The first week of school!
After arriving just as last term ended and then nothing
was going on over the holidays, I’ve been looking forward to school starting
for a long time. Here’s the good, the
bad, the confusing and the potential.
The good:
- School has started!
- We finally have some firewood
- My counterpart and a few other teachers seem willing to
do stuff with me
- I can sit in on classes and start getting to know
students
- They already have an active SGA that I might be able to
work with
- I got to introduce myself to all of the new form 1
students
The bad:
- There’s still a big lack of furniture and books (and
teachers and food and firewood and…)
- They ran out of food and firewood Tuesday, Wednesday
and Thursday, and had to send the day students home. The boarders went hungry until they found
food and firewood, which usually happened around 5pm. This is after not feeding the kids at all Monday,
the day they arrived, because the term technically doesn’t start until Tuesday.
The confusing/frustrating:
- All of the directions in the new student orientation
were given in Setswana. The teachers
know that these kids don’t understand and speak English (About 30-40 probably
do out of 700 something). But then they
still exhort them to study hard and get good marks, in classes that are taught
and tested in English. I don’t get how
people either don’t understand that the kids won’t get anything out of lessons
in English, or ignore it and pretend like the students just don’t care about
school.
- The hungry kids (see above)
- This chaos of the first week, including classes left
unattended and lack of food and firewood, apparently happens every year.
The potential:
- We now have at least some firewood, so hopefully we can
keep the students for the full day and have PACT club
- There are several clubs/students organizations I might
be able to work with
- The teachers and school staff are happy to have me and
introduce me to everyone as ‘our Peace Corps Volunteer’
- Some teachers are interested in having me teach a class
or help them teach creatively
- We had a guidance and counseling meeting where I got the
go ahead for PACT club and we put a few activities on the school calendar
- School has started so I can finally DO something!
- The end of my Peace Corps ‘Community Assessment Phase’,
affectionately called Lock Down, is almost over as well. This means I can start doing projects instead
of just observing, and I can leave my village more.
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