Overview

While the idea of me completing my practicum and student teaching in Senegal may sound like a noble act for the benefit of those less fortunate than me, this is hardly the case. I just want to be clear about this because credit should be given where credit is due. There are plenty of Aid workers, members of NGO’s, and Peace Corps volunteers who are here in Africa sacrificing their time and comfort in order to help some of the less fortunate people of this world, and they deserve the accolades; not me. My wife and I came here because we wanted to live abroad in a non-Western country and have a cultural experience. She found a job teaching at the International School of Dakar (ISD), and I was able to find a program that allowed me to finish my teacher education coursework at the school.
The International School of Dakar is by no means a mud hut with dirt floors situated in a jungle (or desert) for local children who show academic promise. It is a private non-profit school offering American curriculum that has been plopped in the middle of the poorest reason in the world: West Africa. The facility bears a striking resemblance to a military compound. It is tucked away behind a private American club on a dead end road surrounded by walls topped with barbed wire, and it comes complete with a gate and a guard shack. The school itself consists of newly built, brightly painted buildings; a large athletic field (with one of the greenest lawns in all of Senegal); lush gardens; a nice gymnasium; well equipped music and art rooms; a good-sized library; a couple of fancy computer labs; and classrooms with a new computer and projector in each one. In this sense, ISD seems incongruous amid all of Dakar’s poverty and pollution- like a shiny coin in a pile of dust.
Dakar is the cultural and commercial hub of West Africa and ISD draws its student body from the numerous expat families living here. The construction of the school was spearheaded by the US Dept. of State so its employees could have a place to send their children while completing the standard three year assignment. ISD is run by a director and a school board, and according to the school charter, the majority of the board members must be American nationals. Meanwhile, anyone else who can afford to pay the schools’ $16,000 tuition is welcome to enroll, and in a country where the average annual income amounts to about $1500, it is fair to assume that very few locals are sending their kids to ISD. Almost all of the students have maids, most have chauffeurs, and one hundred percent of graduates go on to attend (mostly prestigious) colleges in America and Europe.
ISD takes good care of its teachers and makes every effort to keep their employees happy while living in Dakar. After all, the board does not want a high turnover every year, because recruiting teachers to work in West Africa can be difficult. My wife and I were given an enormous apartment in a ritzy neighborhood populated by embassy workers, business people, and other expats. We do not pay for housing, her salary is tax free, and working for the school gives us certain diplomatic privileges. Most teachers end up hiring maids who cook, clean, and do laundry. Some are members of private clubs, while others golf at a posh golf course attached to the most prestigious hotel in town. My wife and I have not got to the point where we are willing to become that detached from reality and live in the “bubble.” We do not have a maid, are not members of any clubs, and prefer to find things to do in Dakar with the little free time that we have.
In spite of how all of this may sound, the school community is by no means a microcosm of an American society transplanted into Africa, and ISD is not a pretentious, exclusive private school full of snobby uppity rich kids. ISD is a very diverse place. The teachers are interesting, intelligent, and educated people from all over the world. Many have been living and working abroad for years and speak a number of languages, and all of them are excellent teachers who are highly dedicated to their students and to their craft. There are also “local hires” - Senegalese teachers, aids, and workers who are glad to tell you about Senegalese culture and teach you a few words in Wolof- employed at the school. The student body is even more diverse than the faculty. There are 370 seventy students representing over 40 different nationalities. A number of the kids have dual (some even have triple) nationality and have visited and lived in several countries during their short lives. Most of them have been more places than I have, but what is more astounding is that the vast majority speak anywhere from two to six languages. In fact, over sixty percent of students are English language learners, which is absolutely amazing when you consider that all classes (except for French and Spanish) are conducted in English and that there is only one ELL teacher in the entire school!
