier, and without an identity card! Damn I’m good. So naturally she wanted to borrow a copy of mine.

Now, here I am faced with an ethical dilemma. Do I issue the knowledge thirsty senior a practice exam so she has a better shot at passing in November? Thereby undermining our lab master’s authoritay! And potentially getting into a political battle over some bureaucratic issuance procedure (yes they exist here too). Or… do I refuse her and effectively say, “No, you can’t learn because you failed to get an ID card, thanks for trying though! Good luck on the test!”

I issued the test.

In marking workbooks this week, I noticed a distinct difference in the performance of students with large workbooks (8” ½ x 11”) vs. those with small workbooks (6” x 8”). The students with large workbooks perform considerably better on the homework assignments and many times perform better work with better handwriting.

And I thought to myself, what an economist’s dream! I would love to see his report on the effect that the more expensive notebooks (and presumably better off families able to afford them) had on these kids ability to extract knowledge and perform better than the small notebook kids in their exercises. Am I going crazy? I found it fascinating.