July 15, 2013 - First Day of School

As I sit here drinking my Rooibos Tea, I reflect on my first day of teaching.  I really enjoyed it, but does this ever tug at your heart strings.  Some of the teachers shared their stories with me about different students and I am just amazed that these students can learn anything.  I know I have students who struggle with learning, but the issues these students face is on a totally different scale.
School starts in the morning at 8:00.  I arrived here with 'Teacher Sarsih' at 7:45 and there were already kids running around.  Most of the kids walked here and some of them took the taxi.  At 8:00, a student cheerfully rang the bell and the students ran to take their place in line.  They then sang the South African National Anthem and prayed the Lord's prayer as a school in unison.  Once that was done 'Teacher Miriam' said a few announcements and introduced me as 'teacher Angela'.  This school has 49 students from K-4 and is a private Christian school.  From what I gathered, many of the students are sponsored as their parents are to poor to afford to pay the fees.

 There are five school 'rooms', one for each grade.  These school room walls are just an inch or so thick and the floors are concrete.  

Once this was done,   the students walked in a line to their respective classrooms.  For the first part of the day, I went to the kindergarten classroom.  I just observed, as only two of the seven students showed up.  About half of the students are missing because many of them are with their families who are still celebrating the initiation of the 14 year old boys.  The government had stated that these celebrations must be over by the time school starts, but they are still going on.  The teacher and I talked for a bit about her seven students.  She said that this year, four out of the seven are in very rough circumstances.  One of the boy's mother is by his grandmother as the grandmother is not doing very well.  That means that this boy is now living with relatives.  His relatives don't worry much about him and so his bed is on the floor and he only has a few blankets.  He has two other brothers in the school and they are in the same situation.  The teacher of the kindergarten class invited these three boys over to her home for one night during the winter holidays.  When these boys saw the bed that they would be sleeping, all they wanted to do was sleep!!  When it was bed time, they put on their winter coats and pulled up the collar and were ready to go to bed that way.  They were expecting it to be cold.  It just breaks my heart to see these situations.  Around 9:00, breakfast was served.  All students receive a breakfast and a lunch.
Towards the middle of the afternoon, I went to the Grade 4 classroom.  This classroom had five students.  Here I taught Roman history and a lesson on what plants need to survive.  This was fun.  It was a challenge to as I had never taught anything about Roman history and when talking about plants, I couldn't talk about the dandelion or the oak tree or the tulip as they would have no clue what I was talking.  They are a very enthusiastic class and I could tell that they loved learning.
After this was done, I wandered over to the Grade 3's room.  The principal teaches the Grade 3's and so I observed in this classroom for a bit.

The Grade 3 classroom.  At the end of the day, they move their desks to the side of the room.  Notice the brown walls.  They remind me of dry wall.  

The principal's desk.  No computer or anything technological.  

The schedule here seems to be a little easygoing and you change classes when you are done the material and not when a certain time is reached.  It is the same for lunch.  When the lunch ladies walk into the room with the food, then it is time for lunch.  There is a daily schedule on the wall, but as far as I could tell, it wasn't followed very strictly.  For lunch, the students receive rice, some veggies and a piece of meat.  This way, the school knows that they are getting healthy food at least twice a day.  After lunch, the students had English class which for them is quite hard as English is not their first language.  Their last subject of the day was home languages.  During this period, they were divided into their native languages group and their they learned how to read their native language.  

In discussions with the principal, she remarked how that English was very hard for these students.  The Grade 4 class was struggling especially hard with this and so they were getting extra English classes.  However, in order to make this work, she was teaching the Grade 3 and 4 English classes at the same time.  As a result, tomorrow, I am taking the Grade 4 students and teaching them on my own.  This is scary and exciting at the same time.  I will be teaching some eager students, but they are also students who come with a lot of issues and backgrounds that I have no experience with. 

Currently, I am sitting in my new room.  This room is much smaller than where I stayed at the farm and starting Thursday, I will be sharing it with another lady.  We will be quite cramped for space.  This new room is a guest room located right on the college campus.  The school is also right here so that will be nice for getting there.  Another advantage is that I have good internet connection here.  Tonight, I was finally able to have a fairly long conversation with my family without running out of money.  

 My room.  Right now, I have claimed both beds, but that soon won't work.

As I was writing this blog, I was carefully listening for the sound of the supper bell.  At supper time, they ring the bell to tell that the food is ready.  It is now 6:50.  At 5:30, I was told that supper should be ready by 6 and at 6:40, I was told that it should be ready in 10 minutes.  I am still listening for the sound.  I was kindly given some bread with peanut butter and sugar to tide me over, but I am getting hungry again.  

It is now 7:00, still no bell.  

Ohh, there it is.  See you later!!