Back to school, back to school, I'm going back to school...

I am done my first day of school! It was a good day. I was introduced this morning to a nice ovation, and felt very welcome. From everything I've been told, this was one of the least disorganized first days of any school in Lesotho. What I mean is, we actually had classes. We took attendance. Lunch was served. I gave homework, sort of. At the morning assembly, our Vice Principal announced that "Unlike other schools, who will not begin teaching for the first few weeks of school, we are going to start teaching today. So tell your friends, we are starting to teach today."

But, in saying this was not that disorganized for Lesotho, I am only saying so much. For the first few weeks of classes, while our actual school is still being built, we are a "combined school," meaning we are borrowing a few classrooms from the nearby primary school. As a result we have to condense a lot. The different sections of Form A and B (aka grade 8 and 9) are combined into a single section, and Form D (grade 11) is just not coming to school at all for a few weeks.

From a personal perspective, the bad news is that I had a class of 60 Form A's today (I'm told this will be more like 100 once they all show up), in a room that would be better suited to hold 30. The good news is that instead of teaching 26 credits per week, right now I am only teaching 13. 'Tis a great way to ease in.

I wasn't too nervous as I entered my math class at around 9:30 this morning. I planned to lay down some ground rules, encourage them to participate in class, encourage them to tell me when I am speaking too fast, and then get through some pretty basic material. The class went fine, I suppose, but far from perfect. They were exceedingly shy; this is a problem throughout Lesotho classrooms, and exacerbated by this being their first day of secondary school. And, they indeed had a lot of trouble understanding me at times. I still need to work on speaking more slowly, clearly, and British-like. Getting an answer to a question was often like pulling teeth, but by the end of class, we had accomplished a decent amount.

In my science class this afternoon, I taught the same kids, and did something I considered very daring. I went against the customs of the school, of the entire country even, and told the students explicitly, "I dislike corporal punishment, and I am not going to hit you." Now, the teachers at school realize I'm not down with child beating, and despite some light prodding ("Come on, you know you're going to hit them, wait till you see Mare do it, you'll want to do it!"), they have no choice but to respect my stance. Still, there's a difference between us teachers knowing I'll never do it, but still being able to hold it over the kids as a threat, and the kids knowing I won't do it. I've sensed in the past, though, that part of students' reluctance to speak in class is for fear of punishment for wrong answers, and I want more than anything for my students to participate, to keep their minds active, and to think. So, in the interest of learning, I showed my cards.

I expected the kids to be really excited and relieved to hear the good news. But, sadly, they just stared at me blankly.

So, what went wrong?
(a) They're so overwhelmed by being in secondary school that they just were soaking it all in.
(b) I completely misread the situation.
(c) I just said the whole thing too fast and they heard gibberish.
(d) All of the above.

Ha ke tsebe. Who knows.  In any case, the rest of the class went fine, but apparently 8th grade science in Lesotho is far less interesting than say, college physiology in the states. I taught them what a thermometer is.

I waited for science class to end, and when no teacher came at the start of the next period, I was confused. 10 minutes after class was supposed to be over, I walked out, went to the teachers' room, and asked if anyone was supposed to be teaching. No one had any idea, but upon consulting the master schedule, one teacher smirked, stood up, grabbed some chalk and hurried over to the class. I laughed. Though there is clearly room to improve efficiency, I love the laid back culture here. That said, I suspect we'll run a relatively tight ship at our school, which would be great for the kids.

My coworkers are all very nice, and the lunch the school served today (rice and some kind of gravy made of pasta and carrots and potatoes) was solid. Teachers get to eat on glass plates with real silverware. The students bring their own bowls to receive their lunch. Bowls range from actual bowls, to half-melted old plates, to cut-in-half soda bottles, to old plastic bags. For utensils, it's usually just your hand, but I did occasionally see a plastic spoon, and one girl used her ruler (watching her eat rice with gravy with a ruler out of an old plastic bag was kinda sad).

The only homework I assigned was to write down one question you have about anything, and one thing you want to accomplish this year. My hope is that they'll all have questions for me that they otherwise would be too timid to ask. During practice teaching, this was pretty effective, but those were all pretty serious students, so we'll see.

Today I taught two 80-minute periods, and I had lots of down time. Tomorrow I only teach 2 40-minute periods, so, I'll bring a book to read. Despite some challenges, so far, so good.