Education

I will start this long overdue blog with a quick update. Early is still alive and well. His wounds have healed and he is now obsessed with me more than ever. He comes by the house everyday at 7 to see what I am doing and makes sure to stop by after lunch. It has been a little tiring now, but it does make me happy to see him. He also has been giving me several hugs everyday.

I am officially registered for classes at the University of Maryland and I have an orientation starting on the 26th of August, which puts a heavy restriction on my time line to leave Senegal, since the first date possible is the 12th of August. Overall I am very excited to have classes and look forward to the next challenge.

I wanted to spend this blog talking about education and some of the problems that is being faced. The other day, two students came up to me and asked I could give them some help with their math homework. I accepted and that night we sat down to solve a few problems. To start with, this kids didn't show up with pens, or paper, so I had to give them some supplies to borrow. The first question reads as follows. A man buys 7 meters of fabric at 5,000cfa and he sells one meter at 1200cfa. What will be his profit he sells all seven meters?

I start by just telling the kid to do the problem. He isn't sure how to do it and I can understand for a 13 year old, word problems in your 3rd language can be difficult. We go step by step and I ask him to do the division to find out how much one meter of fabric cost. They are unable to do the math so I help them out then ask them to subtract the cost of one meter and the amount sold for. This is the part I start to get really concerned. He is trying to do the math, but is having problems, with carrying the one. I explain how to do the subtraction and they still can't get it. So I just set up a simple subtraction problem and 7-2 and they gave me the wrong answer. I just begin to look at the kid and I have no idea how I am able to help these kids with their homework. I had to turn the kid away and say I am unable to help. I felt as if I would just be doing the homework and he would learn nothing.

Here there seems to be a cycle of kids not getting help with school so they fail. Once they fail, they feel as if they aren't any good and act out. An advantage we have in the United States is that we help our children learn, and if we don't sometimes there are other places for them to go to. That is not an option for these children. The other main problem is the kids in my area speak a different language than most of their teachers. So when they are learning they aren't able to pick up routine lessons at a young age and they fall back.