Finally getting started… sort of

            I have a roommate!  Mireya finally arrived late Tuesday night after a long, frustrating, but typical traveling experience with Mozambican transportation.  It’s great to have her here.  We can now focus on “renovating” our kitchen (remember our bathroom door counter tops?), building a hut in our yard to hold meetings for her girls group, and a bunch of other stuff that we’re just too excited to think of right now.  She speaks great Portuguese (Fluent in Spanish, studied in Brazil, and minored in Portuguese?  No wonder my new neighbors had such high expectations for my language skills!).

           

            I’ve also finally started working.  I have been furiously tapping away on my laptop with two other teachers from the school to crank out the class schedule for school.  Here are some of the factors in making this schedule:

1) There are 5 grades - 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12. 

2) 11^th and 12^th grade are divided into a science and a humanities track.

3) Each grade is also offered to adults wishing to complete their public education

4) Each grade is divided into turmas (group of students that have all of their classes together).    

    There will be 51 turmas with about 30-70 students per turma!

5) There are 17 available classrooms

6) There are morning, afternoon, and night blocks with 6 classes each

7) Adults have to be scheduled at night

8) There are 76 teachers (including 1 Ag science, 1 computer, and 2 French teachers that haven’t

    actually been hired yet.  Did I mention the computer teacher wouldn’t have computers?)

9) 3^rd period on Wednesdays (morning, afternoon, and night) is reserved for the turma meeting

10) The 11^th and 12^th grade science turmas actually have more hours of lessons in a week than

      hours available for lessons during the week.  They have to have two hours of geography on

      Saturdays…

            The craziest part about all of it is, no, not that they started making the schedule less than a week before school was supposed to start but that until I came along with the scheduling program provided by Peace Corps, they scheduled by hand!!!  Anyways, helping make the schedule turned out to be a great way to get to know all of the teachers’ names and what they taught.  Also turned out to be a great way to give myself a four day weekend… Once the craziness of school starting has passed, I’ll sit down with a few other teachers to give them the program and teach them how to use it for next year.  The point of Peace Corps is to make sustainable contributions, after all.

            We finished the schedule just in time!  Tomorrow is abertura (opening) at school.  Mireya and I will put on our batas (white coats worn by all teachers) and present ourselves to all of our new students along with the other teachers.  I will be teaching all of the chemistry classes for the 11^th and 12^th grade science track turmas during the day which comes out to 12 hours of lessons a week.  I may even get to have some lab time!  Our school just inherited a bunch of stuff in giant un-opened boxes from another, richer school (Will’s school down the road, actually).  I can’t wait to get my hands on it all and set up shop.

            We start “teaching” on Tuesday.  I put that in quotations because Mireya has assured me the number of students that will be sitting in my class on Tuesday will be maybe 25% of the students actually enrolled.  I apparently can’t expect most of my students to show up and to start covering real material until February or maybe even March!  This is unfortunately convenient because I’m still trying to get my hands on a 12^th grade chemistry book…  So like I said, I’m finally getting started with my Peace Corps duties!!! Sort of…