First day of school! Man, I never thought I’d ever utter those words after I graduated. But now it’s different because I’m on the other side of it. America’s schools would be peeing themselves if they saw the lack of preparation in the schools here. Today I had planned to do some actual math, but the other teachers said that I should just give them a warm welcome and do intro stuff like class rules and such. The form As were 1) new to this school, 2) probably freaked out because they hadn’t met me like the other grades had during my site visit, and 3) utterly confused by my English. Plus, they were the biggest grade, so that was hard comparatively [from the beginning of the school year to the time that I’m typing this out, each grade has at least doubled in size…A has 64, B has 34, and C has 22 now. This just tells you that getting enrolled and attending school at the beginning is not a super priority for the students/parents]. The form Bs were a much smaller group and more comfortable with me and my English, so they were much easier. I just did name games, explained about myself a little bit, explained how math(s) is useful in pretty much any occupation, and sort of explained what we would be learning about soon. There was a ministry of education inspector at the school who was overly cordial to me, and I was told that he would be back in the near future checking lesson plans and such [update: no such checking has occurred, nor do I think it ever will]. I was thinking that actually being up there in front of the kids would be more stressful, but it was fine. It was kind of boring, actually, waiting around in the staff room for classes to pass or waiting for lunch. I went to the school’s library (a very small room where books were stuffed into sideways, open cardboard boxes as shelves) and got a book to curb my boredom. In summary, I survived. Woo!
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