Goodbye Term 1!

Today is the last day of school for the children for term 1. They are filing into the school in their party clothes: fancy dresses, jeans, ball caps, bright t-shirts, and unbelievable shoes. Corey and I came at 6am to decorate the school with all the balloons we blew up and tied together yesterday as well as with tinsel and a weird streamer thingie. I am amazed that the package of balloons actually said they were jumbo. Obviously “jumbo” in Uganda means something than it does at home.

I have Christmas music blaring from my library window (well, blaring, everything is relative… the neighbours can’t hear it and sing along so really it’s very quiet!) and the children are squealing as they arrive. I’m not sure how the teachers are going to keep them entertained for 5 hours until 1pm but judging by the amount of food the kids are bringing to share, several hours will be spent stuffing their faces.

It’s been an insane week and term. Year 1-6 wrote exams for 3 days. Year 1 and 2 only had 4 exams whereas the year 3-6 had 7 exams: 2 English, 2 Math, 2 Science, and 1 Geography/History. Each exam was 1 hour long. I sat with a boy who has just moved from Sudan and who can’t read in English. He has to count the vowels in every syllable so a word like “home” he counts on his fingers as he says “ha-he-hi-ho” and then “ma-me” to put it together. He understands very well but obviously 7 hours of written exams are not going to show his knowledge and are going to take days to complete if every word is read so painstakingly. 

Some interesting observations from some of the exams…

1. Two pictures of trees: one has no leaves and one is a palm tree. Which season does each tree represent (dry/wet). He writes “wet” for the tree with no leaves and “dry” for the palm tree. Next question asks “Why has the tree lost all its leaves?” His answer is that trees can lose all their leaves when there is too much rain. It’s true, the monkey tree in the high school compound has no leaves. And palm trees never lose their leaves no matter what season. So how does one mark that objectively?

2. Do you know who Boudica and the Iceni are? These kids do.

3. What do people do when it is sunny? Stay in their home. The Sudanese sun is very hot and staying indoors is important.

4. Do you know what the map symbols are for: A post office? A hospital? A round-about? A winery? How do you explain a winery to a Muslim ESL student? And what is it doing on the exam?

5. And what do you do when a student can’t read the term “racial discrimination” and that’s a key element in the exam?

By the end of the day yesterday, these kids looked exhausted. As you all know, I don’t believe in this type of testing (or homework either but that’s another matter) and when I see the exams, I wonder why we bother. What do we show except that children get stressed by exams (imagine your 5 and 6 year olds writing 4 hours of exams) and they can regurgitate facts about Boudica. Even my spell-checker underlines her name.

But now it’s over and the children are partying. I’ve changed my music to Christmas jazz just in my office because the grade 6’s are having a dance party and the music is Ugandan loud.  When they are on break and eating lunch I will put the children’s Christmas music back on. As a staff, we discussed having a Christmas tree and Santa (would have loved to see that – I thought Corey would have been good!) and presents but class parties were chosen in order to be accepting of all faiths. Everyone is wishing each other a Merry Christmas though so I’m not sure it would have been much of an issue to have a Christmas party. We seem to accept each other here without much difficulty.

  

While the kids are done school today, about 20 of them are heading to Mukono tomorrow for a 3 day trip at an adventure park. They are all sleeping in one dorm with the teachers and then doing things like rope courses, obstacle races and other games. I am not going. Sounds like hell. Bah humbug, I know.

The teachers still have 2 more weeks of work. This weekend they have to mark all their exams and next week they need to finish their report cards that will be collected by the parents on Friday. The following week is for the completion of schemes and project plans for term 2. Those are due on the 13^th and then the teachers are free until January 2^nd. On the 2^nd and 3^rd, they are having two days of staff training. I blogged about our August training and if you have read that post, you will understand why I volunteered to do the training for the primary staff. We will spend one day on reading and one day on writing. Anything to not go through what we went through in August!

It has been a steep learning curve for me this term. Build it and they will come has not been the rule of thumb but rather you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink. The first half of the term, I offered specific SMART board training workshops every day each week. The first week it was very highly subscribed but the numbers dwindled and by the end of the term, I had several days where no-one came. Okay, I thought, I will offer training on a more flexible basis and let them come to see me to schedule when they want to train based on when they are free. Teachers here have a ridiculous amount of prep time.

“Great! Wonderful! I’ll come to see you and schedule time!” 

Uh, no. Three teachers from the primary side, who work with me very day, are the only ones who have done that. They don’t need to make arrangements to train, they just see me in my office and ask if now is a good time.

“Oh sorry. I was busy with exams/parent interviews/ marking/ etc. Can I come during holidays?”

Really, it’s not a big deal because I have had many other hats to wear: deputy head, administrative advisor, mentor, coach, trainer, learning assistant, co-teacher, librarian… my days have not been boring. I am slowly cataloguing all the books in the library and marking them based on reading level so that the children know how hard a book will be. This is something they keep asking me. As long as the internet is working at a decent pace (hah hah) then I can get a pile of about 20 books done in a day. I’ve been pushing to get more books for the library and have managed to add about 100 books to the collection. I will get more over the holidays too from Better World Books, an organization that will ship books for free all over the world. Check them out, they do awesome work. The kids have been happy to see new books on the shelves because they want to read. The reception class even gave me a Christmas card to thank me for the new books.

I have a hard time accepting the need to fight for money for books as though they are a luxury item not really required for a school. I am particularly proud of finally getting some dictionaries into the library. I did ask for small sets for the classroom but never got a reply about that. Oh well, at least the school actually has a few dictionaries now.

Next term it looks like I will be doing a bit more teaching than this term as I will possibly take on the grade 3 English and Humanities lessons. I am excited about that because the unit in English is on myths, legends and fables. That will be a fun unit to teach and one that I can bring home and do with my own class. The topic for Humanities is Egypt and that brings back memories of what I taught in grade 7. It is only 8 lessons so it will have to be a quick and intense unit!

As Mum keeps reminding me, the only constant in life is change. If you were to look at our work contract and then follow us for a week, you’d see that we are only slightly touching what we have been hired to do.  But never mind, we’re busy and we’re enjoying it. And I am completely in love with my amazing students of course. They are precious!