Rebecca Ponder, '05, and Elizabeth Friend, '06, Discover the Joys of Teaching and Learning in Namibia and China

Several months ago Rebecca Ponder, ’05, greeted approximately 40 middle school students at 8:00 a.m. as they filed into her classroom in a schoolhouse located in the popular and populous coastal city of Swakopmund, Namibia. Seven time zones away in a rural village in Hunan Province, China, Elizabeth Friend, ’06, led a class of approximately 70 high school students through their mid-afternoon English language lessons.  

Both Ponder and Friend completed international internships as part of their Jepson education. Ponder interned with the Desmond Tutu Peace Centre in South Africa, and Friend combined her internship with a study-abroad experience in Tibet and Nepal. Both women found their internship experience left them with an even greater desire to explore the world and learn about other cultures.  

WorldTeach provided them with the chance to do just that. A nonprofit, nongovernmental organization founded by a group of Harvard students in 1986, WorldTeach recruits volunteers to live and work as teachers in developing countries.  

Ponder, who arrived in Namibia in December 2005, recently completed her one-year commitment and returned to her hometown in Franklin, Va., in time to celebrate Christmas with her family. But she remains enthralled with Africa and hopes to return soon, she said.  

“When I went over to Namibia,” Ponder recalled, “I just wanted to help. I’m not trained to be a teacher.” But she learned fast out of necessity. 

Ponder typically taught four to five English classes during a school day that began at 8:00 a.m. and ended at 2:00 p.m. Most of her students spoke English relatively well, Ponder said, despite the fact that 80 to 85 percent of them spoke Afrikaans or one of Namibia’s 20 plus tribal languages at home. She described their writing, however, as “atrocious,” and she administered weekly spelling tests in an effort to help the children improve in this area. 

Given the challenges her students faced, however, Ponder could only marvel at their intelligence and motivation. Located on Africa’s west coast, Namibia didn’t start to focus on education until it won its independence from South Africa in 1990, according to Ponder. Therefore, many of her students’ parents never received an education, could not read or speak English and were unable to help their children complete their homework.  

Other factors also hindered the students’ ability to finish homework assignments. Many students walked 30- or 40-minutes to their townships after school let out and then worked on household chores until nightfall. Most lived in homes cobbled together from scrap metal without plumbing or electricity.

The lack of electricity made it impossible for students to work on homework after sunset. In an effort to address the homework problem, Ponder’s middle school instituted a mandatory one-hour review session after school. 

The school undertook other initiatives to help its largely impoverished student body succeed. For example, of the 280 students attending Ponder’s middle school, 200 participated in the government-sponsored feeding program. 

“The government donated huge sacks of maize meal,” Ponder said, “and a local woman would cook it up. The maize looks like thick oatmeal, but it smells disgusting. But some of the children would eat two, three helpings. For many, it was the only hot meal they got all day.”  

Students also learned to take advantage of the school’s indoor plumbing. Because they didn’t have running water in their homes, many students would bring washcloths to school and rinse off in the bathroom sinks. Although washing in the school sinks violated school rules, Ponder said she couldn’t bring herself to chastise the children for trying to keep clean.  

The desert climate of the region posed another challenge, especially given that the school had no air conditioning and temperatures sometimes hovered around 105 degrees Fahrenheit. “Sometimes it got so hot that we would turn off all the lights and have the kids lie down on the floor and read books,” Ponder said.  

Ponder faced some challenges of her own as well. Less than two months after arriving in Namibia, Ponder awoke at 4:00 a.m. to find a male intruder in her bedroom. The man and his partner robbed Ponder and her roommate of many of their possessions, including a camera, towels and their Pantene shampoo, but didn’t inflict any physical harm on them.

Despite pleas from her parents to return home after this scary incident, Ponder chose to move to a safer part of town and remain in Namibia. 

“I will never regret my time in Namibia,” Ponder said. Although she described her stint as a teacher as the most exhausting job she’d ever had, she wouldn’t trade it. “It surpassed all my expectations, and the experience gave me a lot more confidence.”  

Ponder has not forgotten her students in Namibia now that she is back in the United States. She has been raising money to purchase a copy machine for the middle school where she taught in Swakopmund. She would like to see the school, and Namibia in general, become less dependent on foreign volunteers, she said.  

In terms of her own goals, Ponder is currently seeking employment in South Africa, ideally in a leadership position in the nonprofit sector. Securing a job in a foreign country has proved more difficult than she expected, she said.  

