I made it through the first week!

August 7, 2010

I made it through the first week of school! Not that I had any serious doubts about it… Teaching is a funny thing. Sometimes it can be the best thing in the world, especially when you can see a concept really click in a student’s mind and they have that “Aha!” moment. Other times, it can be the bane of my existence. Trying to get a room full of students to be quiet so I can tell them about current electricity is frustrating, to say the least.
On Thursday afternoon, the class teachers re-shuffled the students. This means that my A1 and A2 students from last semester were all jumbled together and split up again, based on how they did on their exams in June. This is fine, in theory, and I’m sure it has worked well in the past, but why on earth would a school do this in the middle of the week? This means that maybe 3/4 of my form A students have learned something about electricity in physics. Of those, probably half have seen my lesson twice. That means there are still a handful of students who haven’t seen it, and even though I tell them to get notes from a friend, probably won’t. It also means that A2 is probably no longer my favorite class, since it now has the lower-achieving students as well as a (healthy) handful of the troublemakers.

Almost nine months in… I’ll admit, I’ve been a bit homesick. Even though school has started and goodness only knows that’s plenty to keep me busy, I still find time to miss my family and my home. I find it’s the little things that set me off… reading letters from home about Grinnell summers or going to my cabin, hearing about sports practices for my siblings and knowing that I’ll be missing their games and tournaments for the next year and a half… I still believe I’m in the right spot, but it’s hard having life at home continue on without me.
Last night, I suggested that the few teachers remaining on the campus for the weekend all cook dinner together. When I say, “We cooked dinner together,” I really mean: one teacher cooked papa and meat, and I cooked vegetable soup-stew. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to cook, especially because usually when we have gatherings like this, I somehow weasel my way out of cooking. It was a surprising lot of fun. It’s much nicer eating with people than sitting home alone, night after night, eating by myself. The teacher who hosted us all has a nice solar panel set up for the television and satellite dish that don’t work. When one teacher mentioned how she wished we could watch television, I grabbed my computer, brought it over and we watched Love Actually. In retrospect, I don’t know if I would choose to show that movie again. There are some parts with nudity and some other scenes that made me a bit uncomfortable in a culture where anything between the knees and thighs is considered off-limits unless you’re married. I do think they appreciated the message though; “Love is actually all around.” This is honestly one of my favorite movies, but seeing America at Christmas time made me miss snow and family and my tree and Christmas cookies… sigh.
So now it’s the weekend. It seems strange to be here the whole weekend; usually I get off campus, even if it’s just to go to town and do some grocery shopping. I will say, it’s pretty peaceful. I did some laundry yesterday afternoon and have been reading and writing a fair amount. I need to plan lessons for next week, as well as what we’ll do on the first day of my Life Skills Club. Over 80 students have signed up. For a school of not even 300, I’d say that’s a good amount of interest! Over a quarter of the school’s students and closer to a third! I’m pretty proud. We’ll most likely have to split the students up somehow, maybe by grade. There’s just no way we can do almost 90 people in a room here. I’m a bit disappointed that none of the Form A students have signed up, but they see me enough during the week, and maybe they’ll change their minds eventually. I’m pretty pleased that I’ll have help from the other teachers. My counterpart has been huge in getting the ball rolling. My principal is also really enthusiastic about being a part, and so are some of the other young(er) teachers who work here. I think this will help in a couple of ways. First, it should show students that Life Skills is not just something that white people preach; even Basotho teachers care and believe it is important. Second, I hope it will be more sustainable this way. If I work with teachers this year and next year, then hopefully they can carry on without me when I’m gone… Hear that? It’s that great buzz word: sustainability. Here’s hoping!
My plan (as of right now) is to do some self-esteem and identity stuff, then once they’re a bit more comfortable with each other (and me), move into the heavier topics.
I lucked out: there was a soccer game that everyone on campus wanted to watch today, so they turned the generator on. I was able to sort through some photos and music between the cheers and gasps of students. It ended up being quite a match, Chiefs vs. someone else. The Chiefs only scored in the final minute of stoppage time, and it was a beautiful goal. (Did I mention how much I miss the World Cup? I got a text message from a friend the night before school started, “Can we just put on clown shoes and go back to Rustenberg?”)
I just spoke with my librarian, Rethabile, who went to town yesterday. He said he stopped into the hospital to see how Teboho is… and yes, he is STILL in the hospital. The latest news is: they took the x-ray, sent it to Maseru to try to figure out what exactly to do with his leg. They will hopefully re-cast it maybe sometime this weekend, but probably (more realistically) next week sometime. Who knows when he will be back to school. Soon, I hope… he’s a pretty good student, very hard-working and a lot of fun to have in class. Then the problem becomes where he will stay while his leg is in a cast. If he stays at home, he has a walk that should take someone with two non-broken legs at least an hour. If he stays at school, there isn’t really anyone to take care of him and help him bathe or do anything that’s difficult for someone with a broken leg. I have no idea what will happen; I just hope his leg heals well and he doesn’t miss too much school – it would be pretty awful to have to repeat a grade just because you broke your leg (in my opinion).

I’m sure I could write another thousand words about my life here, but I think it’s time to eat lunch, work on my Life Skills lessons, and go for a run.
Love from Lesotho!
-Katie