Thursdays are cursed

Since the beginning of the school year, every single Thursday has been terrible.  They are longer days for me than Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, with 2 double English classes after break, which is when learners are least attentive.  And I have 6B for the last 2 periods of the day.  No matter how well the morning maths class goes, by Thursday afternoon they’ve morphed into monsters.  At the beginning of the term, I thought it was just coincidence, but after a bunch of consecutive terrible Thursdays, I started to be proactive against the pattern.  Today’s attempt at averting a bad afternoon was an epic fail, resulting in an hour of detention for Grade 6B tomorrow afternoon. That’s really the last thing I want to be doing on a Friday afternoon, but if it breaks the bad Thursday routine, I guess I can’t mind that much. 

Tomorrow we have an inspection by the Ministry of Health.  The female staff decided that the table clothes in the staff room were too dark, and requested N$500 to buy new table linens for tomorrow’s inspection.  I said I wouldn’t sign the letter of request on account of STILL not having extension cords to plug in the computers in our library.  The inspection did provide the catalyst needed to start talking about rearranging the library; on top of everything else that happened today, I ended up staying at school until 3 pm putting books on the shelves in “alphabetical” order.  The great thing about my school’s library is that it already had a librarian before I started.  Most other volunteers inherit the librarian post from the former volunteers because most of their coworkers don’t want it.  The bad thing about the situation is that we don’t always see eye to eye about things, but I figure that whatever I can help with is better than doing nothing, or doing things in a way that make her not want to do it anymore.  Funnily enough, when she returned to school at 3pm and all the books were on the shelves and the library had been tidied, she said that she could almost kiss me at the moment she walked in.  At any rate, the library is going to be really challenging, and I know that almost every volunteer that starts or maintains a library runs into a few of the same things: stolen books, mishandling of the books, and more advanced issues like maintaining semblance of order on the shelves, teaching learners to actually apply their knowledge of alphabetizing to doing it with the author’s surname (I was thinking today while I was putting books up that it’s already too much for them to alphabetize the books by surname, we don’t even talk about first name, and heaven forbid if the same author writes more than one book), arranging afternoon library hours, teaching the other teachers how to use the library…..  It’s overwhelming how many resources we have for teachers to use, and how little actually gets used.  I’m hoping to aid in changing that, but have to remember that baby steps are best sometimes. 

During PST and Reconnect, the PCVs all told us that teaching in Namibia takes a lot of settling in.  I imagine it’s like that for most PCVs teaching English and other subjects, worldwide.  Namibia just has its own set of benefits and drawbacks.   Definitely, though, there’s lots of trial and error.  Dasha and I talk about it often – what works in her classroom failed (sometimes miserably) in mine.  What works in mine would never work in hers.  And even now, nearing the end of the term, I still feel like I’m flailing in the dark in many ways. 

I had a nice conversation with my principal yesterday.  By nice, I guess that I mean that I asserted the fact that I feel really good about the progress my grade 6s are (finally!) making with multiplication.  We’d spent 2 weeks on drilling facts and learning how to read the tables/squares, but they still weren’t getting it, but when I taught them how to count multiples of a number, and then to count multiples on their fingers, we had a breakthrough.  They’re still not great, but they’re LOADS better than they were.  So I was telling him that because I felt that the multiplication foundation was so important to everything else coming up, I was putting it down as solidly as possible, but as a result I was behind where I should be in the syllabus.  I was happy to have at least voiced what was going on, even being at fault for being behind the syllabus means less than the fact that my learners can multiply.

Dasha and I met the new health volunteer coming to Gobabis in May yesterday afternoon.  He’s working at the Catholic Aids Action office, and he seems to be doing ok with his new host family this week.  It was funny to find out over the weekend (in Mariental) that the new training group (Group 31) is already out on site visit; it just doesn’t feel like that long ago that they arrived.  I’m sure they’d disagree.  At any rate, I’ll be happy for another PCV in town.  I joked with Dasha that it was a good thing we didn’t meet him today, because I didn’t have a lot of good things to say after school today. 

I think everyone has moments when they’ll do anything to avoid doing the task at hand.  For me, the task at hand is almost always either lesson planning, marking papers, or both.  The thing I’ve started doing instead of either of those things: bread baking.  I’ve baked a lot of bread in the last few months, and while I’m baking edible bread, it still seems to be hit or miss for me.  And I’ve definitely not baked anything nearly as good as Michael Jones’ banana peanut butter bread.

Some of you have asked about what you can send me.  I think there’s a list to the right, but in case any of these things aren’t on the list, here are a few more things that I’ve thought of that would be nice to have:

·         Nag champa incense

·         American candy for my learners

·         bic pens (again, for my learners)

·         cheap American t-shirts or hats to barter with at the Okahandja craft market (like, things that say something on them, the cheesier, the better)

·         dried garbanzo beans – they’re pretty expensive here

·         NY Times or Post – mostly to show the learners

·         Magazines – climbing, news, entertainment – favorites are National Geographic, Time, Newsweek, Climbing, Rock and Ice

·         quinoa

·         Trader Joe’s dark chocolate covered anything (preferably nuts or espresso beans) – as long as there’s no milk in the chocolate

I think that a slackline or 2 is coming my way.  It’s an experimental venture setting up a slackline at my school, but if it’s successful, it may be something I’ll ask for again. 

It’s difficult asking for things, and really, the best packages are the ones that are full of surprises. 

Anyway, tomorrow’s Friday, and even though the health inspection people will be there (which I’m sure will have all kinds of unforeseen surprises), I’m hoping for a better day tomorrow.

Today I had about 15 spare minutes at the end of the day, when I was trying to explain to the learners why their behavior today was not appropriate for grade 6.  I find it helpful to remind them sometimes that I’ve come a very long way to be their teacher, and that I’m there because I want to be there.  But something occurred to me the other day that was imparted on me by my dad, which certainly applies to my learners.  I told them that their education is the only thing no one can ever take away from them.  If they listen to anything I say in the next 2 years, I hope it’s that.

Thanks for reading!!