First week of classes!

What we’ve all been waiting for, the first week of school!  Here’s a summary of the week.

Friday (T minus 3 days until classes): I get a list of what teachers are teaching what.  I’m teaching 11^th grade math just as I was told I would, and SURPRISE!  10^th grade English as well.  I have 4 classes of math and 2 classes of English.  I’m actually pretty excited (minus the extra lesson planning) because while I will really enjoy teaching math, I will be able to have a little more fun in my english classes.  They’re easier to prepare for and to teach, but infinitely more miserable to grade.  (There will be times where I don’t know what language they were trying to speak on their homework and tests, but it definitely will not be English-or Portuguese!)

Saturday (T minus 2 days until classes):  We are supposed to do the schedule for all the teachers today…needless to say, that didn’t happen.  My director told us to come back Monday afternoon to make the schedule. 

Monday (First day of classes): The morning starts with a school wide ceremony welcoming the students and the new professors at 7 AM.  Now, we’re in Mozambique, so 7 AM means 7 after 8 AM, and if you’re really lucky, 7:30.  That being said, the ceremony didn’t start until 10:15.  Naturally, Hannah and I were two of a very few that even showed up around 8.  Thankfully our empregado Daniel warned us to come at 8 and not 7.  (To bad he didn’t tell us 10!) The ceremony lasted a little over 2 hours and then it was lunchtime.  Monday afternoon rolls around, we head to the school to do the dreaded scheduling for over 30 teachers.  Oh wait…they’re still not ready for us to do the scheduling.  Please come back tomorrow at 7 AM.

Tuesday (Apparently today and not Monday was supposed to be the first day of classes…):  Enter 7 AM: Hannah and I waiting at the school outside the locked doors of the directors’ office.  Enter 8:10: My director* shows up not looking surprised that we’re waiting for him.  Okay, finally the scheduling.  8 hours of straight work (they were aghast that we worked straight through the normal 2 hour lunch time)  the schedule is finally done.  It took a lot of finagling around, but we tried to ensure that no teacher had a terrible schedule such as coming in at 7 AM for a class and then not teaching again until 2 PM.  My schedule is GREAT!  I only teach between 7 AM-12 and I don’t teach Fridays.  I’m lucky because Segundo ciclo and 10^th grade are taught in the mornings, so I’m done by lunchtime.  Hannah is spread out throughout the day, but we did the best we could. 

Wednesday (classes are finally starting!):  I show up at 7 AM to teach my first math class and half the school is locked.  Students are standing around, only one other professor is there as well (yep, he’s a new guy).  I work on perfecting my Portuguese for the next hour while we wait for other professors and the pedagogy directors to show up.  Around 8 my director strolls in and asks me to help him print the schedule for all the professors.  Between 9:30-11:30 professors are walking in and picking up their schedules.  Many appear to be happy, or at least not displeased at the times they are teaching.  95% of the teachers found out what they were teaching that day.  I think only Hannah and I really knew what we were going to teach.  Many knew their discipline, but not what grade or how many hours.  So much for lesson planning.  So, some of the shock had nothing to do with the schedule, but a surprise in the discipline they were teaching.  Shocking…we’re not starting classes today.

Thursday (okay, I promise…classes start today!): Hey, what do you know, I get to school at 6:45 (my first class is at 7) and I wanted to know what room I would be teaching in first.  There’s only one other teacher there, and he was shocked I was at the school so early.  I get to my first class and there’s maybe 6 students.  Side note: I’m a bag full of nerves…I wish I could have started with an English class, I at least know that language.  I had planned to just get to know the students today.  I was warned not to teach or give homework in the first week of classes because the majority of students don’t show up.  I start giving a quick introduction of myself: I work for the Peace Corps, I studied engineering (I left out the biology part so they wouldn’t be confused as to why I am their math teacher) for 4 years in the United States, I’m going to be here for two years, here are my two rules for the class: 1) Your grades will reflect only, wait, give me a second, I mean…your grades will reflect only your hard work and effort, nothing else; 2) It is your choice if you want to learn math or not.  If you do, fantastic, I’ll be more than willing to help you down that path, but if you aren’t interested in learning it, I can’t force you.  The door is right there, you can leave whenever you want because if you stay in the classroom then you’ll be distracting all the other students that are there and that want to learn.  That’s not fair to them.  They seemed to understand both of my rules and they also agreed to be patient with me when I fumble a little bit with my pronunciation and Portuguese.  We made the deal: I help you with math, you help me with Portuguese.  They seemed to like that.  They also were happy when I told them that I was taking Portuguese lessons outside of class to get better.  I want to be a great teacher for them, but I won’t be able to be anything better than adequate until my Portuguese is better.  Then I asked them the types of movies, singers, songs, anything with pop culture that they liked.  I’m planning on using the names of these titles and people to make homework more interesting.  I can either do boring, un-relatable word problems, or I can have word problems about Akon, Justin Beiber, Jet Li, and Rihanna.  Which would they rather do? 

