Form I

Our week back in Dodoma after New Years was a little bit of running around doing errands like buying things we still needed, a few trips to town to buy fabric and go to the tailor with Cristina and Hannah to get some clothes made (so they could look “smart” for their first day of work!) and finally nesting into our rooms. Thankfully my room was pretty clean before I left (number one rule of travel – never leave your bedroom messy!) but I decided to put away a lot of things I wasn't really using, like clothes and other things that, well, I didn't want to have out and around every day. Pictures and other things finally are up on my walls and my floor is no longer messy with things that had no place. The only furniture in my bedroom is my bed, which is actually quite refreshing. It is forcing me to keep things clean and simple – a desk is really just a place to keep crap. But the window in my room is actually the perfect place for keeping jewelry. Hopefully pictures will follow soon (though I am on a pause on picture taking because unfortunately my camera was fallen on in the Tanga caves by a friend who was borrowing it. I'm going to try to find someone to fix it so we'll see).

Our first day back to school was a faculty meeting on Friday with all new and old teachers. It was so exciting to see a room full of teachers, instead of the small staff we had last year. The meeting was to last all day, but unfortunately our new house has been posing lots of problems for us, so I ended up going home early. (On Thursday, a faucet in our bathroom burst somehow and flooded half of our house. We tied it up and thought it was okay, but Friday morning it burst again. Thankfully Hannah was around, but I headed home to help call a fundi – a repairman for plumbing – and to clean up all the water). You know, the flooding was quite surprising and disappointing, but at the end of the day we are very lucky. The mess was manageable. Plus, we have running water – that in itself is a blessing.

Anyways, Saturday was move-in day for our new Form I students, so the four of us boarded the bus around 9:30am, after a 15 minutes walk through the rain. The whole day it rained and was really, really cold, but things went smoothly. Last year we had the parents and students come through the classroom block, but this year everything happened in our multi-purpose hall. I was on duka duty – Hannah and I helped Happy, the girl in charge of the school shop, with the buckets, sheets, and other things the students needed to buy for the year. Sean and Cristina were on uniform duty. It was a long day; we left around 7:30pm, but Hannah and Sean picked up chips mayai (french fry omelets) for dinner and we ate them, all sitting on my bed (still haven't obtained couches), and watched True Blood Season 2 (we found seasons 2 and 3 in town!). Thankfully Sunday we were off, so we went to the second Mass, bought some veggies and things from the market, picked up some packages from the Jesuit Residence and did other things at home.

Monday was Day 1 of orientation. Marty asked Sean, Cristina, Roland and I to run the thing, so we had a little bit of planning to do – mostly icebreakers. The week went significantly better than last year – we were more organized, had a better plan, and didn't have as much construction difficulties, and so far, I'm pretty impressed with our Form I students. They seem excited, engaged, and respectful, for now. We had a few Form II students come and help out with the week and it was really neat to see them take on that leadership position.

The week was a little long, each day was 7-5pm, but it went pretty well. Thursday was our last official day of only Form Is, and we planted trees almost all afternoon. The whole ordeal, trying to get around 200 students organized to plant a couple hundred trees, took much longer and was a little more difficult than I think anticipated, but at the end of the day, we planted new trees almost entirely across the campus, which was quite impressive! I just hope they make it, because they were neglected to be watered. But it's rainy season now, so maybe they will revive! I'm excited to see more life on our campus. When it gets dry the place really gets brown!

Friday morning we took the students through a mock-school-day in the morning and in the afternoon the Form IIs arrived. It was fun seeing everyone come back, watching them greet each other and help each other get settled. I'm excited for a fuller school this year!

Classes commenced on Monday the 16^th of January. This year will be a lot different from my last year at SPCHS. Marty and I decided that the ethics class that I created last year is now going to be used as the Form I's year-long religion class. Our Form Is are six streams this year (six classrooms) and it wasn't really possible for me to teach the whole grade, so Roland, Sean, and Cristina and I will be teaching separate classes, but using the same outline. I'm actually really excited about it, because teaching that class was a real challenge for me last year, in terms of my own personal reflection and growth, so now I'm excited to share it with them and try to dig even deeper. I think at the end working together will ultimately help our students so much more, too. I'm also teaching two classes of Form I English, which I am ecstatic about! I really like English, and grammar, and writing, and I'm looking forward to having a little more structure to a class. English has a syllabus and books to follow – that ethics class was basically created from one resource: desperate searching on Google.

I was hoping to structure the class to go back to the basics of grammar to really reinforce the rules to help the students, but after one week of classes, I'm realizing how much more advanced this grade is compared to the students of last year. Their speaking English is incredible and I really think they comprehend much more than I expected. So now I'm scrapping all my lesson plans and I'm starting over. It's overwhelming to do so, but in the end, I think this will be even better – hopefully because they already know so much, we can really do a lot more in terms of better writing and more critical thinking. Who knows, we'll see! Back to google, though! I need lots of ideas of digging deeper with topics like “giving directions” and “talking about occupations.”

So, at the end of week one, I'm excited for the next. I'm feeling much more confident and comfortable in front of the classroom and already have better interactions with my students – thank God, because I really had a hard time with that last year.