First day of School

Every day, before school, the volunteers would assemble in the Village Hall for Briefing to discuss the day’s targets and check no-one had suffered any medical difficulties overnight. Having already decided who would be teaching the year-groups, we headed up the hill in our smart Fijian clothes, scuffing the gravel with our flipflops and swinging our lunchbags by our sides. It was a ten minute walk to the outskirt of the village where the school waited for us, on the brisk of a hill above a large, sparse playing field.

The school itself was single-story and long, painted green and multi-coloured on the outside. The headmaster and his family lived in the house just opposite and his car remained at the entrance of school property.

After piling our things in the library, a small room with two long desks in the middle and shelves of books either side, we were invited to attend the first assembly. A priest led the proceedings, standing behind a school chair, and leaning on it for support as he thanked us and spoke about all the good things we would be doing. We sat on school benches either side of him, boys and girls alike doing our best to ensure our upper legs were appropriately concealed. The children beamed at us from the floor, with their legs crossed, fidgeting and whispering. Then all of a sudden a small cluster of kids next to Dan started wrestling with each other, laughing and it soon seemed that Dan was struggling to contain himself so much that his face was red tucked behind his hand. When the blessings had been made and the assembly was over, we rounded on him saying, “What was so darn funny?” and he wiped a tear saying: “One of the boys farted.”

CP and I had been assigned to work with Years 3 & 4, an age group I was particularly keen on in terms of learning ability. The school was structured so that two years shared a room (and a teacher): Kindergarten first, then 1 & 2, then 3 & 4, 5 & 6, and 7 & 8.

Our head-teacher, (who will remain unnamed), who usually taught that class was absent that day and so his wife, Mrs -- authored the proceedings. Over the blackboard at the front, she stuck a peach piece of sugar paper, upon which the title: “Jo’s New Baby Sister,” headed a passage that went something like: “Mother is going to have a baby. Mother takes a bus to the hospital. Father carries a basket. Jo wants to play with Aunty. ‘Can we play tennis?’ Jo said….” and so on.

“The kids,” said Mrs --, addressing us, “will read this aloud together. Then they must write to half way,” she made a cutting motion on the sheet about half-way, “then they must read it individually. When they can read and write all the way to the end, then they can do the extra work here.” She took a piece of broken chalk from the desk and drew three bubbles next to the paper in which she wrote a jumble of letters, each making up a word. “These are the new words from the text,” she said, and listed the words ‘writing,’ ‘coming,’ ‘enjoy,’ next to the A3 paper. “They can write these separately.”

CP and I glanced at one another. Thrilling.

“If any struggle, you can help them.”

At this point she meandered round the class, circling the kids who were slapping their books out on their desks and clambering into their seats, and then she said the words I will never forget.

“This one is year four,” she said, holding the shoulders of a dark girl a little taller than the rest. “She is only one in year four so she is more advanced than the rest. She power through, you can leave her alone.” Then she pointed to a boy a few seats down, “He is very slow, he will need some help.” She walked across to another child and held his head, “This one is very naughty. Very loud. Tell him off if you need to. Ok?”

“Ok,” we said in unison, because we didn’t know what else to say.

She left us then, and we had no-one to supervise the class but ourselves.

Between us, CP and I, we agreed that we would work out for ourselves the learning abilities of these kids, having each one come up to us via a table at the back of class and read through their work. Thus, whilst CP peered over shoulders and encouraged them to keep going, I took the first pupil to the back of the class. Take one guess who finished first?

‘And what is your name?’ I asked the Year 4 child.

‘Alisi,’ she said, and presented her work to me proudly.

The handwriting itself was pleasing enough, and so I asked her to read it aloud for me quietly. Having done so almost perfectly, I sent her back to her table to complete the passage, and engaged the next student with lifted spirits.

The boy read aloud very nicely too, except the whole passage was missing full stops and capital letters. This was ok, I told myself, an identifiable problem that was easily fixed… until the next child came along. None of them understood the concept of beginnings and ends of sentences! Where the line ended on the sugar paper, the students began a new line also, regardless of whether they had more space. Equally, they tried to cram words onto a line that no longer fit because the words on the board had not taken a new one. In fact, they didn’t seem to understand punctuation at all.

I had a little side-chat with CP and found she had discovered further defects. The alphabet alone, they could understand, but mixed up, the kids often struggled to differentiate between the letters. How was it that they were being asked to construct whole sentences!? To make matters worse, when we asked a question, one child would shout out the answer and everyone else would copy it down, regardless of whether it was right or wrong. Some of the more evasive voices prevented us from seeing who knew the real answers and who didn’t.

CP and I quitted the English lesson at 10.30 feeling incredibly disheartened and sad. Every child in that classroom had different levels of capability, some of them almost up to standard, and others, no better than a kindergartener.

Back in the library, adjourned for break, other volunteers uttered very similar exclamations of surprise and it quickly became apparent that it had been a very distressing experience for all of us.

Back home that day, I retrieved my pen and paper, frustrated and determined. I made a list of things that needed to be sorted and particular names in the class whom I decided needed extra attention. Then, I began divining various learning activities specific to their cases, ready to work my heart and soul out for those kids, day and night if I had to.