My school opened on Monday. This, however, means something very different. In America, the first day of school has been decided on three years in advance, all teachers are present, all students (more or less) are accounted for, and classes are taught. It may be a day of syllabi, names, and “How was your summer?! Oh my gosh, I missed you!” but it’s still a day of lessons. Here, on the first day of school, our academic master (who is also one of our 5 teachers) had not yet arrived, approximately 20 of 500 students trickled in throughout the day, and not a single person entered a classroom. As a matter of fact, all of the classrooms still have padlocks on them. Honestly, though, what did I expect when I was still asking last week about what day the school would be opening and couldn’t get a straight answer from anyone?
On the first day of school, I sat outside of the staff room with my fellow teachers and watched new Form 1 students (high school freshmen) walk up with their parents and school supplies (machetes, hoes, foam mattresses, buckets, trunks… compare that to America!) and then I watched their faces as their parents walked away. Do you remember the first time you had to live at school and YOU watched YOUR parents walk away? Do you remember how scary that was and how much you just wanted to cry? Yeah, it’s the same in Tanzania (and parents out there, I know it’s a two-way street because I saw the faces of the parents as well). I could just see in these girls’ faces all of the thoughts running through their heads. I wanted to give all of them hugs and tell them everything would be fine and that they’d have a great time here but instead, since I don't have the Swahili to be any kind of comfort, I just gave them the warmest smile I could and said hello. This was probably best anyway as they all bonded with each other pretty quickly and those bonds will be much more important as the year progresses. As of day three, their fears and apprehensions seem to have faded and I’m having fun watching them settle in to their new home.
So, you ask, what has happened as of day 3? Well, we now have 31 Form 1 students and they’ve been put to work cleaning the school (no janitors here, folks). This includes, among many other things, sweeping, fetching water, and cutting down overgrown weeds with the machetes they were required to bring from home. As for the staff, we have had our first staff meeting (conducted in Swahili… THAT was rough) and duties have been delegated.
Are you ready for this?
Our academic master is in charge of making the school calendar for the year along with a temporary timetable for classes. He is also in charge of teaching all 500 students (freshmen through senior levels) both history and geography and overseeing all of the Form 2 students. He and our school bursar will share the duty of writing the school’s budget. In addition to the budget, our bursar is in charge of all of the typical duties of a bursar, teaching the whole school’s Swahili classes, and overseeing all of the Form 3 students. The headmaster is, well the headmaster so she has plenty to do as it is, but has signed on to teach everyone civics as well. In addition to his normal duties, our second master will teach English and be in charge of the Form 1 students. My counterpart is in charge of teaching everyone Biology and Chemistry, is currently the teacher on duty, and will share the responsibility of the computer lab with me. I have been made the head of the science department (not sure what that actually means yet) and I will be teaching Form 2 math and Form 4 math and physics (Peace Corps limits the number of periods a volunteer can teach but, if I can handle it, I’ll take on more). There’s currently a rumor that we will get some Form 6 leavers (students that didn’t get good enough scores to get into University) that will come teach some of our science classes but we won’t know what the verdict on that is until February. Once we’ve learned of whether or not we will get more staff, the academic master will be in charge of finalizing the timetable and school calendar. Needless to say, everyone will be overworked this year… just like all of the other years and there’s nothing anyone can really do about it.
Crazy, right?
Something else my counterpart and I were put in charge of: doing inventory of the school. How many beds, chairs, tables, classrooms, toilets… toilets? Yes, toilets, does the school have? After we had gone around to all of the dormitories and counted the number of beds in each, I added up the total amount and it came to 372. Remember how many students I said we would have? 500. Last year we had 462. Where did those 90 extra students sleep last year? They shared beds with other students. Don’t worry, it’s an all girls’ boarding school BUT the beds are small and definitely not designed for two people to sleep in… especially for a whole year. I was shocked. I was even more shocked because my counterpart was not only not shocked, he was completely un-phased. It’s such a reminder to me of how lucky we are in America to have the resources we have and how much we take for granted. Think of those twin-sized beds in most colleges and then, in your mind, shorten them and add a bunk. Now imagine you’re sharing one of those beds with another person, every night, in a humid 80+ degree building that houses 12 to 15 of these bunk beds. That’s anywhere from 24 to, potentially, 60 girls in one building smaller than my house that I live in right now alone. Dang. Talk about making-do and being grateful for what they CAN get.
One night before the school opened, I was talking to my counterpart and he informed me that I would be responsible for teaching the whole school math and physics as I’m the only math and physics teacher the school has. My response: “That’s not possible, how can I do that?” There’s legitimately not enough time in the week to teach all of those classes. He told me I would have to pick and choose which classes I would teach each week. Having grown up with the mentality that every single class offered to me was crucial and that every class I attended would come equipped with a prepared and well-educated teacher, I couldn’t wrap my brain around this concept of sacrificing one group of student’s lessons for another. His response: “What can you do? That’s the reality of the situation. There aren’t enough teachers.” That’s tough/sad/frustrating/you-name-it, as he’s right, that is the way it is. Old news for them, mind blowing for me and a very hard pill to swallow. There’s just so much potential here, these students are smart and it kills me to see their potential go unrealized. Something inspiring to me, though: no one I’m working with has given up. They’re all still doing the best they can. My headmaster finished our staff meeting with “ok, we need to do the best we can to get our students to perform well so lets work hard.” At the end of the day, all anyone can ever do is their best, so that’s what we’ll do and we'll get the students as far as we can. I guess that's no different from America, right?
My intention for this blog was to talk about the education system as I’m frustrated with what it expects of students here when it does not provide the proper tools but alas, my “first day of school” has taken up enough for now. This is all a good jumping point for next time, though.
Until then, I hope everyone had a happy New Year, and that things have gotten off to a good start!
