Workplace Angst

This post, really is just a melting pot of the thoughts that have been sifting in and out of my mind over the past week or so.

I'll begin with my placement. At the Day Care Centre it is apt to say that I find it rather unappealing there. This morning I left an hour and a half early because I could no longer cope with the insufferable nature, and ineptitude of the teachers that had surrounded me. I got into class at 8am and all of the centre's teachers were congregated outside. They were chatting, dancing, eating, and most alarmingly ignoring the children. This occurs almost always so really it wasn't a shock but it was still rather frustrating. So when I stepped into the tiny classroom packed with over 20 one, two and three-year-olds I felt a little overwhelmed. The biggest problem that I face in these classrooms is that I can't understand the children because they speak Twi and not English so I am left with a class full of kids who I cant communicate with. This means when they're crying I can only offer a limited amount of comfort because I don't know what the issue is, when they're fighting they don't listen to me because they don't understand me and on another level they know that I'm not going to beat them if they disobey me.

Another issue that is beyond exasperating is the attitudes of the teachers. The women who I work with are untrained, unequipped and disinclined to working with children. They just don't care. They come in everyday to work because it is money, but they are preoccupied with themselves that they have little attention to spare on the children. If you organise an activity to play with the children, it is necessary to include a part for the teacher or else the teacher will take the activity away from a student to use for themselves. If its colouring, they take the pens, if its bubbles they blow the bubbles while the children watch enviously. Its deplorable and pathetic. Worse than all of these things is meal time. Not all the parent's pack food for their children, but those that do pack ample food to fulfill their child's hunger for the day. The teachers divide up the children's food from their lunchboxes- so the child will get half of their lunch and the other half would go into a bowl. More often than not the bowl gets more food than the child. The bowl is then taken and divided between the two teachers in a classroom, while three or four kids sit hopelessly and longingly at the teachers and students around them who are eating. IT made me so angry today. I made the teachers share out the extra food amongst the kids that didnt have any, and they reluctantly did so. They tried to argue that the food in the bowl was strictly for the teachers, and they had the audacity to invite me to join them in eating the food that belongs to the children. One even tried to tell me that the other children without food weren't hungry which was easily contradicted by the vigour with which the kids ate the food that they were eventually given by the teachers. It's outrageous. At snack-time the same thing occurs, the kids don't get their juice-boxes, they get a few sips and the teachers commandeer the rest of it.

Mary is a little girl in my class who has the most peculiar hair i have ever seen. She is black as night but she has red eyelashes and the roots of her hair are a flaming orange colour as if someone has dyed it. She was tired today, her yawns and inactivity obvious. She nodded her head drifting into sleep as she sat on the mat. The teacher not only smacked her but made her stand for five minutes while everybody else sat and played. I say the other children played but I use the term loosely - the teachers got out some blocks and divided amongst the children it meant that they got maybe one or two pieces each if they were lucky- (some just sit on the mat vacantly resigned to the fact that they won't get any blocks to play with, some throw tantrums to get more toys, others aggressively snatch them from other children resulting in yet more tears)
The poor girl was standing their her eyes drooping in exhaustion yet the teachers seemed determined that she should stand and not fall asleep. they have no reasoning. You can't very well expect a child who is tired and doing nothing to not fall asleep. I scooped her up and let her sleep in my arms because the teachers don't like to do anything that will upset the volunteers because they depend on us to do their jobs for them. Working here, in this area I have been given the impression that volunteers do more harm than good because we make teachers complacent and lazy.

On a happier note, I ventured to the orphanage and a special school this weekend. The Orphanage was definitely a challenge as the kids their have nobody. There are 2 volunteers who come at 8 and leave at 3 and after that the kids are left pretty much to themselves. They are unruly and ragged, and difficult to manage but when I'm there I at least feel like some of what I am doing is worthwhile. The special School i loved. It was my best experience so far. The children delight in our presence and there are only 12 in a classroom which means you can actually interact with each of the kids on a personal level. I'm definitely going back there because it was such a rewarding experience.