My Classroom

Do we need tables and chairs to educate students?

For a mysterious and undetermined reason, and there are many such reasons lurking in Brazzaville, the Ministry of Communication decided to remove the conference table and chairs from my classroom leaving it empty, airy and suitable for an aerobics class. The scene when I open the door in the morning looks something like this. My students scrounged the chairs from other rooms in the building.

Word Of The Day: Makeshift

Calm, Calm

FYI: Just to let you know that Mr. Bongi pointed out something I could already see. The tables and chairs are no longer in our classroom at Tele Congo. My resourceful students scrounged chairs from nearby rooms in the building, and the semicircle makeshift furniture arrangement we created worked quite well for discussions, but the room is completely void of furniture until we redecorate each morning. Opportunist that I am, this situation provided the context for teaching the vocabulary word “makeshift,” which was in our reading assignment about the Congolese basketball player Serge Ibaka. I swept my hand grandly through the empty space surrounding me and said, “We work in a makeshift classroom.”

I realized I am adjusting to life in Congo when this observation did not raise my blood pressure or cause any form of anger to arise in my being. I just smiled.

Distel, thanks for teaching me that lesson.

Have a great morning!

The ELF