"With all respect, Sahib, you have little to teach us in strength and toughness. And we do not envy your restless spirit. Perhaps we are happier than you? But we would like our children to go to school. Of all the things you have, learning is the one we most desire for our children."
~Urkien Sherpa to Sir Edmund Hillary,
the first man to summit Mt. Everest

Friday, November 9, 2007

Snippets

It’s been a while since I last updated my blog. Here are a few snippets of my life the past few weeks.

-I went to Bobo for the first time in the middle of October. It was wonderful. It has all of the conveniences of Ouaga (grocery store, internet, good restaurants…) with much less of the crowded polluted big city feel. The only difficulty was getting there and back: I took a bush taxi (small mini van) with anywhere from 17 to 25 other people hanging out windows or sitting on the roof or each others’ laps. (The range is necessary because we stopped about every 3km to pick up or drop off passengers…for you metrically-challenged people, that’s about once every mile and a half…which is why the trip took six hours.) Bobo deserves more of a description, so I’ll write more the next time I go.

-I got a refrigerator! …and a girl delivered it on her head. …ok, so to be accurate, the refrigerator is a small clay pot. But buried in moist sand, it keeps my drinking water refreshingly cool. Ask chemist Chelsea how it works.

-Towards the end of the fourth week of school, the last of our teachers arrived to complete the staff. There are six full time teachers, including me, plus the director, secretary, vice principal, accountant, and groundskeeper. All in all, it’s a pretty big staff.

We had our “back to school” staff meeting at that time and discussed such important things as the discipline policies, the school calendar, and the number of tests required in each class per trimester. You might be thinking that all those things would have been nice to know before school started…flexibility is very important here.

Interestingly, we did not discuss the random holidays that pop up every two or so weeks; I guess those are regularly kept secret until a day or two before they happen. It’s more fun that way. Also, I found out that the fall trimester ends December 7; this allows for two weeks of grade calculations before Christmas. “Two weeks!?” says you.

“300-500 students per teacher and no computer,” says I. Finally, the spring trimester is only seven weeks long. Bonus: we got chicken and beer after the meeting.

-I gave my firsts tests last week. The sixth grade average was 60%, and the seventh graders got about 40%. The seventh graders were rightly disappointed, but the sixth graders were thrilled. Like I said earlier, the system here is based on the French system that believes in showing students the areas in which they can improve. 50% is passing, so the sixth graders were happy…almost all of them. I gave three cheaters zeros. That’s the rule. And when you copy the only kid in class who draws a four-sided figure on the triangle question, then match his answers word for word on the rest of the test, it makes my job really easy.

-For the most part the kids are great though. The sixth graders fly out of their chairs when I ask for volunteers to do a problem on the board. They especially like correcting their classmates’ errors.

They also like goofing around, and it’s sometimes hard for me to resist cracking a smile at some of their antics. But sometimes discipline is easy: like when I send you to the vice principal to get a tardy slip and you don’t come back for an hour and a half. Give me a break kid.

-One of the things that has really struck me the past month is the noticeable lack of an outlet for student creativity in school. The kids meticulously copy notes from the blackboard so carefully that they use rulers to underline key words and start a new page if they make a mistake. There are no fun projects, music classes, or art classes. One of the ways I want to remedy this is by starting a math/science club after our holiday break. I say math/science but what I really want is math/science undertows with an emphasis on fun and games: Soduku, brain teasers, star-gazing, and Cribbage…that kind of thing. If you have any good ideas, please let me know.

-Another thing you can help with: Send me postcards if you go on any cool vacations. The history/geography teacher invited me to talk to one of his classes last week. They are learning about North America, and he wanted me to talk about the big American cities. The kids were floored to find out that everyone has electricity, people ride to work in underground trains, and buildings can reach the clouds. If you visit or live in any major American cities or other points of interest that they would have heard of (I’m thinking New York, Chicago, LA, Washington DC, the mountains, the beach, someplace with snow…), send me a postcard. Traveling internationally? London, Paris, Rome, Beijing, Tokoyo…send me a postcard. If it’s a really good picture I’ll pay you back with a beer the next time I see you. Sorry, the kids probably won’t recognize pictures from your trip to visit Grandma in Hodunk, Nebraska. But I always love getting mail, so send away anyways. Thanks!

-I’ve started sleeping outside again. It’s probably not completely necessary since the weather hasn’t been too hot recently. Don’t ask me what that translates to in degrees- my perceptions are all screwed up. I go to bed wearing only a pair of shorts and wake up twice every night: once to pull on a t-shirt, knit socks, and a sleeping bag; and once to shoo away the donkeys that like to make a rukus in the front yard around 3:30am.

I think that’s just about it for now. Happy Thanksgiving! How ’bout them Packers?!