I started teaching

This week I started officially teaching classes though the time table (schedule) is not completely finished even by the end of the week. My school roughly had 750 learners last year and this year we have around 650. No one is quite sure why but we think more will show up sooner or later. So far on my schedule I get to teach tenth grade physical science, eighth grade math and physical science, and grades five through seven Internet communication technologies (ICT). Here instead of being a subject teacher, everyone just teaches whatever is needed whether or not they are actually qualified for it. Because the time table isn’t finished we’ve been using the same schedule everyday and just waiting until later to use a schedule and teach real lessons.

This hasn’t been too bad except for teaching the fifth graders ICT. The normal ICT teacher is in South Africa because he daughter started school in Johannesburg. I have no syllabus (syllabi are developed by the ministry of education and given to the teachers) and no one to ask what I should teach the learners. Because of a complete lack of preparation for the learners I have not allowed them on the computers and mostly end up babysitting the most rambunctious children for two class periods every day. It is not enjoyable though my older learners are excellent and I really enjoy them. I sought advice from other teachers at school, they replied “You must get a stick and hit them,” for multiple reasons this advice was ignored. Discipline with the younger learners is difficult. They are under the impression that if I don’t hit them they are doing nothing wrong. I’ve talked to other Peace Corps Volunteers and they have given me some advice but they mostly say it will just take time for them to get use to your style. My head of department tells me that when he writes the actual schedule I will not have the fifth graders and will likely only teach grades eight and higher, until then it’s just hang on and hope for the best.

On a more positive note I had several people over this past weekend for a house warming dinner. It was a lot of fun sitting around and discussing our first two weeks of real work with some of the older volunteers who went through the same thing last year. Also the food was wonderful. I made pizzas for people and the second night Martin made tortillas and we had beef curry tortillas. It was pretty delicious. We also had scrambled eggs and pancakes Sunday morning. If you couldn’t tell getting together and eating real food is very important to the sanity of a Volunteer.