Skip to main content

School limps into gear

So school offically started on Monday, though the learners didn't show up until Wednesday. Monday was spent throwing together some lesson plans, which consists of copying the relevant material out of the course schedule (the document that details what is supposed to be taught when according to the law). These will bear only a passing resemblance to what is actually taught--and that's probably a good thing, as most of the time the learners are not remotely ready for what is laid out in the work schedule.

Apparently the high school in the next village bombed the matric test (4/25 passing), so on Tuesday a guy from the Department of Education--an Afrikaner who knew a little bit of Setswana, no less--stopped by to read us the riot act. This was frankly refreshing, as it seemed to put the teachers and especially the new acting principal (who used to be the head teacher) in a productive mood. That same day they put me down in the intermediate phase for this first term (grades 4-6--I used to be helping grades 7-9). This seems a bit silly as I know math and science ten times better than any of the other teachers, but on the other hand I'm being replaced with the best teacher in the school and now I get my own classroom, with my own lockable filing cabinet, posters on the walls I can keep maintained, etc.

The other issue with the change is that grade 4 is where everything is supposed to be taught in English, but as the kids don't really get much practice in English they have no bloody idea what I'm talking about. However painful this might be at first, I think it's going to be great for their English and my Setswana also (the latter especially).

The first day, though we started late and ended early, went better than any day I have seen thus far at my school. Every teacher was in the classroom, and I saw all of them teaching at least a little bit. I think this is mostly due to the new principal, who mentioned specifically that educators were not supposed to be in the staffroom during class unless they have some copying or something to do. I was pleasantly surprised at the abilities of the intermediate phase (especially grades 5-6), and managed to teach a few half-decent lessons with a combination of English and broken Setswana. I'll say I'm cautiously optimistic about the new year. Hooray for 2010!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why Did Reality Winner Leak to the Intercept?

So Reality Winner, former NSA contractor, is in federal prison for leaking classified information — for five years and three months, the longest sentence of any whistleblower in history. She gave documents on how Russia had attempted to hack vendors of election machinery and software to The Intercept , which completely bungled basic security procedures (according to a recent New York Times piece from Ben Smith, the main fault lay with Matthew Cole and Richard Esposito ), leading to her capture within hours. Winner recently contracted COVID-19 in prison, and is reportedly suffering some lingering aftereffects. Glenn Greenwald has been furiously denying that he had anything at all to do with the Winner clusterfuck, and I recently got in an argument with him about it on Twitter. I read a New York story about Winner, which clearly implies that she was listening to the Intercepted podcast of March 22, 2017 , where Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill expressed skepticism about Russia actual...

The Setswana Grammar Manual

One of my few successes during my service here was formatting the Peace Corps South Africa grammar manual for Setswana, written mostly by Art Chambers, an SA16 volunteer.  For anyone wanting to learn Setswana, I reckon it's a pretty good primer, so I present it for free here .  If you think it sucks and you want to make changes, or you'd like to take a look at the raw TeX file, you can find it here .

On Refusing to Vote for Bloomberg

Billionaire Mike Bloomberg is attempting to buy the Democratic nomination. With something like $400 million in personal spending so far, that much is clear — and it appears to be working at least somewhat well, as he is nearing second place in national polls. I would guess that he will quickly into diminishing returns, but on the other hand spending on this level is totally unprecedented. At this burn rate he could easily spend more than the entire 2016 presidential election cost both parties before the primary is over. I published a piece today outlining why I would not vote for Bloomberg against Trump (I would vote for Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, or Biden), even though I live in a swing state. This got a lot of "vote blue no matter who" people riled up . They scolded me and demanded that I pre-commit to voting for Bloomberg should he win the nomination. The argument as I understand it is to try to make it as likely as possible that whatever Democrat wins t...