Back to Work

Two weeks in the bag. What can I say??

After reading through some of my fellow PCVs' blogs, I have been doing a whole lot of teaching compared to the norm. It's quite common here in Namibia for schools to take one to three weeks before all the kids begin showing up and all of the teachers have their timetables (schedules) for the year. Result: no teaching for quite some time. But I actually had the opportunity to begin teaching on Day 1 of the school year and I didn't pass it up. These kids need as much time as possible to get used to me as their teacher and also to learn things they probably should have learned like three or four years ago. So, we started with multivariate calculus in 8th grade math, group theory in 9th grade math, and physical chemistry in 8th grade physical science. </joke> ßNerd!

Now about the teaching itself... Although I never taught a class in the States, I actually got to teach a bunch of lessons during the final term of last school year so I was able to acclimate myself to the situation a bit. With that said, I wasn't too nervous about how things would go during the first week. I think that made things easier too. Although I didn’t know exactly what to expect, I had a decent idea of how much material could be covered in one class period so I was able to prepare a few reasonable lesson plans for each class. And the lesson plans helped a lot! One of the things that I found difficult in my brief teaching stint during the end of last year was determining what to present in the next class and I’ve since found that looking ahead and preparing a progression of related lessons works wonders. Kinda makes sense, right? Plan ahead and have future lessons be related to recent lessons if possible.

I think the learners are getting used to me as well. I can pretty easily identify when the whole class is clueless and when just a few are confused and the latter occurs way more than the former. The big problem in my school (and probably many other secondary schools throughout the country) is the 8th grade learners are not adequately prepared to perform at the secondary school level. The kids know very little English and too frequently suffer from incomplete training in almost every promotional (important) class. With that said, we teachers have to teach a whole lot of make-up material in addition to the topics included in the syllabus for each class. This presents many issues. Right now, my approach is to teach close to what the syllabus suggests for each class and work on incorporating basic competencies from past years whenever I see a good opportunity. We’ll see how this strategy pans out when the end of year examinations come. Ahh!

Yeah, so the beginning of my first full school year has been pretty good so far. More than I could have hoped for given all of the horror stories I have heard over the past few months from other PCVs. But not everything is perfect in Ohalushu… Here’s some of the bad:

1. My principal was offered a position in Oshakati and he has since transferred
2. The computer lab is still not fully functional
3. Every school in the region wants me to make their timetable (exaggeration)

My principal, Mr. Pohamba (no relation to the president of Namibia), after just two years of exemplary performance at the helm of Isai Nhinda JSS, has moved on to bigger and better things. I’m happy for him. He’s a great guy and really did a lot of awesome things for our school in his short time as principal, but it’s also difficult to see such a good guy leave the school. He really did drive performance at the school and his motivating nature will be greatly missed.

The computer lab. Oh, the computer lab. The eighteen 1990s processor/case combos with monitors on top and the one decent server with horribly outdated Edubuntu software regularly ensure that I leave school with a headache. Sometimes we have internet access, sometimes we don’t. I am currently in the process of upgrading the software on the server so maybe things will soon get easier. Personally, I am not a fan of trying to do a sweeping overhaul of a server’s functionality through the terminal (command line) and new graphics-based software should help make the upgrades easier to incorporate. I’ll let you know how things progress with this project. As it stands, I now completely control the computer lab so I get all of the acclaim for things that work (totally don’t care about this), but I also get blamed for anything that becomes broken (kinda care about this).

Sometimes it’s good being the only person that knows how to do something. With enough time and resources, the knower can teach the non-knowers the desired information and everyone wins. The non-knowers now know and the knower gets satisfaction knowing that his/her knowledge was put to good use. Problems occur when there are too many non-knowers and too few knowers or if there are not enough resources or if there is not enough time for the knower to train the non-knowers. A perfect storm occurred recently when everyone and their mother asked me to create their timetable. I simply don’t have the time and energy to take the several hours to create teacher, class, and master timetables for each school in the region. This has been a big annoyance so far as the school year has begun and teachers like me should be focused on teaching. Something preparatory like a creating a timetable should have been done before the school year began. I would have been glad to help out during my exceedingly long summer break, but now that it’s over I want to do the job that I am employed to do and not some administrative garbage for another school.

So even with these last few drawbacks, I can say confidently that the start of the school year has been a positive rather than a negative experience. Hopefully I just never have to open that dreaded timetable-generating software again!

Oh yeah, I was really sick last week. It began on Sunday with a sore throat (remember I said I was coming down with something, mom). On Tuesday afternoon, after back-to-back days of post-schoolday headaches, I gathered that hearing myself speak too much gives me headaches. [If you know me well, you probably know I tend to enjoy pristinely quiet environments and say less than 100 words per day unless forced to do otherwise.] I now believe this supposition to be incorrect and the headaches to be the rumblings of thunder before the vicious 4-day storm hit me from Wednesday to Saturday. On Wednesday and Thursday I suffered from 102- and 103 degree fevers, respectively. Additionally, the minor after-school headaches that I experienced on Monday and Tuesday had become far more intense and really quite debilitating. I began to develop acute muscle fatigue throughout the majority of my body and found it difficult just to get out of bed in the morning. And I completely lost my appetite. I forced myself to eat about 500 calories of rice per day from Wednesday to Saturday so I didn’t die. Lastly, when I didn't have a fever or a headache I was literally covered in sweat. I don’t know how my body produced so much sweat… Maybe it found some secret reserves that are to be used only during times of considerable illness. So in a word the illness was nasty, but I made it through the storm and am now in full health (or very close) once again. I didn't even miss a day of school (or even a lesson) throughout the hellish week. In fact, I spent my entire Saturday at the school trying to work on the wretched computer lab. I saw the week as an opportunity to show the kids that sometimes we must work through adversity to accomplish a task.

I’ll end with a brief update about the homestead. I don’t think I mentioned this yet on the blog so I’ll say something quick about the eating situation. I used to eat oshifima and meat/soup with the family but now I cook for myself. It sort of sucks (no working refrigerator yet so the options are limited), but there are some positives too. I eat a whole lot of bread, peanut butter, and rice which means my diet is not good but I also don’t have to buy food for the big family anymore so I save a lot of money. Also, I stated earlier how important silence is to me and it’s been everything but silent around here recently. Since the beginning of the school year, we have obtained two more sub-5-year-old children on the homestead and they are quite naughty. I think one of the new kids taught my young cousin how to cry for attention and she has been bawling ferociously for the past two weeks for at least an aggregate of 30 minutes per evening. The kids also run around yelling and playing which is fine if there are a few kids and they do it every once in awhile, but there are like ten kids and they are constantly running around and yelling at each other. My final gripe is about the puppy. This thing could be the most obnoxious animal ever but I think it has brain damage (meme has hit it with the truck at least once [her driving is scary – she almost plowed into one of the huts this morning when she forgot the car was in gear]). Anyway, the dog barks incessantly. Every single noise it hears sets off a trigger in its mind to unleash a sadistic assault on any ear within a 5 mile radius. I once timed a barking spree that went on for 18 minutes! Really, okambwena? Really?

Okay, that’s enough for now. I have to go to sleep. I hope you enjoyed reading and hope you are doing well wherever you are!

-J
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