The complex social rules that govern life at a Basotho primary school and how my lack of knowledge of same cause me to lose my students’ respect

Sorry for the long title, I just finished a cool book of essays, “Consider The Lobster,” by David Foster Wallace and he used a lot of long talky titles like that. That book was recommended to me a long time ago by my sister Karen who, in addition to having really good book suggestions, was also recently named one of the top state politics reporters in Pennsylvania by the Washington Post. Please congratulate her and follow her on twitter (https://twitter.com/karen_langley), and, if you remember, send her a fruit basket.

But to this post’s subject: I have been having a very tough time managing my classroom of 48 standard 4 and 5 students. A technique for getting attention and getting people to be quiet I learned at my summer job, the excellent Overland:

• At a conversation-volume voice, say “clap once if you can hear me.” People close by you will hear you and clap once.
• At the same volume, say “clap twice if you can hear me.” More people will hear you this time and clap twice.
• At this point, most of the crowd will be quiet, and a few remaining talkers will stop at the weird sound of everyone else clapping three times in synchronization.

This always worked really well at Overland, and I thought I might try it in standards 4 and 5. This was a big mistake.

I started it, and students clapped with me, and we got to 4 claps with every student looking at me with rapt attention. However, when they realized that we were not planning on going on to 5 claps and then 6 claps and then 7 claps and so on ad infinitum, and that I had only used this fun clapping game to get their attention and teach them some boring lesson about making singular words plural, they went back to talking and jumping on desks and slapping each other. So let’s say that I have very little control of the classroom.

One standard 5 girl, Kabelo, who is also a frequent player at the furious games of Uno that always seem to be happening with the neighborhood kids inside my house, explained that my lack of control was due to two grievous errors.

Grievous error number one: “You looked unhappy when Renang was crying.” One day, one of my standard 5 boys, Renang, was having such bad stomach pains that he was in tears, and could not stand when I tried to walk him to another room. Kabelo told me that I looked worried when this happened. I also told students to stop laughing at Renang.

Grievous error number two: “The know you will not beat them.” I may or may not write about this topic in a post of its own, but corporal punishment is a common practice here. However, the students have divined that this is not something I will do, and that under no circumstances will I beat them as punishment (or, obviously, for any other reason). This, combined with grievous error number one, means that I am basically a MAJOR SOFTIE in many students’ eyes, and that me standing at the front of the classroom deserves their attention as much as, I don’t know, a bowl of plain custard or an especially dull sheep.