[2008] Nov. 17th - 28th

It is a kind of let-down for me that, not having done much, the school is going to be closed soon for a month until early January next year, after another week of classes. I do however, appreciate the seemingly idling period of time spent at school for the past week for giving me some time to talk to the teachers, adjust to the environment and figure out what I could do.

I’m not sure if this is limited to JOCV or the other international volunteer organizations take similar approach, but I’ve noticed that my program tends to throw you out there to the site with a little information on it, let you find out everything else and work on your own. Inefficient this approach may be, I like the idea since this is a good way to force myself to be involved at the work place in the process of information gathering and establishing solid relationships with the colleagues.

So here’re things that I’ve done at work and the things I’ve learned. Some of them are as trivial as the annual timetable and daily schedule, but others turned out to be quite useful information. Instead of writing down long paragraphs, I’ve put down a list in chronological order.

1. After all, I confirmed that there were more advanced level teachers for biology and chemistry at the school than was necessary and that I was only assigned to have one lesson a week of the physical chemistry section of Form 5.

2. I found out about annual timetable of the school. Major breaks in December and about a month during the period of Ramadan (around September) with few week-long breaks in between.

3. School year form O-level begins in January and goes until December. A-level year begins in March and goes until February of the following year.

4. Morning sessions starts from 7am and goes until 1pm. The afternoon session follows from 1pm to 6pm.

5. Like the school system I’m used to, there’re home class teachers whom I can talk to if the students are in trouble.

6. Organizational hierarchy of the teachers. We have what they call section leaders at school. Above them are the assistant headmasters and then the headmaster.

7. If you’ve got a suggestion, chances of your suggestions getting through would be much higher to first consult with one of the section leaders.

8. Headmaster has changed while I was back in Dar for two weeks.

9. Some teachers do take going to class and giving lessons seriously, and others do not.

10. Laboratory equipments are scarce, especially for biology. I haven’t spotted a light microscope yet.

11. After randomly meeting with an O-level teacher, who is currently teaching all the chemistry lessons from Form 1 to 4 (Grade 7 to 10), I found out that there was in fact a shortage of science teachers not in the A-level but in the O-level classes.

12. Starting from January when the school year for O-level begins, I’ll be taking over his Form 1 and 2 lessons which means I’ll be teaching total of nine 80-minute lessons (1 lesson for Form 5 and 4 lessons each for Form 1 and 2) per week which is standard for the education volunteers.

13. This week is the nation-wide examination period for Form 2 students. The exams are taking place in all the secondary schools including mine. All the teachers and Form 5/6 students are supposed to be at school for regular classes, but on Monday, an invigilator from the ministry of education requested to completely close the school for the examination. Apparently, this kind of abrupt change in plans happens occasionally. Makes me wonder how I could plan out my lessons to cover everything on the syllabus till the end of the school year.

So here I am with this so much extra time in my hand, writing this post.
All together with the month of break ahead, I’ll take this as an opportunity to plan my lessons ahead and studying Kiswahili, since the students in lower grades generally have lower English proficiency compared to those in the A-level. There’s also an annual volunteer conference and a conference for education volunteers in Dar for me to attend in mid- December.

After all, when the new school year starts in next January, there won’t be any major breaks until next September. (According to the official schedule and that if there was no long-term blackouts or major shortages of water)