More School

I taught at school all this past week. It was great fun and a good experience. I enjoyed sharing stories with the teachers and the headmaster. They thought my time with them was much to short. And really a week is. I could have done more if I had more time but they were very grateful for that which I did do. I taught English classes and music to P5, 6, 7. Well, and social studies in fact as I told them about Canada. The Canada binder that Suzanne Kapur’s class had prepared for the Learning Centre came in quite handy. I shared the letters and the pictures. They particularly enjoyed the stories and pictures about snow, Halloween, our classrooms and the fact that we walk our dogs. (Here dogs are guard dogs and they run around on their own.) School seems to run on African time too of sorts. It starts punctual, ie the bell is rung on time…(an old hand bell rung by a student) so is recess and lunch etc. but then instructional time doesn’t actually start when the bell has rung. Students go to their classrooms and are reprimanded if they don’t go right away but the teachers don’t actually enter the classroom sometimes a whole 15 minutes or maybe even later. Teachers are sometimes just served their lunch when the bell rings and so they sit and eat it while students hang around in the classrooms. Yesterday the English teacher never arrived to class. As they were waiting around for him I decided to go in and help them wait by playing some games with them reviewing materials they’d learned in the week. I presume the teacher figured I had everything under control so he never came. He then even left early to go into town. And there’s really only so much game playing you can do. Thankfully the math teacher ended up coming in in the last half hour of the day to give them some math review.

The headmaster really wanted me to teach solfege in music classes so I did and taught them Do Re Mi from the Sound of Music to go with it.  Also Land of the Silver Birch, which has been a very big hit, and Love goes round and round in a circle. I also tried to teach Masooli-Kitettikka which worked well in some classes but not in others. The P7 boys for example were too embarrassed for it. The P5 boys doing the bass part did a very good job actually. They had a good rhythm going. I was glad for the music teacher’s help too. She helped greatly with the two part singing. She was very sweet. She made me a banana fibre basket as a thank you. I was so touched since it was completely unnecessary and they have so little.

Teachers and headmasters are paid so little, particularly in government schools. 100 or 200$ a month! Many live apart from their families, in teacher’s residence and need second jobs because they can’t make ends meet. The headmaster was telling me that he couldn’t afford to send his daughter to school this term. She should be starting S1 (high school) and she’s very mad at him because all her friends are going on to school this