8 Mars 2008

Sorry for the long absence, I've been really busy at site finishing the trimester and putting together some activities for La Journee Internationale de la Femme (AKA Women's Day AKA 8 Mars AKA March 8th). I held a poetry and essay writing contest as well as a girl's soccer match. About 80 students wrote entries for the contest, of which the French teachers at my lycee chose eight as winners. I was really excited to see lots of participation from boys, which may or may not have been due to the awesome prizes (notebooks, pencils, erasers, protracters, etc). In fact only 26 of the writers were girls, and the themes were to discuss why girls should go to school or to write a poem about women and education. I even walked around to all of the classes and asked the students why they thought we celebrated 8 Mars when we announced the contest, just for a two minute sensibilization, with the permission of the other teachers, of course.

The soccer match was the first between two all girls teams at my lycee. I asked any girls who were interested to come and sign up and then I divided them into teams. Then the day of the match they took a few minutes to get organized and put on their jerseys (given to our school by the fantastic NGO Plan Burkina). Most of the other teachers and staff showed up to watch too, which really helped support the girls and build their self confidence. I talked for a couple minutes about women's rights and why we have 8 Mars, then the match got under way. Three of my male students agreed to be line judges and referees. After the game was over, which ended in a shoot out, I handed out prizes for the writing contest. Next trimester the winner's work is going to be posted next to the office at school for all to read.

As a teacher, I don't have a lot of time to organize secondary projects, but for my first real secondary project at site, I think that this one turned out pretty well. The most important result of it was just to get a dialogue going at my lycee, to spark questions like, "why are almost all of the extracurricular activities so centered around the male student population?" "why do so many female students drop out after the first year or two?" etc. I've even taken up debating gender issues with one of the male students in my physical sciences class, and I think that I've made him think a little bit more about how he treats women. Okay...so it's not saving the world, but that's not really our job, no matter what people say. It's more about getting people to imagine living their lives a different way, and brainstorming how they could do that. Anyway, Happy Women's Day to all! Also, shout out to the women in my village who waca-ed me to play soccer in a dress in front of 500 villagers for the celebration en ville. I don't think I'll ever feel embarrassed ever again.