While it is clear that ISD students are exceptional individuals who come from extraordinary backgrounds, ISD is not an “elitist” institution. It is not an IB school and over 90% of those who apply are accepted. The keyword here is “growth.” Senegal is a “developing” country and as it develops, the International School roster swells with the children of families coming over to Africa to do business, contracting, or to work for their respective governments. This trend causes ISD’s rolls grow at a rate of about 20% every year. With this growth comes increased revenue, and the money is used so that teachers and students can have sophisticated technology at their disposal. As mentioned earlier, all of the classrooms have computers and projectors, and some even have smart boards. Like many public schools, ISD has its own intranet, but it has other programs which are new to me. There is “Focus” which is essentially an online grade book into which teachers must input all grades and assessments. Students and their parents are given passwords to Focus so that they always have access to their grades and can never claim they do not know which assignments are missing. For curriculum mapping, ISD uses another program known as “Atlas Rubicon”. Instructors are required to individually and collaboratively map out their curriculum for the entire year and post it on Atlas. In addition, each teacher has been told that all curriculum most be comprised of UBD units that include standards, philosophies, approaches, and references. Actually, the template provided by Atlas is none other than the UBD template itself.
I am very impressed with the way teachers are given the means and encouragement integrate technology into instruction, and how technology has been incorporated into and assessment and curriculum design. By giving parents direct access to students’ grades, Focus encourages parental involvement in academics while increasing accountability and transparency on the part of the teachers. At the same time, Atlas Rubicon is conducive to good cooperative planning and collaboration on the part of faculty. ISD truly is on the cutting edge in that sense. Unfortunately, having such lofty technological ambition can be difficult in Africa. There is limited bandwidth, which makes computers slow on campus, and power outages are a constant problem. I often hear teachers complain about how they lost power in the middle of doing grades or inputting a lesson. While I do believe that is important for schools to keep up with technological trends, I also think that a school must have the means to support the technology before it becomes a mandate that teachers use it. If not, it can be counter-productive and take away from valuable planning time.
Now that I have given a fairly detailed description of the International School of Dakar, I can move on to talk about my actual placement. I am here in Dakar to do my practicum and student teaching in French. My ultimate goal is to be certified in Middle School and SED French with a MS endorsement to teach Social Studies, and I cannot be emphatic enough when I say that ISD is the ideal place for me to finish my coursework. First of all, Senegal is a Francophone country and living here certainly helps me keep up on my subject area. At the same time, being in a Muslim country in Africa offers me a glimpse of a neglected part of the world that most people never see. This is a cultural experience will undoubtedly benefit me as an aspiring Social Studies teacher.
Next, the French department at ISD is exceptional. There is only one Spanish class; everyone else begins to learn French as soon as they enter the school. The classes range from beginner to Francophone (for native speakers) and are taught to every age group. The department has a rule that only French is allowed in the classroom to the extent that some students do not know that their teachers can speak English. Teaching beginner French entirely in French has been quite a challenge for me, but the more I do it, the more comfortable I become with the idea of teaching entirely in French when I get back to the US. I know that the question of whether beginner classes should be taught in the target language is still an ongoing debate in the field of foreign language education, yet I am witnessing firsthand that teaching this way is possible and it can work. The jury is still out on which approach is better.
The French department and the school keep me pretty busy. I have two cooperating teachers- one for middle school and one for high school and I spend about 10 every week in the classroom observing and teaching lessons. I have designed many of my own lessons after being provided with objectives and I recently taught a MS class a series of eight lessons as part of unit about “le week-end”. The people at the French department are even nice enough to include me in all of their meetings and I attend bi-weekly PD conferences about UBD with the rest of the faculty at the school. The fact that the school is so intensely focused on UBD really helps me with my practicum because it provides me with insight into the stages of creating a unit that I might not get if I were still in the states.
As a token of my appreciation, I make every effort to give back to the school. Every Monday night, I teach French lessons to some of the teachers (free of charge), and I coach the boys’ varsity soccer team the rest of the week. The other coach is Senegalese guy who used to play for the national soccer team. He does not speak English, so I function as his translator at practice and at athletic meetings. Actually, I do a great deal of translating. I have sat in on a couple of conferences to interpret for French speaking parents, and my neighbors often ask me to translate for them when they need to talk to their maids. Being a soccer coach has also given me the opportunity to help organize some fund raisers and next week, the school is flying me to Ghana for a tournament! I guess it is fairly obvious that this is truly a positive experience for me.