Long before getting to the phase where I am now, I had been told many times about how our National Youth Service Corps tends to take engineering students to organisations where they can gain even more practical knowledge and expertise in their respective fields rather than schools to teach elementary subjects. That became my expectation for myself, and so I imagined that it would happen that way when my time came, but reality happened, and then I had my hope dashed away.
To my surprise, I was posted to a secondary school. And it even happened to be in an unexpected local government area. My spirit became really low when I got the letter, and I felt so disappointed and devastated. I had no strings to pull before, and I didn't at the moment of unfolding, so I had no choice but to brace up and head straight to where I was posted.
I may have been told a couple of times that I am alright with teaching, whatever it may be—maybe even a fine teacher—as I am often keen on effectiveness and efficiency with my approach. Nonetheless, it is not something I would want to take up unless I had to. I have to in this case, so I embraced the idea of Teacher Olujay.
School finally resumed, and then I had to report for duty. Being in technical school, there were quite a number of subjects I could handle since I graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering degree. For whatever reason, I was assigned physics to teach, and I was glad. Physics was my favourite subject back then during my days, and so I'd choose it over others.
I then remembered how physics was initially quite confusing for me because of the teacher I had then, who was indifferent about whether we were really learning or not, and so I had to struggle on my own with the help of a different private tutor to learn. I imagined I could turn out to be just like that indifferent teacher I had if I didn't care as much about the job as I should.
Perhaps I wouldn't be judged if I didn't care much. The monthly stipend I get from our government isn't exactly substantial enough to really help me sustain myself for a month. In most cases, people would receive extra money from their place of primary assignment or their place of work, but I landed at a government-owned school. Hence, my allowance was going to be my pay. How fascinating.
However, rather than being unconcerned and nonchalant about the job, I thought I could make a difference in the lives of the students assigned to me. I thought to take the job seriously and be enthusiastic about it, so I could be different from the kind of physics teacher I had then and really open the skulls of these kids to pour the deep secrets of physics into their heads—not literally, of course.
For some reason, I thought it would be a piece of cake, especially with the notion that I was going to be intentional about it. The first day opened my eyes and made me realise that it might be harder than I thought.
I am to take groups of the same level, groups A and B. They are about three times the size of group B in group A. And group A was the class I taught first. I would estimate a number of eighty students in that classroom in group A. And, considering that they lacked many amenities in that school, the classroom was far from conducive. With luck being on my side, they had a chalkboard rather than a white marker board, which meant the job was going to be a little messy. It was the least of my worries anyway.
Now, on to the teaching experience. The first thing I did was to introduce myself as Corper Olufemi. Yes, not Olujay, because that is only a nickname, and that would have been a tad bit informal. And, also, I reckoned that it was better to use my actual tribal name there so it would be easy for anyone to know what tribe I am from and not have them ask me over and over again what Olujay meant because most of them here wouldn't be able to guess since they are not from my tribe.
I then asked for the class representative to know who to relay information and instructions to, and then I held a little bit of conversation with them to make them feel comfortable with me, and then I moved on to begin teaching.
It turned out that these kids had a backlog of work from the last session, vocation one. In a way, it meant that I was going to have to teach them some topics from last session, but there wasn't much time, and so I assured them that we'd talk about untreated previous topics along the way.
Moving on to the topic of the day, I started with an illustration to prepare them for what I was going to teach them. I am a very practical person, and that reflects in my teaching approach. With a brick lying somewhere around, I demonstrated to them the relationship and importance of vectors in our everyday lives. That seemed to do the trick to get them intrigued and interested in the topic.
Everything seemed to be going well until I had to introduce mathematical terminologies, and that was when we started having accidents. In certain areas, some students were no longer understanding what I was teaching; it was other areas for some other students. And, during the session, I had to be stern as I perceived some of the students to be presumptuous.
I needed not to draw a cane to keep them collected and respectful; I had to use their own fears to control them—like the fear of being embarrassed. I'd simply ask whoever's defaulting to come up front to explain exactly what it was I would have been trying to explain in the moment they were interrupting by being a nuisance. That usually did the trick and kept them calm, since their colleagues would laugh out loud at them in such moments.
Fast forward to the end of the session with group A. It turned out that many of them still couldn't comprehend most of what I had taught them, regardless of how explanatory I was, except for a certain exceptional boy. Why that happened was because they had a very poor background in physics from their first year and even a worse one in mathematics, and so teaching them their second year was going to take a whole lot of work.
A similar thing happened in group B. They were more fortunate in Group B, however. I was even more prepared, and then more practical and interesting, with a lot of illustrations. The result was the same, however, although they were more compliant than the first group.
I should feel frustrated already, but I realised that I just need to prepare more adequately in accordance with their needs to be able to effectively do my work and make good impacts in their lives. Nevertheless, the enthusiasm I had previously built remains unwavering. I hope to achieve something tangible with these kids at the end of the day. Let's see how it goes.