She also hopes to enroll in a master’s program in social development in one of the two universities in Cape Town, South Africa, in February 2008. “I have a real passion for working in Africa,” Ponder said.  

Elizabeth Friend, it seems, has a similar passion for working in Asia. Friend started working for WorldTeach in China during the summer of 2006. She will complete her one-year stint as an English teacher at You Xian Middle and High School in Hunan Province this July.  

Schools in China’s large cities have access to educational English resources, Friend said. Not so small schools such as You Xian in rural sections of China. “I am the first foreigner to spend time in this area,” Friend said. 

Most of Friend’s students live in dormitories at the school, a common practice in much of China, especially in rural areas. Children typically attend elementary schools near their homes, Friend explained, but public middle schools and high schools are often located far apart. If students live more than a 30-minute bike ride from their middle school or high school, their parents usually pay for them to live at school so that they can continue their education.  

Children are separated by gender and grade level in the dormitories, which Friend described as dark, drafty and sparse. Most rooms accommodate 10 to 12 students in bunk beds. Students clean the dormitories, as well as their classrooms and the school grounds. 

Students report for morning exercises—a form of low-impact aerobics—at 6:45 a.m. and classes begin promptly at 7:00 a.m. A midday break from 12:00-2:00 p.m. gives students a chance to eat and relax before returning to their classes from 2:00-5:00 p.m. They eat dinner from 5:00-6:00 p.m., have a mandatory self-study period until 9:30 p.m. and go to bed in accordance with a 10:00 p.m. lights-out rule.  

Students follow this regimen Monday through Saturday. On Sundays they enjoy some free time to relax during the day before resuming their studies in the evening.  

Such an intense schedule allows little or no time for students to pursue other interests such as music, art, sports, or even pleasure reading, according to Friend. “My own assessment is that many of these students are less well rounded than American students as a result,” Friend said.  

Classroom dynamics offer a contrast to the U.S. model as well. With an average class size of 65 to 75 students, Chinese teachers employ an authoritarian, lecture-based teaching methodology, Friend said.  

They focus most of their instructional time on covering the content of the Gao Kao, the test students must take when they complete high school to determine whether they will attend university or technical school or pursue other options. Competition for admission to one of China’s universities remains fierce because of the sheer number of high school graduates. 

With its emphasis on rote memorization, the traditional Chinese teaching methodology does not encourage critical thinking, according to Friend. “I have tried to help [my students] see a different teaching style—one which involves critical thinking and interactive group work,” Friend said.  

“I get them thinking about issues,” Friend said. “I try to help them gain a larger cultural perspective—to let them know there is something beyond their town.”  

In an effort to accomplish this, Friend and a high school Chinese-language teacher from Friend’s hometown of Hingham, Mass., created a cultural exchange blog for their students. “We try to post new thoughts, ideas and questions each week for the students in China and America to read,” Friend said. “Our goal is to help broaden cultural appreciation while strengthening foreign language skills.”  

Friend has undertaken another service project on behalf of her students, this one focused on collecting hundreds of English-language books. “I first realized the need and interest in English books when I was in the downtown area of You Xian and saw many of my students spending their precious free time on Sunday sitting and reading in a small book store,” Friend said. “Many of the books were translated versions of English classics as well as some newer books, including the first Harry Potter book.”  

Currently the You Xian school library doesn’t own any English-language books, but that will soon change. With the help of Friend’s hometown public schools and a used book store located in her hometown public library, Friend has collected more than 900 books for the You Xian Middle and High School. She hopes to raise enough funds in the next few months to ship all the books to You Xian.  

“I think that the [English-language] library will help the students further their English abilities as well as gain new insight into other cultures,” Friend said. “I also hope that the books will encourage students to use their creativity and critical-thinking skills.”  

In addition to the good news about the English-language library for her students, Friend recently received some good news for herself: she learned of her acceptance to a master’s program on sustainable international development at Brandeis University for the fall semester. She hopes to complete the field work component of her master’s program in Nepal, addressing such issues as access to clean water, healthcare and education. 

But between now and July when she returns to the United States, Friend still revels in soaking up Chinese culture. “I have learned that if I am able to keep an open mind and find a way to embrace China and all its peculiarities my experience in China will continue to be one of the most stimulating times in my life,” Friend said. “I just have to keep my eyes, ears, nose, hands and mouth open for whatever China throws at them.”