School has Begun

So, school has started for all of us here in Moz. The school year runs the actual year so it starts in January and ends in Nov/Dec (depending on what exams you have to take). Jan 17th was our “opening day” and in true Moz fashion there was a big assembly where all the important people made their important speeches. Just imagine all that paperwork about rules and such that gets sent out to parents before school starts being read out loud instead of copied and sent out to everyone to read for themselves. That was 75% of this meeting. 33 rules of conduct…ugh…then some repeated in local language for the benefit of parents at the meeting. My personal highlight of the meeting was the dance version of “I’m in Miami Bitch” being the song choice for background music before the meeting started. I literally laughed out loud a couple times at the hilarity of it all.

Also Monday I finally got my schedule for teaching (nothing like waiting to the last minute). I’m teaching 10th & 11th grade English and 11th grade Technology class. Also I’m the head of the technology department for first cycle (grades 8-10). Still unsure as to what that’s going to entail, but I’ll find out eventually I’m sure. I have 3 classes of 10th grade English (making me the sole 10th grade English teacher at the school), 2 classes of 11th grade English and 2 classes of 11th grade technology. All of my English classes are in the afternoon and technology classes will be in the morning with a total of 20 hours of teaching (The max I can teach is 24 hours). The only thing that makes me nervous is 10th grade since that ‘s also a national exam year so there is going to be a lot of pressure on me to get the correct percentage of students to pass (usually by helping out with the test or bumping up grades which I refuse to do). Also, there is no curriculum for technology so I’ll get to teach them whatever I want to teach which should be fun and/or stressful.

Now, just because school has started, don’t be fooled silly rule-following Americans -- it’s Wednesday and I’ve only taught 1 of 4 classes that were supposed to take place and that class only had ~15 of my about 40 students. Over holiday everyone goes back home and helps out their families in the mato (bush) and don’t start coming to school until they’re assured that the teachers are actually having classes. A colleague told me that the 15 kids I taught today will spread the word to other students in the class and everyone will start showing up soon. We’ll see about that. My one class that I did have was actually pretty fun. I wanted them to ask me questions about English, America, even me (which had the potential to backfire). Unfortunately none of them had questions to ask so I just kept asking all of them questions like “what’s your favorite subject?” “How old are you?” etc. They know a lot of vocab and could fill in the blank to answer questions, but when asked “Why is green your favorite color?” they had some difficulty. Something to work on in class I suppose. It was fun to determine their level of English. Two more days of pseudo-classes and then we’re off to visit some volunteers this weekend. Chao!!