Some thoughts on school...

So my commitment to blogging once a weekend will probably get dull at some point, as life here is very routine... However, I suppose, even as it becomes routine and normal for me, I will be able to continue to find things to muse about which are less familiar back home...

This week however was pretty eventful in that we had midterms. For the secondary students, Tuesday through Friday, and for the primary students, Wednesday through Friday. For me, I monitored the fourth grade exams, which meant I spent a lot of hours watching the fourteen fourth graders and had lots of time to think of all things present, past, future and hypothetical... From my marking, most of the students passed(which is 50%) or above... Some who were really struggling in most subjects did very well on their kiswahili exam which mostly means that a lot of learning is lost to language as the classes are taught mostly in English and the exam questions were written in English(except for Kiswahili).  Now we have five weeks or so until the final exams where the hope is that all students will pass.

I enjoyed monitoring midterms and had more opportunities for interacting with the rest of the teachers than I have had these past five weeks... and I think earned their respect by my diligence to the task, or at least I tried to. There are eight teachers for primary(and I do not know the secondary ones) and they are very committed to their job and to the students. The class sizes vary. For example, there are fourteen fourth graders, more fifth graders and third graders, but less second and first. None of the classes are too big by anyone's standards which must make learning easier. The students vary in ages depending on when they came to Hope, and ability and commitment to education of course.The school itself is made out of tin, and so when it rains, which it does daily, teaching must be very hard. I asked one of the teachers, and she said that when it rains, the students do homework, the teachers can't teach over the racket. It made me appreciate my far removed little classroom where the rain is not so noticeable in the downstairs of the boys dorm(there were no spare rooms in the tin school house so we made do...).

Meanwhile, our new secondary school building(which will be beautiful and made of stones) remains pretty much the same as when I arrived(lacking a roof, that is), waiting on funds I believe. Hopefully, it will be able to be completed by the beginning of the new school year in January, or many of the form two students(who provide a lot of student leadership) will have to go away to boarding school because the upstairs classrooms of the dining hall lack proper science labs.

That really was the majority of this weeks focus, and today being Saturday was laundry day(for me, that is, as the kids do their laundry everyday). And basketball in the morning after laundry before the rain. Persistent rain, for which I think the kids are very thankful for their new gumboots, and I, meanwhile, continue to wear sandals and be muddy by preference. My preference being for sandals over gumboots, not muddiness over cleanness. From the sound of balls hitting the backboard, perhaps the afternoon rain has let up already and it is time for to go explore and see what is going on.