Finally Teaching

Okay then… I started teaching Thursday! It went very well! But it was certainly a learning experience for me. As an introduction to this blog let me summarize the challenges: There were scheduling challenges, technology challenges, the obvious language barrier, and the distraction of me being white...

On the positive side – I found the students to be extremely engaged – but my department head informed me that was only because they were focusing on trying to understand my accent...

Here is me and the 2nd year class. Unlike USA a vast majority of the students are male. Only 3 females of 30ish in the 2nd year class.

The technology challenges revolved around having a projector available in my class during my class times. The module I am teaching is scheduled to meet for 50 contact hours (five credits). I was scheduled to have a classroom for 10 hours Thursday afternoon and all day Friday. Since no one could tell me when or if I would get additional classroom time for the remaining 40 hours (I’m sure I will – no one just knows when) I was advised by my department head to use those guaranteed 10 hours of classroom time for lecture and keep the other 40 open for times when I might not have classroom when I could assign labs, clinical-based assignments, etc. One thing I found out – after I have prepared 10 hours of lecture – was that projectors need to be reserved in advance for classroom times. Interestingly enough you never know when you’re going to have classroom time allotted so it is difficult to ask for projectors in advance. The trick I found out – is to just ask for and schedule a projector every day all the time and if you have the benefit of classroom time you simply pick it up as scheduled… if you do not have classroom time scheduled just don’t pick it up. Of course when you go to pick one up they are all already scheduled out to other faculty, and of course no one is willing to give you one until they are absolutely certain that whoever has one scheduled is not coming to get it…. [Not wanting to deal with that tricky situation ever again I paid a visit to Newegg.com and $500 later ordered my own projector hopefully it will be delivered soon]

After some finagling I was able to secure a projector for my class lectures. I have no idea on earth what I would’ve done without a projector for PowerPoint. They were totally expecting just to sit there in the classroom for four hours and listen to me talk – without the PowerPoint I don’t think they would’ve understood one word. Because many of my points were illustrated or spelled out on PowerPoint I think it helped them get a grasp of my accent much quicker. I am also coming to find out that the students are very comfortable and accustomed to lecture-based teaching and that anything other than that seems to be suspect and not real teaching – even the other faculty have a strong lecture-based bias.

Sorry for the blur... here are the 2nd year students doing a "lab" on proproiception and balance... most of them have never tried this before and it was like having recess for them, since they mostly sit and listen to lectures all day.

The scheduling was also an interesting situation to navigate. While I had my 10 hours allotted for the week (keep in mind that I am not sure when I will get classroom time again for this module) I lectured for four  continuous hours on Thursday and had six hours remaining on Friday. As was recommended to me I had planned to lecture all 10 hours – again as I don’t know when I will be able to have them in lecture again – but, I received an email Thursday night at 10 PM at the rector of the Institute would like all the KHI students to attend a debate at 1 PM on Friday. Therefore, my department head informed me at 10 PM Thursday evening that I was to let the students go at noon so they could have time to eat lunch before the debate. And that any loss of lecture time would be “no problem.” So, I just scrapped three hours of my lecture and hope that I cut out the information that they’ll never user won’t need…

Their expectation of education is certainly different from what the focus is in traditional Western- based universities! I would compare their educational system to highly concentrated clusters of seminars. For example, each class has objectives or learning content that must be delivered in the class. Instead of the class being taught by a single instructor the class is divided into a series of modules. And each module is then taught by a different instructor. In a traditional American university a course syllabus identifies specific objectives that the course should deliver. In Rwanda it appears that what we call “objectives” they call modules. So in essence a different instructor is brought in to teach the different course objectives. So my objective (or module) is to teach exercise therapy to the second year physiotherapy students in their physiotherapy techniques 1 class, and a different instructor comes in to teach them joint mobilizations, etc. When talking to the different members of the faculty as to what content I should focus on for “exercise therapy” there was absolutely zero consensus. Very frustrating! So I did what all experienced an expert faculty member’s do – and just winged it, and made stuff up as I went.

The feedback from the other faculty members after Thursday evening – was wonderful! Once the students got over the fact that I was Muzungu (white) things went very well! In fact, I was extremely impressed by the students! I am not ashamed or afraid to say they have raised my level of expectation for my students at BGSU– when I return – watch out! Perhaps, it is as my department head suggested and they were extra engaged because of the language barrier, regardless of the reason they work very hard to understand what I was saying and apply and integrate what I was saying into their treatment of patients. They actually stopped me and asked me to re-explain something if they didn’t understand me! (Perhaps that’s because getting out early is a different concept to them since are scheduled to sit there and listen for six hours anyways). What I was most impressed with was not their acquisition of the knowledge; rather it was the insightful questions and critical thinking. Again, it renewed my hope in the capacity of students (even sophomores, wink wink) to critically think and apply information to the jobs and tasks they do in their clinical rotations. I found that as second-year students they had a much deeper grasp of concepts that our students don’t seem to understand until their senior year. For example, eccentric, concentrate, and reciprocal inhibition was something that they were able to grasp and demonstrate correctly almost immediately.  After observing the students, faculty, and the institution for four weeks now… I truly believe that a large part of why the students seem to be “better” is because of their respect and admiration for their teachers and faculty. One thing I have noticed – as a huge difference – between the students in Rwanda and the students at the three other universities I have taught in America is the genuine respect for my expertise, experience, and knowledge. Perhaps that is because their access to information is significantly less and they depend in large part on their faculty for relevant information. Whereas, in America students can access information almost instantly via the Internet, libraries, etc.… And challenge and question what their instructors tell them based on what they read on Google or Wikipedia – wink, wink!

Anyway, my first 10 hours of teaching and proven to be very educational and insightful about my own skill set as well. I had to slow down considerably in my pace of talking, and language in a completely different way. The words I chose had to be simple and a significant part of my lecture was taught like we were playing a game of charades. I found the challenge to be exciting and I’m looking forward to getting another crack at lecturing and teaching next week.