            My next two classes were 10^th grade English.  The first started with one girl sitting at the desk when class started.  She was horrified to be the only one and that shook her confidence levels a little bit.  I still don’t know if her English is adequate or not up to par because she was too petrified to speak.  I started out with her writing things down in her notebook because she didn’t want to speak out loud to me.  A second student trickled in and his English was much better than I was expecting.  (Yay!) Five minutes later a third student came in, his English was middle of the road between the other two students.  We went over food they liked to eat and singers they liked (in English of course).  We also went over the numbers 1-20 and the date.

 My second English class started with the good English speaker from my last class following me in, asking questions.  It was just me and him for maybe five minutes.  I kept on telling him that he needed to go back to his classroom for his next class and that I would see him after classes or next Monday.  He just went to a desk and sat down.  His response “no other teachers are here.”  I also didn’t find out until after class that he actually was in that class, and the first English class he went to he went in because he didn’t have a teacher next door.  By the first ten minutes of class I had 8 male students and it was a lot of fun.  Their level of English was shockingly higher than the two other students from my other turma.  I’m a little confused about that because the classes should be at the same level, but I guess I’ll have to see when the rest of the class shows up next week.  Since I try to keep speaking Portuguese to a minimum it’s a lot of acting and motioning.  It’s actually pretty fun! 

My second math class had a ton of students.  I think that the students that didn’t show up to my 7 AM math class all came to this one because they didn’t have a teacher in their room.  Anyways, my confidence (after successfully making it through three classes and not having a student walk out shaking his head in a hopeless way at the year to come) and therefore my Portuguese was much better.  This math class ran much more smoothly, everyone was involved and I really am excited to teach both my subjects.  I finished the class with a square puzzle (thanks mom!) that they LOVED.  The highest any of my students got was 24.  Let’s see what you get! 

How many squares can you count? 

Class: Why did we just do that?

Me: Did you enjoy it?

Class: Yes, definitely!

Me: The part of the brain that you use to solve those types of problems is the same part of the brain you use to do math.  They were utterly shocked that I had just made math fun for them.  Hopefully I can continue to do puzzles like that once a week or so as a warm up while I’m setting up the class.  (There’s only 5 minutes in between classes and I’m going to have students wanting to ask me questions after a class, so I won’t have very much prep time inbetween classes.)

Here are some highlights of the day:  During each class I asked the students if they had any questions for me.  Well, yes, of course they did.  Here were the two that I got in every class: How old are you?  Are you married?  In response to the first question I told them that I wouldn’t tell them…just yet.  I asked each and every one of them to guess how old I was.  Between all four classes the range was between 16 and 30 with the average around 20-21.  Sigh, sometimes I hate looking young for my age.  Especially when some of my students are as old as I am.  As for the second question, from the reactions of some of my male students, I broke a few hearts that day when I said that I had a boyfriend from the States, but that I wasn’t married.  It could either be a very long year or it will fly by. 

*There is a pedagogical director for 8-10^th grade (Primero ciclo) and then a pedagogical director for 11-12^th grade (segundo ciclo).   Since Hannah is only teaching 9^th and 10^th grade English, the director for segundo ciclo is my director and the primero ciclo is both of ours as well. 

Below I included two little highlights of the week.  

Hello, my name is Zuria, but sometimes I like to be called Zuzu.  I am two years old, and I love hanging out with tia Amanda and tia Ana.  My mom, Cristina, is close friends with tia Amanda and tia Ana.  Isn't that great?  

This rainbow decided to stick around for about 45 minutes.  This was the same day I taught my first lessons.  Good omen?!