Monday February 3rd was the first day of the term
for the primary schools. In case you didn’t know, I am working as a Literacy
Specialist for Peace Corps to promote/help improve their pupil’s reading and
writing skills. Since I studied biology, they are having me teach science in
the P4 (like 4th grade) class. I have a counterpart who is one of
the P4 teachers who I work with the most. He is awesome and has been very nice
and super helpful in so many ways.
Anyway, Monday came but let me first explain a bit of how
school works here in Uganda: Just because it’s the first day of the term doesn’t
necessarily mean it’s the first day of classes. Sometimes the exam results from
the previous year that determine what pupils can be promoted into the next
highest grade haven’t been recorded. Sometimes the pupils just haven’t
registered to attend that school. Otherwise, the pupils and teachers don’t
really show up the first day. A few more trickle in each day until finally you
have a full class/staff and you can actually start teaching lessons. But even
then, things are still not anywhere near perfect. There is a time table that
depicts the schedule for each day Monday-Friday; what class will be taught at
what time and when the breaks, assembly, game time, etc. are. But because so
much pressure is put on the end of term/year exams for students to ‘pass’ them
in order to move onto the next grade, only the four core subjects are really
taught (Science, English, Math, and Social Studies) and the other subjects
(Library, Creative Arts, Religious Edu, and Local Language) get snubbed. There’s
a lot of information that is needed to go over, the classes are very large, and
the lack of resources make it impossible to have each subject only take 40
minutes to teach. It takes almost that long to have them all copy down the
notes let alone explain what it all means and then have them answer assessment
questions. It’s a very difficult situation.
Here’s how my first week went: I showed up at 10am on Monday. The day usually starts at 8 and ends at 5, but when I arrived, there were only a few students who were cleaning up the compound/school. There was a very brief staff meeting just to do some introductions of who I am and to assign which teachers to teach which class/subject. Primary schools are classes P1-P7 and teach the subjects I mentioned above. They learn in their local language until P4 which is when they switch to learning in English. That’s why I’m working with the P4 class. But yeah, that was essentially the first day. They second day, there were 10 pupils who showed up for P4 so the other two P4 teachers did some review lessons with them after they finished cleaning in the morning. Wednesday was almost the same: assembly, cleaning, then review sessions. The students attend morning assembly and clean the compound every morning. (This is also another reason classes get snubbed) But I ended up teaching my first lesson this day when the teachers were late coming back from break! I taught on Thursday and Friday as well. It went ok I think for not being very well prepared. I had to speak super slow so they could understand, but hopefully we’ll get used to each other very soon. I really like the ones who have showed up so far (32 as of Friday). I also get along with most of my other teachers very well! Along with teaching, I am gathering information about the school to submit to Peace Corps to have a better understanding of what the school really needs and doing a reading assessment of 100 pupils to see who really needs help with one-on-one reading interventions and track their improvement throughout the year.
Here’s how my first week went: I showed up at 10am on Monday. The day usually starts at 8 and ends at 5, but when I arrived, there were only a few students who were cleaning up the compound/school. There was a very brief staff meeting just to do some introductions of who I am and to assign which teachers to teach which class/subject. Primary schools are classes P1-P7 and teach the subjects I mentioned above. They learn in their local language until P4 which is when they switch to learning in English. That’s why I’m working with the P4 class. But yeah, that was essentially the first day. They second day, there were 10 pupils who showed up for P4 so the other two P4 teachers did some review lessons with them after they finished cleaning in the morning. Wednesday was almost the same: assembly, cleaning, then review sessions. The students attend morning assembly and clean the compound every morning. (This is also another reason classes get snubbed) But I ended up teaching my first lesson this day when the teachers were late coming back from break! I taught on Thursday and Friday as well. It went ok I think for not being very well prepared. I had to speak super slow so they could understand, but hopefully we’ll get used to each other very soon. I really like the ones who have showed up so far (32 as of Friday). I also get along with most of my other teachers very well! Along with teaching, I am gathering information about the school to submit to Peace Corps to have a better understanding of what the school really needs and doing a reading assessment of 100 pupils to see who really needs help with one-on-one reading interventions and track their improvement throughout the year.
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| My school! |
It was a good week overall, but I was happy to have a break
from all the excitement/stress when it came time to leave on Friday. I went to
meet up with a bunch of other PCVs who live in my area. We went to a friend’s
site to spend the weekend. We had a lot of fun hanging out. On Saturday, our
friend had a Chinese New Year’s party and made a TON of super good Chinese food (dumplings, lion head meatballs, bok choy).
Oh how I had missed that! Mmmmmm! It was also my birthday so I ate a lot of
sweet things they gave me :P haha! I woke up that day to them bringing me zucchini bread on a plate with a candle and getting sung to :) Some other PCVs, my host family, and the nuns I live with called to wish me a happy birthday too! It was seriously a great day spent with some
awesome people :D I'm so thankful to have them 'close' by :)
I came back to my site Sunday evening and today (Monday) when I came home for my lunch break at school, the sisters had prepared a VERY nice feast of fish, chips (fries), rice, salad, matooke (can't have a meal in Uganda without it), and wine to drink. They had invited some friends over to join us and after eating, they brought out a big cake and bowl of fruit and sang to me! I love them!
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| Birthday lunch celebration! |
