Teacher on Two Wheels

Above:  Students interviewed for this article

**This is a piece I wrote recently for work.  This article appeared in a quarterly newsletter I helped write and organize for Invisible Children.**

When I asked a group of students at Pope Paul VI School in Anaka, Uganda what they first thought when they spotted their new classrooms, buildings built under IC’s Schools for Schools (S4S) program, wide, toothy smiles ripped across their faces.

“When I first saw the new classrooms, I wondered, Who put these buildings here?!” Betty, a 19-year-old student, said, smiling. “I walked closer and looked at them. I was excited for class to start.”

Nodding in agreement, Petra Faith, 20, added, “Yes, everything was organized in the classrooms, and I thought, For sure, now our education will improve.”

School for Schools, a program started by IC in 2006, gets students like Betty and Petra Faith smiling over school memories by improving both the structural and educational elements of 11 schools in northern Uganda. Through constructing things like classrooms, bathrooms, water pumps, and libraries, and by strengthening in-school education through teacher exchange, teacher workshops, and emotional literacy classes, S4S is changing the cores of its partner schools. More than 1,100 schools around the world work throughout the year to raise money to fund S4S projects in Uganda. For some of the 11 schools, schools like Pope Paul VI, the S4S program is doing more than improving educational infrastructure—it’s letting students return home.

Violence displaces people. It pushes people from their homes and schools and forces them to safer areas. Because of displacement, the students at Pope Paul VI have been studying at a make-shift school site for more than 20 years, waiting for the waves of violence in northern Uganda to ebb. Now, thanks to both recent stability in northern areas of Uganda and support from S4S, high school students from Anaka are finally coming home. Doors to their new classrooms are open. Teachers are writing on fresh chalkboards. Seeing students sitting at clean desks in bright buildings, though, made me wonder what things were like before, how much things had changed. I sat down with a group of five students and one teacher to find out.

“Rain was disturbing us a lot. The desks would always get wet if it rained because rain would enter in the roof. And sometimes the teacher would leave the class because he didn’t want to get wet,” said Filda, 21. She told me about the classroom floors, how the rain would puddle in the red dirt and turn it to mud.

Another student, Richard, 21, spoke up. “I sat on rocks in class many times because there weren’t enough chairs. After some time in the classroom, the rocks got very uncomfortable.”

The students told me about how their school environment retarded their academic progress. They described packed classrooms devoid of chalkboards and proper furniture. They told me about how villagers would use their school water pump; how, when they needed to fetch water, students would leave class early with their jerry cans to wait in line at the pump. When I asked Justin, 18, what the bathrooms were like at the temporary school, he just shook his head. “Things were not good,” he said. “Often, villagers would use the school bathrooms. It wasn’t good.”

The experiences of Oyoo Samson Otukene, a teacher at Pope Paul VI, mirrored those of his students. “Teaching at the old school was hectic. Class control was so difficult. At the end of class, you could feel in your heart that the class was not effective. Students were often late for class. Their energy was not positive,” he explained.

As the new school grows, as buildings continue to rise on Anaka’s campus, its students are enjoying the benefits of development. Gone are the days when classes struggled to write down lecture notes because no chalkboard adorned the wall. No longer must students leave class to line up their jerry cans by the pump. With reliable electricity, large windows, and sound roofs, new classrooms prevent storms from drowning out lessons.

Above:  Countryside near Anaka, where Pope Paul VI is located

Even though class sizes are still large (one classroom I visited had 147 students in it), many of Anaka’s barriers to learning have been removed. And this, says teacher Otukene, has made all the difference.

“All that’s left for our students to do now is pass their tests,” Otukene said. “I’ve noticed a change in their attitudes. They are more positive now. They come to class on time and are excited for class to start. Really, all of sudden, once they arrived at the new school, the problem with lateness went away,” he explained, smiling.

I asked him if any of these changes surprised him.

“No, no,” he said, shaking his head. “We’re not surprised by the changes. We all know where the changes come from—they come from this,” he explained, pointing to the new classroom blocks to our right.

There is still an immense amount of work that needs to be done at Pope Paul VI. In the future, IC hopes to build a science lab, a library, a computer lab, latrines, and a power supply system at the school. Beyond the school’s physical structures, IC is planning on improving the school’s human support system, as well, through things like teacher capacity development and workshops with the school’s parent/guardian community. Completing the remaining projects at Pope Paul VI will take years. But if the current level of student optimism is any indicator for things to come in the future, the completion of Invisible Children’s S4S projects will be met with more than just smiles on students’ faces; academic improvement is on its way, too.