General Papers

Kerry and I are teaching “General Papers” to “Senior 6” which is equivalent to seniors in an American High School. General Papers is a new course in the past couple of years, and is to teach student how to critically think for the national exam. It’s almost like a Theory of Knowledge (IB) class, or teaches to the new essay portion of the SATs. The topics can range from politics to science, religion to AIDS, local Rwandan issues to world events. It’s a fun class to teach. This is the first year it has been in English and that the National Exam will only be offered in English. Obviously, for students who have only studied in French until this point, it is a bit daunting.

To get to know our students better, Kerry and I did a very American thing. We passed out small pieces of paper and asked each student to write their name, interests and career aspirations on them. Many of the interests listed echoed the fact that these students are some of the best in the country ,attending one of the best schools for science; Physics, Chemistry, and Maths were all listed. The jobs also followed this, with many students wanting to be engineers, medical doctors, politicians or nurses.

These are no doubt wonderful aspirations, and how many American students would list school subjects as their interests? How many are that grateful for and devoted to their studies? These classes all have 45 students and are kept in order by their own discipline, respect for teachers, and desire to learn. It’s pretty incredible.

There were some answers that were more inspiring than others, and made me stop and reflect as I entered them into my spreadsheet, a common interest was “Pray God” or “Singing songs of Praise.” Below I copied some other excerpts as nearly as I could:

“Interest: I like to pray God through his son Jesus Christ and to love each other”

“Being someone that every will be proud of, especially my mom”

“Career Aspiration *being one day an important person in government
*being a peace maker”

As I final thought, in each class at least one student listed “soldier” as their career aspiration.