1.2.2007

Oof, what a week. I've had some really good days, and then this morning I nearly threw up I was so stressed out.

I think what's been putting me in a good mood is the gardening I've been doing. Last week I planted green peppers, cilantro, and carrots, and this week I added a lot of tomatoes. It's also really nice finally having the whole school in session. The little tiny village really close to the school is much more bustling, I can do almost all my food shopping there now.

On the downside I had to yell at my kids. After doing the lab 3 weeks ago, I had 5 or 6 lab reports turned in to me, 4 of them completed. So, I devoted a period to how to do a lab report, how graphs should look, etc. I also gave a writing assignment when the lab was first assigned that was basically 1 paragraph of reflections on the lab. I told them that we would redo the lab this week, but that I wanted to collect the writing assignment (which only 1 person had included at the end of his lab report) on Wednesday, and that only those students who turned it in would be allowed to participate in the lab on Thursday. I was really thought that would get me those assignments. I re-wrote the assignment on the board and left it up for a couple days. But by the end of the day on Wednesday I had 7 papers, pretty bad for 28 students. What was stressing me out so much today was what to do. So I took them outside and yelled at them. I think there were more problems they weren't telling me about. Turning in work is very unusual here, and I think one of the obstacles/excuses was that many kids didn't have a separate notebook for labs or any extra paper. Now, of course no one came out and told me this, but this time I let them all do the lab, with a strict warning that for real, anyone who does not do a lab report will be not be allowed to do the next lab. And I gave them all a couple sheets of paper (which I'm fantastically lucky that the school provides--I know of volunteers who buy a ream of paper every other week give their kids quizzes). So we'll see how it goes.

I also got really mad today at a teacher, who happens to be the physics department head (though I don't think that means a whole lot as I'm the only A-Level physics teacher) and occupies the office that I go through to get to my office. He pulled me out of class today, midsentence, and took me into my office where he proceeded to explain that the kids are dishonest and will take any opportunity to rob me. He's become very agitated because I've put the 2 chess boards in my office and I let kids come in and play. Several times he's told me that they're "very clever" and will distract me and trick me so that they can steal my things and the textbooks that I have to check out to students. He tells me I shouldn't allow more than 2 kids in my office at a time. I asked him how, then, am I supposed to check books out to kids when his rule requires that 3 students must sign to check out 1 book? He ignores the question and repeats himself (these are past conversations). Today, since he pulled me out of class while teaching I thought he'd have something worthwhile to stay, but unfortunately it was just the same. After listening for a minute I interrupted to ask what his point was. This prompted him to start over--this is all in Kiswahili, and often with this teacher, when I try to ask leading questions he assumes I'm just not understanding what he's saying. I assure him that I understand, and, unfortunately I think the sarcasm was totally lost on him when I said "Maybe you didn't see, but I'm teaching now. So, right now, what do you want?" I don't think the rudeness translated, which is maybe for the best, but he realized I wanted to go back to my class so he finished off with his normal conclusion, about the only thing he's ever said to me in English: "We Africans, you cannot trust us."

I'm angry again just thinking about it. I think I've had 3 conversations on other topics with this guy, and probably 5 conversations about how "Africans" (meaning the students) are doing nothing but looking for ways to take advantage of me. They'll steal lab equipment (Why? I ask) oh, the standard weights and measures are very valuable, you can sell them for lots of money--I'm a bit skeptical. They'll steal the textbooks--I say karibu (welcome, go ahead)--the good books have been checked out and what's left are old books falling apart that I have 10 to 20 copies of each. And if the students want to steal them and read them instead of letting them fall apart on my shelf, I don't see a problem.

Since I'm angry, one more story about this teacher. I had a visit yesterday from Jacob, my sitemate, a volunteer at another school about 10 km away. He just dropped by for a little while, but he told me that once when he was visiting Mithril, the old volunteer at my school, they were in her office (nextdoor to the Evil Physics Teacher) when a kid came in and asked EPT a question. They heard the question, and Jacob said it was a good one, really tough. Mithril commented later that she didn't know if she could even answer it. EPT tells the student that he's embarrassed to be asked this question, it is so easy, and that the student should be ashamed. He tells the student that he should go ask any of the other students, beacuse the question is so simple anyone will be able to explain the answer. The kid leaves, and Mithril asks him why he said those things, and he says something like, "Well, I didn't know the answer..." Sigh.

I suppose I should say here that, though I haven't observed any full classes, walking by and sticking my head in, many of the teachers seem to be effective, and even EPT seems to be mostly effective in the classroom.

