Day 2. They say it gets easier to somewhere day after day
once you get use to the environment, but oh boy this is a big change. There are
some similarities I am seeing with issues being brought up in the school and
some very big differences. Let’s start at what I walked into on Thursday
morning-a fight.
I have 40, 3rd graders, at least 18 of them
are boys. So the dynamics of the classroom are very interesting. When I walked
upstairs the students were lined up outside the room and started to go in the
classroom when four of them started coming up to me talking really fast. And
while they were speaking English to me their accents are very strong and with
all of them talking I had no idea what was going on, so I sent them inside to
talk to a student who was very upset.
Dylan was crying and I asked him what had happened. While
we were talking the class was doing their morning prayer and going crazy and
that’s when their teacher came up. When I told her there was a fight she
immediately had all the students came back outside and try to go in quietly and
also have Dylan pick out who was picking on him. What I believe had happened
deals with that they were not wearing their uniforms yesterday, it was
“American” Day and the students were picking on him for what he was wearing.
This is why they wear uniforms. The only punishment the four boys were given
was to not talk and apologize to Dylan.
It is the end of the term for the students. They have
just moved to 3rd grade in January, so with report cards due out
before Holiday a lot of the teachers are trying to catch up on grading and
getting those ready. Many teachers do not do any work outside school so during
this week they have been doing the reports and having the students do nothing.
Yesterday we worked on writing stories, awesome. Expect it was in Affrikans-
their second language. So I couldn’t help them with much, but they were still
excited to read me their stories and translate to English. And that is all they
did for the whole 5 hour day.
The school day is very different, students begin at 8am
there is a break at 10:30 for 25 minutes. This first break is usually for
lunch. Then there is another break at 12:30 and students start being dismissed
around 1:15pm. The time in which they are dismissed is dependent on their grade
level, my 3rd graders get out at 1:30pm and the 2nd
graders get out at 1:15pm. Very interesting.
So until we head back in 2 weeks it will be a great break
to absorbed everything that we have seen so far.
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