My first week at school

There were so many thoughts running around my head this week, many of which I am sure will come out in posts over the next 10 weeks here. There are no classes the first week of school, which I knew about before I came, but had the same semi-incredulous response as the director, why bring all the kids in and just put them to work cleaning up the place? What is there incentive to even show up? After the first day, with only about 30 kids reporting, I still thought that was because there was no reason for them to show up because they were just doing yard work and cleaning and no activities. 

Working with some girls to clean up the library

The more the week went on, I realized although it was totally different than my education, it is not a bad system. It is like all of the students are on a work study program, which is necessary since the school has no maintenance staff. And while the kids are given work to do, in the afternoon after lunch it is almost like they have an afternoon of recess, playing ball, making buildings out of scrap wood, reading, in the library, or just

hanging out. The staff is also doing a lot of the work that in the US would be done before the students came back. But here, I assume the school is not going to pay teachers for weeks where there are no students and therefore, no tuition. Three to four families or guardians of students came in almost every day to meet with the administration and sometimes me to work out payment/attendance/living arrangements or other issues. We are working on a new textbook loan program since many students either could not afford books, or parents would by them months into the year. I distributed school supplies and provisions (soap, snacks, toothpaste, etc) to the neediest of students. We took tallies of students that had not shown up and sent neighbors, teachers or others to go and check on them. One of the new students this year was sick with malaria and sent work through a friend, one is stuck in another town because the father sill not pay for the transportation to get eh child back to her grandmother. These are just some of the issues that we need to find

out and address before the real classes start. Overall, this week of teacher planning and student work actually was building the new community for the year. Meeting new teachers, checking in with students that have problems and issues, getting all the issues settled so that hopefully Monday, people can focus on the classes.

Morning Assembly

There are a lot of moving parts of this school. There are 12 teachers, 3 administrators, cooks and driver to take care of: boarding and feeding students, including if they have mattresses, sheets, do laundry and keep clean. Maintaining the buildings and bathrooms for 80+ students, let alone the regular school tasks like teaching classes, feeding the students, and all the administration for all the fees, scholarships, enrollments, etc. All of the administrators are also full time teachers, teaching 6 classes. All of the teachers have many other duties like extracurricular activities, in charge of sanitation or nurse and librarian.

Also during this week we had teacher trainings. These were the questions that made up the homework that all the teachers had to complete. I am in a weird position of sort-of teacher and sort-of administrator. As the representative of Pagus, sponsor and long-time supporter of much of the schools work, that makes sense. On the other hand I have never taught a day in a school classroom in my life.

These teacher trainings were interesting and totally different than I expect back home. Some were almost like sermons, nor surprising since the asst director is also a pastor. The speeches were very roundabout, very repetitive, would make our efficient PowerPoint experts cringe, and very little interaction with the audience. But they were also probably more applicable to the audience, all of whom has English as their second language and all the stories and examples of the thoughts were both helpful and culturally more the norm. But there was also a level of casualness/teasing/non-PC discussions that went on that was also strikingly differen than back in the US. With all open windows and kids running around they used students names as examples of how to manage tough situations or discipline problems. They openly said the name of past staff that left or were fired for some pretty sketchy reasons. It was also more like a team coach than a boss giving the talks, a pep talk before the big game, lots of clichés and lots of adlibbing but also fun and motivating to keep the school one of the top in the region. So I am sure that I will have more to add when I actually have students in front of me, but it will surely be an adventure and I will figure out if this is something I have a knack for or not.