So, I've got kids playing chess almost everyday, which I think is great. Yesterday I announced that if anyone beats me in chess (I've only played 2 or 3 games against the kids) I'll take him into "town" (the village) to eat pork, which would be a huge treat. And we'll see Monday how many lab reports I get.

6.2.2007
Today's excitement was a staff meeting. I got to school a little early so I could make an announcement at the morning parade that I'm starting music classes this Thursday. I'm a bit worried about how many people will come, I invited between 500 and 600 students and teachers, and a whole lot of them seem interested... More news on that after Thursday.

After the announcement, I taught my math classes. Then I got a surprise visit from my sitemate, a volunteer about 10 km away, who was hoping to borrow some teaching materials from our Physics and Biology departments. The biology department head apparently left to go into town today, but we got some of the physics stuff. Around 10:10, we have a short staff meeting (matangazo) everyday, usually about 10 minute long. Today, when I got there the secondmaster announced that the "Kigao" would be at 11, and that was all. I asked what that was, and was told it was a meeting. The different name should have warned me, but this was a major to-do. My after-chai class normally starts around 10:45 (on good days, sometimes not until 11:00), so I decided to just start class after the Kigao. Little did I know that the Kigao would surprisingly start almost ontime, and then drag on until 5:50 pm. That was one long meeting. I was very hungry by the end. Luckily I had my bag along and I did some lesson planning and got a couple letters written. As many of the teachers were variously writing text messages, sleeping, and passing notes, I didn't feel so bad ignoring most everything which I could only understand half of anyway.

9.2.2007
Ah! Secondary Project: Music Education is off to a great start. I would estimate I had well over 100 kids clapping rhythms last night. (Over 100 is just an estimate, but there were a bunch more than in math class, where I regularly have around 80.) No teachers came, but several asked me about it the next day, and two of them said they really wanted to come and gave me very legitimate reasons why they couldn't, and one actually did come, but I think he was a bit late and many students were early (which almost never happens), and I think he didn't want to be the only teacher.

Early next week I may try to do an additional period for the teachers so they can catch up, and then have them join in with the students. My first class was just rhythm, and it was a lot of fun. I was pretty nervous before starting--I'm not sure exactly why--but everything went well. After abou 90 minutes of teaching I told them that was all for class, but welcomed them to stay to listen to me play my violin a little. Almost everyone stayed for a few short pieces and they were full of questions. No one had seen a violin before, and almost no one had even heard of the Kiswahili word for it (fidla).

And then today I got my bike. Finally. A Peace Corps vehicle is going around delivering bikes, apparently being delayed a lot due to road conditions. Today was my lucky day though and I got a brand new nice Trek bike, which took me a bit longer to put together than I'd like to admit. Tomorrow I was going to walk the 10km to visit my sitemate, but now I can ride!

I've also added some math periods so that I can hopefully finish covering differentiation before the end of the term. This brings me up to 22 unique 40-minute periods each week (including music), which is quite a bit of work. (They are all paired, and it is rare for a set of two to start less than 10 minutes late, and the one's after the mid-morning tea break, which is really breakfast for my kids, usually starts more like 20 minutes late, or more if the daily staff meeting runs long.)

Right now we're covering thermometry in Physics. This is a good example of one of my reasons for disliking the national syllabi. I'm starting the heat unit, and I've spent 6 periods on the basics because, although my kids have been taught some of it before several times, it's always been partial (and likely poorly taught and poorly understood). So after going over how the temperature scales are defined--which is good to know--I spent yesterday and today talking about the pros/cons and misc. characteristics of various kinds of thermometers and diagramming the thermometers and how they work. I found it a little interesting to read about, but teaching it is boring, and I can tell the kids think so and can probably tell I think so. Guess I need to work on my game face. Part of the problem is that next year is when they will learn about electricity and magnetism (who knows what little tidbits they've had now and again for 4 years), but they need to know now for the national exams how a thermocouple or a platinum resistor in a wheatstone bridge can be used as thermometers. Oh well.

14.2.2007
It's been a busy week. My extra math periods are catching my class up a bit, but they're keeping me plenty busy too. Tomorrow We're gonna do a nice little physics lab with springs in series and parallel. I got all the apparatus together yesterday and today, tomorrow morning is to be spent writing the assignment. Second music class is tomorrow evening, and then I'll be in to Njombe for the weekend.

