Teaching in Rwanda

As my last term of school in Rwanda nears its end, I’ve been reflecting a lot on my teaching experiences here and on the things I’ve learned about education in developing countries. Though I officially came as a health volunteer, teaching has been the most rewarding work I’ve done. It has been the most enjoyable and, I think, has had the most impact.

Teaching in any developing or non-Western country is fundamentally very different from teaching in the U.S. One of the most noticeable differences is the relative lack of resources, which is something I faced, even at schools that are fairly high quality by Rwandan standards. Public and private schools across Rwanda lack the necessary number and variety of textbooks. Some classes don’t have books at all, leaving the teacher to create a curriculum entirely from scratch. Even when there are books, there often aren’t enough, and three or four students have to huddle around one book. Another major problem is that many of the textbooks produced in Rwanda and Uganda just aren’t very good. They’re filled with mistakes, teach obscure and unnecessary topics, and are often impractical. On the other hand, some schools have Western textbooks, which are equally problematic. The topics of stories and articles in textbooks from the West often presume knowledge about certain places, people, or events, making them both confusing and irrelevant to Rwandan students. Further, Western books containing depictions of Africa are too often stereotypical and sometimes even insulting, such as stories focusing exclusively on jungle animals, treating the entire continent as one entity, or portraying Africans as savages. In addition, when using Western books, it’s difficult to find appropriate books for a given grade level. For example, most Senior Two (the equivalent of 8^th grade) students in Rwanda don’t have the English ability to use an 8^th-grade textbook. But, the content of, say, a 4^th- or 5^th- grade textbook might be too immature, especially as many Rwandan students are behind, resulting in 20-year-olds who are still in secondary school.

The lack of books, however, is only the tip of the iceberg. The majority of the technology that American teachers use to save time and make classes more interesting doesn’t exist here. Instead of printing and photocopying handouts and worksheets, Rwandan teachers have to use class time to write notes and exercises on the bored, which students then have to copy into their notebooks. Similarly, classrooms have no projectors, no computers, no means of showing films or pictures or using the Internet. I didn’t realize until I started teaching in Rwanda how much technology allows American teachers to maximize class time and, ultimately, cover more material more extensively than is possible here. When you realize that Rwandans spend half their class time writing and copying notes that, in the U.S., would be on a handout and distributed in thirty seconds – or would be included in the students’ textbooks – it’s clear that they won’t be able to cover nearly enough material.

Scheduling here also tends to be much…looser. Despite many schools having a timekeeper or some sort of “bell” (at one of my schools, a selected student keeps the time and bangs a stick on a rusty old piece of metal) at the end of each period, classes start late and end late almost as a rule. Further, it is extremely common for teachers to be absent, often with no notification. There are no substitutes here, so when one teacher is absent, a teacher of another subject who happens to be free that period is called in to teach, with no notes from the actual teacher or time to plan a lesson. On a somewhat related note, school administration frequently holds meetings (that could be conducted after school hours) during classes, causing students to miss out on even more class time.

The last major thing I have noticed about education here has to do with exams and grades, which I will illustrate with two stories. First story – At the end of the school year last year, three of my students had failed their English class. A few days after the regular finals, the students who had failed came back for supplementary exams, which are basically a second chance for students to pass an exam. And, the supplementary exam is different from the original one – and intentionally designed to be easier. In my case, two of the students also failed the supplementary exam. I was then told, with about two minutes notice, to give those students an oral exam to make up for their having failed the supplementary exam. Had the “oral exam” been legitimately graded, they would have failed that, too. But, by that point, it was clear that the easier supplementary exam and the makeshift oral exam are just excuses to add points to the students’ grades until they pass. A passing grade here is 50%, and, when I mentioned that two of my students had failed, the other teachers literally said, “Well, you must make them have at least fifty.” As in, “Well, you must write that their grade is fifty, regardless of what it actually is.” I know this doesn’t always happen at all schools, as I know students sometimes receive failing grades, but I’m sure this school is not the only one.

Second story – This I have not witnessed directly, but is based on what I’ve heard from multiple other volunteers. At the end of Primary Six (6^th grade), Senior 3 (9^th grade), and Senior 6 (12^th grade), all students in Rwanda take national exams, which determine if, where, and in what field they’ll continue their studies. National exam scores are the sole determinant of a student’s educational future – a lot is riding on them. Unfortunately, the grading process is evidently riddled with problems. The exams are graded by hand, not machine, meaning there will inevitably be human error, both in and against students’ favor. Further, it is quite common for the answer key to have the wrong answer on it, and nothing to be done about this. A student might have the correct answer, but will be marked wrong because of mistakes in the answer key. Things that these are just so frustrating and disheartening, and they really won’t improve without systematic change. It also makes any unfairness I felt in high school, a few points here or they that I thought I deserved, seem pretty trivial.