“Are you married?” Day 1 and 2 at Ecole Des Science

 

I was told to expect to the unexpected my first few days and this was true. The first day I had no specifics about what I was teaching but I just showed up at 8. This is what my first few days looked like

Day One:

12:30 AM Woke up to fill buckets with water. We have “running water” which really means that it is on between 12:30-4am and you have to wake up, fill buckets so you have water for the next day.

7:00 AM Bucket bath and heart shaped corn cake for breakfast

8:00 AM- 9:00 AM Sat in staff room. There were 11 male teachers and 1 female besides me.

9:00-9:30 AM Everyone went to library so woman could clean staff room. Library has a couple hundred text books in different subjects. I found one for computers and a few for English!

9:30 AM-10:30 AM I sat outside with the teachers while they spoke in French/wanda about politics, taxes, school schedules and pay. It is hard for me to follow along in French because they tend to throw in Kinderwanda and then I get confused.

11:00 AM Headmaster came into the staff room and started a meeting. Teacher Patrick wrote everyone’s names on the board and Jean (Headmaster) assigned the subjects, class levels and hours. I was assigned S4, S5 S6 A and B which equals 12 hours. and 4 hours of computers for S4.

12:00 PM Huge fight/debate about amount of hours people are working. Some people were assigned 27 and others less. They proceed to reassign hours, levels and subjects until the people with 27 have closer to 25.

12:50 PM I get assigned 1 hour of creative which I think means music.

1:00 PM C’est Tout. (That’s all)

Day Two:

1:30 AM Woke up to fill buckets

7:30 Woke up and had tea and heart shaped cake

8:05 AM Got to school and sat in staff room not having received a schedule or instructions.

8:15AM Realized that there weren’t a lot of other teachers in the staff room.  I looked around and realized there was a vague schedule with the subjects and classes (but no teachers names…. so I was confused). Then realized I had skipped my first class.

8:50 AM I walked into my first class completely unprepared but went over my background, the rules for the class and goals for the year. There was a lot of discussion among my fellow volunteers about how to approach discipline. A lot of people thought the best idea was to walk in the first day and be a hard ass. While I am  very capable of being a hard ass, its not my style to fake it just to fake it. Bribery is more my style.  I said that if the class follows my rules, every week, our last class we would play a game or listen to music. In a system where teahcers “chalk and talk” and they spend 8 hours a day in a classroom, 1 hour of sports and then back to classroom for studying I am hoping that the idea of a little in class recreation will keep them in line. Worst case- I will send kids to stand outside (very embarrassing here). These are my class rules:

1.  No Cheating

2. Respect the teacher and each other (this launches a discussion about what respecting teacher means etc)

3. Be Positive (I can instead of I can’t)

At the end I asked “any questions?” and the questions were:

“Are you married?” “How old are you?”

It may surprise my readers to know while I am not married, I am engaged! Well, fake engaged. This started awhile ago. Because I find men here to be very aggressive and predatory, I decided that John who lives closest to me would be my fake boyfriend. I would parade him around town and this would send the message to people to bug off. Well, the first time someone asked me and I said I had boyfriend they promptly proposed. This caused me to up the ante and thus I am engaged. Students and teachers seem to accept this as a signal to back off.

9:40 AM Ditto last class including questions

10:30 AM Tea break sans tea. I am asked by a teacher in the staff room if I am married. I explain I am engaged. He says “Oh no. That means you cannot be my girlfriend.” (to much laughter from other teachers).

10:50 AM Ditto last class with the addition of a new question- “One of my goals is- that we may come to your wedding”.  This class (S5cmb i think) also asked about my family and favorite sport and food. They were happy to hear I liked tennis and I had to explain pizza! Explain pizza! These poor poor children. Another good question “Do children in the U.S. learn Kinderwanda?”

11:40 AM Ditto 9:40 AM class

12:30 AM C’est tout! Wednesday is a short day because the students use the afternoon to study in their classrooms. I think in the coming weeks I will use the afternoon to teach English to the teachers.