School is Funny

October 16

Last Monday my first day of class, the student's second week of school, I went not knowing what I was going to teach. The teachers' schedules hadn't been done yet. The principal worked hard over the weekend and that Monday I learned that I would be teaching 18 hours: 10 hours of math to two 8th grades (60 students per class), 5 hours of English to one of the 8th grades, and 3 hours of English to the 9th grade (90 students).

I threw all of my 8th graders into one classroom, 3 to 4 to a table and gave a review lesson on plotting points, flying by the seat of my pants.

There was very little teaching my first week of school for several reasons:

1) There were only two teachers for the whole school, both of us math and science teachers. Two teachers cannot keep a school with 6 classes and over 400 students running. We sent the students home early after teaching for a couple of hours.

2) The second day of class I could not erase my previous day's math review lesson because there were no erasers to be found in the village. I left that class went into the other 8th grade classroom which had a clean blackboard, gave a lesson, threw those students out, and brought in the other 8th graders for the same lesson.

3) On Friday, the students and I all came to school and were told to go home. It was a holiday, Ramadan.

4) On Monday, we all came to school and were told to go home. It was a holiday, the 20th anniversary of the president being in power.

Today I finally gave my first real lesson teaching 4 hours of symmetry to 8th graders.

Finally maybe school has started. Or maybe tomorrow I'll be sent home again. I am glad unlike some of the students I don't have to bike in 10 km to go to school.