Getting Into The Swing Of Things
Written on February 1st , 2025 by Ben Weber
I’ve just completed my third week of teaching, and it seems like things are finally starting to settle. During the first two weeks of teaching my schedule changed five times. Last week, I walked into a classroom ready to teach when another teacher also showed up to teach at the same time. It turned out that they had changed the schedule that morning but hadn’t notified all the teachers. Now that we’re done with week three, the schedule seems set. In addition to the schedule change, the Form 1 students have been arriving at different times. Most of my students are here now, but I’ve been told that my Form 1C (which currently has 22 students) will still have students arriving throughout the next month. This has made the start of school challenging since not all the students have been to all my lessons and they all have varying levels of English comprehension. I’ve been struggling with lesson planning, because I want to review the content for the students who arrived late. But when I do, the students who already learned this material don’t pay attention and distract others. I plan to use this next week to get all the students to the same spot and hopefully I will have more productive lessons in the following weeks.
In other news, I’ve been starting to get a feel for my routine. Classes start at 8:00am, but the teachers are expected to be there by 7:30am for the morning assembly. Depending on the route I take it is roughly 10 to 20 minutes to get to school. So, I’ve been getting up around 6:30am and leaving the house by 7:10am to get to school on time. My school ends at 3:30pm Monday through Thursday, and Friday is a half day, so we finish classes by 12:30pm. Monday through Thursday I can usually get home before 4:00pm and have been using the time in the evening for chores like washing clothes and dishes. On Fridays, I have the whole afternoon to myself to do whatever I want. So far, I’ve been using that time for chores, but I want to fill it with other things soon. Around 4:00pm on Fridays, the students meet at the school for sports and games. Last week I brought a frisbee to toss around with the students while others played soccer or netball (which is somewhat like basketball). My school has a basketball and volleyball court that I want to start using in the upcoming weeks. The weekends in the village are very lowkey. Saturday is a free day and I’ve been surprised how much time there is to spend on anything. Sunday is mostly reserved for church, but I haven’t attended many sermons since they are usually quite long, and the building gets hot during the middle of the day. The church can start anywhere from 7:00am to 11:00am and last up to four or five hours if you stay the whole time. In addition to extracurricular activities and chores, I try to walk around the village at least four to five times a week to meet the people I haven’t met yet. This week, I was stopped several times by the parents of my students who were thanking me and introducing themselves. It’s nice to feel appreciated and welcomed here.
By my next blog post I should have the furniture I ordered from the carpenter in the village, and I’ll share some images of the layout of my house. For the last month or so, I’ve just been keeping most of my stuff in bags on the floor since the house came with no storage space. I’m excited to have places to store my things and clean up the hallway a bit.
This photo of me is from last weekend walking around in the chai plantation, I’ve been enjoying walking through the chai plantation and listening to music to pass the time.