One of the A-level teachers got sick and has been in the hostpital since Monday. She was the one in charge of the exam schedule, apparently, so the other 2 decided to take the initiative and schedule exams next week, so they will start Feb 21. The kids have 5 exams to take, so of course exams need to start a full week and a half before the school closes. Actually, they just want to make sure they can all be graded by the time the kids leave, but I was counting on them starting the week school closed, not next week. So, I don't get to finish the topics I started, but there's still next year.

And the teacher shortage, oh my gosh. This afternoon we had a going-away party for another teacher (the second this month). Not good for a school that was short-staffed to start with. Also, last Friday one of the young teachers got fired, along with my friend the cook, because apparently they got drunk and showed up at the dorm. The cook's wife, who is the 3rd Master has been sick for weeks at the hospital, and now I won't be surprised if she doesn't come back. I haven't seen Donald, the cook, since he got fired. His kids say he's traveling, so I assume he's gone to see his wife. I kind of feel like people are jumping ship. In my weaker moments, when I'm thinking a lot about home, it helps to realize that there is really nothing this community seems to need more than teachers. It looks that way from in the school at least, and it's good to know I'm making as much of a difference as I possibly can.

Fashion!
People wear the strangest things here. The strangest Western clothes, that is. Today I saw a Form 3 kid wearing a t-shirt that read "MVP, Most Valuable Parent." One of my favorite teachers, Mwl Mwindosa, who teaches geography and general studies to the A-level kids, is incredibly good-natured and seems to always be smiling. Sometimes he wears a black cowboy hat, which looks great on him. He's a little big, and I can imagine him on a ranch somewhere riding the fences. On other days, sometimes he wears an immaculately laundered and ironed labcoat like a sportcoat. That just makes me laugh.

Having my bike is wonderful. I visited my sitemate, Jacob, last weekend, and it was really nice to be able to do. I told him that the last time I came back from Njombe when my bus passed his school, this guy came running down the hill wearing a (very nice, compact) life jacked. He's pretty sure that this is the guy he calls "Bwana Fashion" (mr. fashion) because he wears all sorts of strange getups, and once Jacob saw him wearing some bright orange jumpsuit, and Jacob asked him why he was wearing it, and he said "It's fashion". Very unusual for Tanzania, but I like it.

18.2.2007
Despite (or maybe because of?) all the work I had a really satisfying week. Maybe it's that a lot of the work actually got done. My second music class went great. Attendance isn't what it was the first week, but I knew it wouldn't be. A couple new people came, but I'm down to around 25 kids, which is a much less exciting but more manageable number than the hundredsome that showed up week 1. It was another rhythm class, with more syncopation practice and dotted rhythms added in. Next week I promised we'd start singing, so it's gonna be the old do re mi's. I'm so glad I started teaching those classes, they're much more exciting than my other classes because it's constantly involving the whole class, and the progress is immediately apparent.

Also, my lab went off well on Thursday. I found enough springs and weights to have the kids do an experiment about springs in series. It's nice to watch them work on the labs, they're very eager there. I just hope that I keep getting increasing numbers of lab reports. I ended up with 21 from the second try of the first lab, and I kicked all the kids who didn't turn one in out of the room for lab 3. A couple didn't leave, and promised me that they'd do the lab report this time, and I'm pretty sure a few more snuck in to do the lab. If they turn in the work, that's just fine with me... we'll see tomorrow.

The results came back for the Form IV National Exams, which determine whether kids get to go on to A-Level or not. I believe (trying to remember from training) that for boys, you need a Division 1 to get a scholarship to go to a government A-level school, and for girls Division 1, 2 and 3 get scholarships. I'm sure they still have to pay a fair amount, but my guess is if you get, for example, Division 2 and you're a boy, you can go to A-Level pretty much only if you're parents are rich. My school's results (where I doubt anybody's parents really qualify as rich... maybe a couple) were 1 student with division 1, 2 with division 2, around 20 with division 3, around 40 with division 4, and 3 or 4 failures. The Division 4's are probably pretty happy, my guess is most of them knew they weren't A-level bound and they get to graduate, which puts them among the elite for the area out in the middle of nowhere, but honestly the results are pretty abysmal. Only 1 division 1 is a blow to the school. All my A-level kids come from different schools and different areas--I think pretty much all A-level schools are boarding schools.

basi, enough of that. I learned a new phrase this weekend that I think I'm gonna overuse, but it will be so useful. Acha aibu, stop the shame. Apparently it works extremely well to make students speak up and maybe look at you while they talk, which can be a big problem, especially for the younger girls.

Now it's about time to get on a bus back to my site to go write some final exams1

take care everyone,
Gregor