And Life Continues On!

Well, Class VII is now taking their exams, so I've had yesterday and today off. I passed by the school yesterday morning on my way to go work out but I made sure not to even step a foot onto the school grounds. I was warned not to pass through the compound (which is what I usually do), and I don't want to do anything that could compromise the students' tests. Yesterday, I also washed clothes, and did a lot of other miscellaneous things. In the afternoon I headed to town to talk with a shopkeeper friend and mail some letters and last night I spent the night at the house of a friend who lives near town. It was a really nice time. We got dinner in town and pretty much sat around and chatted all evening before we went to bed at the very reasonable hour of 10:30pm. This morning she went to school early and I hung around the house reading and working on graduate school applications. Now, I'm back home hanging out for a bit before heading out to play volleyball.

The last couple of days, I've been trying to focus more on relaxing and just trusting God that everything that needs to get done will get done. I've found recently that I've been getting so stressed out by all my different ministries that I haven't been enjoying everything as much. Monday and Tuesday went well and as they are the last couple of days before the tests, I decided to let my Class VII students relax a bit. On Sunday I was able to get copies of 100 Bill Nye the Science Guy episodes that were downloaded by a friend here for me. I let Class VII watch at least four of them on Monday while I graded work. They absolutely LOVED it! They kept asking me to play more episodes and we pretty much went until my computer ran out of battery. I hope that they learned something, but how can you NOT learn something from Bill Nye the Science Guy??

Tuesday, Class VII was given the day off and the rest of us had a slightly shorter day. When I got home, I found a couple of my students sitting out on the porch doing more practice problems for the exams. They asked for Bill Nye and we watched at least 3 more episodes together. It was great! I think that in the future, when I let the students watch the show, I'm going to write out a list of questions for the students to answer. That way, they'll be a bit more active in their learning and they'll also have something the can look back to for reference. I know I'm not actually a science teacher, and really science was never one of my strongest subjects, but these students are struggling so much with it that I just have to do something!!

In English class, I've begun giving the student journals. The classes are required to write the same number of sentences at the number of years that they have been in school. So, class V must write 5 sentences, VI must write 6 sentences, and VII must write 7 sentences. I'm not sure why I decided to do that, but it made sense to me that those who have been taking English longer should be able to write more. The point of this activity is to give the students a chance to discuss ideas and express themselves using English. So often, it seems that the curriculum is so focused on grammar (which the students need for sure), but doesn't give them a chance to do writing activities. I think it's been a really good experience for them, though I think it's a bit of a challenge. Although it's terribly difficult for me to restrain myself, I'm trying not to grade them based on correctness of English. I don't want to journal to be stressful for them. The only time I mark a sentence as incorrect is if it couldn't pass for a complete sentence. One of my favorite moments so far with the journals has been when I gave the topic "Write About a Time You Were Most Happy". My piano student wrote about the time I asked him if he wanted to learn how to play the keyboard. He wrote all about how much he loved to play keyboard and about all the things that he has been learning. I was so overwhelmed by this. I had no idea how much of an impact I was having on this student just by teaching him how to play piano! I've decided to take on a couple more piano students. I'm really excited about this! I want to add more students as well, but I'll have to gauge how much time I have and decide what's reasonable. Maybe I can begin

Now that Class VII is done, I'm going to be taking over the English classes for Class IV in addition to keeping Classes V and VI. I'm also going to be teaching music once or twice a week to classes V and VI. The schedule has been a little bit off with the national exams and preparations for the graduation next Friday. I've agreed to teach a song to Classes V and VI to sing to Class VII and then also a song that Class VII can sing to the rest of the group. I've decided to teach them Madam Christine's one-part rendition of "The Lord Bless You and Keep You" that the Centenary College Choir sings at the end of every concert. Honestly, I think that it's such a wonderful good-bye song and I think that the students are enjoying learning and singing it. It's a song that holds a lot of meaning to me having been in the Centenary College Choir for 3 years in college. There's truly no other group like it in the world and it's kind of cool getting to share something that means so much to me with others.

Looking forward into the future, we have school tomorrow and then it's the weekend. Saturday I move into the new house. Monday, I've got school and then Tuesday I'm off to DAR with Pastor Umba to collect our new missionary. Next Friday we have the graduation ceremony for the Class VII students. I'm not sure why that is seeing as they won't have their scores back for quite some time. I'm not sure what will happen if they don't actually pass the exams. Will their "certificate of completion of Primary School" be made null? Will they return to Wesley and try again next year? This is our first year having a Class VII, so I guess we'll see what happens.

May the Lord Bless You and Keep You,
~Christine