Notes from a Conseil de Classe

March 3, 2008

Our second semester recently came to an end, and so all the teachers met to discuss the ‘progress’ of our students. There was a lot of despairing laughter because our graduating class is, well, less than stellar, with 8 out of a class of 18 in danger of failing. I was never very good at math, but even I see these numbers as catastrophic. The picture I have chosen here, artwork done by the kids for this year’s Halloween bash, may well serve as a grim reminder to those kids who, come graduation time, will reap what they have sown. On a brighter note, the Conseil was most helpful to me vocabulary-wise, so let me share my newfound insights with you.

The world, I learned, is divided into two camps: those who work, or are ‘travailleur,’ and those who, like Melville’s Bartleby, prefer not to. These are known as the ‘feignants,’ or lazybones. Given just how bad this class is (and the fact that I spent the afternoon filling out report cards), I have also learned the following useful phrases: ‘a peine passable,’ or barely passing and the even more pessimistic ‘risque de redoubler’ as in, if you don’t straighten out and fly right, you will get to have me as your teacher AGAIN next year, to our very mutual displeasure, so do whatever you need to do to get yourself on out of here! There was also the little red flag reading ‘attention aux notes eliminatoires,’ re grades so low in certain subjects that a student will automatically become ineligible to receive a diploma.

It is rather mindboggling that the kids are doing so poorly, considering that everything they do is a collective project (I just saw an IHT headline on ‘coworking’ – haven’t read the article, but I am pretty sure my Senegalese students pioneered this idea. Why should EVERY student look up vocabulary words or even write essays if you can delegate just one to do it?).

Today I had a long talk with the kids on the subject of plagiarism, trying to get them to understand that while it is perfectly acceptable to do research on the Internet and incorporate that research, always acknowledging the work of others, it is emphatically NOT okay to cut and paste from Wikipedia and turn it in as your homework. My notoriously pragmatic students, whose collective motto again is “work smarter, not harder,” did not appear to see the problem with this. They proceeded to ask questions that led me to suspect that they were simply trying to see how they might be able to convince me or some other dim-witted toubab teacher that “literary pre-eminence” and “prior to having served” are phrases generally bandied about by Senegalese 12th graders. (I tried in vain to point out the incongruity of their using such highfalutin’ language when they regularly forget the ’s’ in the third person singular, think that ‘brung’ is the past participle of ‘bring’ and seem firmly convinced that the plural of ‘wife’ is ‘wifes’).

During lulls in the meeting, we teachers swapped war stories and traded juicy tidbits: “Did so and so really need to meet with you at 2.30 the other day? I thought not…what a tricheur!” “Did you know that Babacar and Fatima were dating? Apparently it is quite serious.” “Oh, that one! He hasn’t handed a single homework assignment in on time since he came to the school.” “Her? Give me a break! Every time there’s a test she gets a stomachache. And those medical certificates she brings in? You can buy them.” “Has so-and-so really missed classes ten times in the past two months? That’s unacceptable. But apparently the mother is a higher-up at the bank, so there’s nothing we can do,” and so on.

Talking around a table about our students in this manner really led to a warm and fuzzy camaraderie among all the teachers, foreign and Senegalese. Not altogether surprisingly, we established that a ‘paresseux’ is generally equally lazy in English and biology. A compulsive liar never lies only to you; reassuringly, he’s lied to all the other teachers at one point or another as well. In certain cases, a student who really loves a subject will excel in that and do poorly in the others. I am remembering my own very lopsided SAT scores. Frankly, I am convinced that someone over at the College Board helped me out a bit on the maths end so that I might be able to go to college and make something of myself. Ha. If anyone has any ideas on that score, my contract here will be ending in 2009, suggestions welcome…!

About the Author : Tamara-Diana Braunstein brings us her stories from Senegal every week. She was born in Brooklyn, New York. She is a restless wanderer who earned an MA from the University of Freiburg and has worked in a youth hostel in the French Alps, a law firm in Montreal, the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as in university press publishing. At the moment her home base is Dakar, Senegal, where she is supposed to be teaching but is doing far more learning, as you will see by reading her blog at www.senegalschoolmarm.blogspot.com