3/7/12

Trust


   It takes time here for colleagues or counterparts to truly take you seriously or even to trust you. It makes sense because really, they don't know us PCVs, just like we don't really know them. Nonetheless, that can feel frustrating at times or at least it sometimes has felt frustrating to me. For me, the most challenging place, and the place where I've had to work the hardest so far to earn trust, has been at the schools, in particular at the JSS, which is ironic because the schools are also my favorite places in my village to go. I've been going to the JSS in my village since around August. At first I just spent time meeting with the guidance teachers and getting to know people there. Then I began to work with the PACT club. It took a while before PACT club meetings became something "normal" at the school, and it took a while for even some of the teachers whom I really like and get along well with  to trust me working with them. When I first started teachers who still didn't really know me would stop by meetings and ask what we were talking about or ask if the students were behaving if we were playing a game or team builder that was a bit louder. It didn't bother me when they stopped by because the school should know what is going on and be involved, but it was a constant reminder of "Ok, they don't know me yet. They don't' know that I can handle this yet. They don't trust me yet". Part of why this took so much time was also because the guidance teachers who were technically in-charge of PACT weren't there or seeing what work I was doing with the students or talking to other teachers about PACT club. A while ago, I held a PACT club workshop to help train new PACT members at the start of the new school year and to sort of "show off" PACT a little bit and make it something that people saw as important. I invited the two guidance teachers and both attended for a while, and I think this helped. ( I had also met with the school head to get permission before planning it)  One of the guidance teachers and I also took 10 students from PACT club to Girls Leading Our World camp for our district, and ever since things have been going better for PACT. Teachers asked me a lot about GLOW and PACT when we got back and talked about how much the students seemed to enjoy it and learned. Now PACT club meets every Monday and Wednesday afternoons regularly, there are new students who have joined, and they are consistently making classroom presentations every Tuesday afternoon to all fifteen classrooms at the JSS. This is a huge deal for many of my PACT students who are very shy and are working very hard on their presentation skills, which brings me to a story that is an example of how much things have changed for me as far as I'm viewed at the schools now. 
   Like I said, PACT club has been presenting every Tuesday to all 15 classrooms at school for nearly a month now. Every Monday we meet and discuss the topic that they will teach their peers about so that we can make sure that they all understand the topic and so that they can feel prepared to present the information.  Then on Tuesdays I show up to the school a little before their presentation time, make sure they are all ready, give them handouts to help them with their presentations, and check on them as they present. Before this, students from PACT were expected to present to their classmates but the problem was that there are no teachers in that classrooms during that time of day. It is a study period during which all of the teachers are in a staff meeting and the students are left alone. The often very shy PACT students were getting walked all over when they were trying to present and talked about how much they disliked presenting because of that.  I now try to float around the best that I can and make sure that things are going smoothly for them and so I can give them feedback or advice later. It has been working pretty well. Yesterday afternoon when I was floating around one of the PACT students came to find me to tell me there was a group of students in her classroom who were being rude, talking, and laughing at she and the other student who were presenting. When I followed her to the classroom one of the teachers was there already  with a stick (corporal punishment is legal here) and was about to give lashings to a group of 5 boys from that classroom. Now, this is not something that I haven't seen before here, but in the past there has been absolutely nothing I could do about it. This time, all I said was "Rra, is it ok if I just talk to these students for a moment? I want them to understand why they are in trouble and how rude they were being to these PACT students?" I expected that he would just look at me like I was insane and say something along the lines of "No, I've got this", but to my surprise he said "Ok" and let me talk to them! That NEVER would have happened even a couple of months ago. This is an example of trust being earned here, and it feels good because it really has been EARNED. It didn't just happen. I really had to work for it, and now it feels pretty great. 

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