My Classes

So I know that more than a few weeks have gone by since I arrived at my school(can you believe I've been at my school over a month!), but only now do I feel confident enough to say what my classes are.
I first want to explain up till now why I have not been confident. To start, only after 4 weeks of school did all the students arrive. For the first 4 weeks we only had 4 out of the 6 grades, meaning we were missing 7 classes, which is around 300 girls.
From the get-go I knew that I was teaching Senior 5 chemistry. The class was also one of the anglophone tracks previously, so they have been taught in english for the past 4 years. For those not in the know, this year all the schools in Rwanda have switched to being taught in English. Previously schools were either all in French, or had both anglophone and francophone tracts/sections.
I had also thought that I would be teaching all three Senior 1 classes, and one Senior 4 class.[senior 1 and 4 were the two grades that came late]
During all this the timetable of the school was also constantly being changed. Teachers would complain and then change the timetable themselves, so things would be messed up, and then it would have to be redone. About 2 and a half weeks ago I got put on doing the timetable. Let me tell you, not fun. Not fun at all. Really not fun. I think I must have redid the timetable 4 or 5 times because each time we realized that something had to be changed or a teacher complained enough so I was told to change it. Basically not cool.
One of these changes stemmed from my own schedule's change. Originally I was teaching 9 hrs/week for Senior 5, 9 hrs/week for Senior 4, and 3 hrs/week x3 for Senior 1, making 28 hours a week. Although a little duanting I was excited because it would give me something to do, not to mention I really do like chemistry. Well, the power at be decided that this was too much, so they took my Senior 1 classes away, giving me only 18 hrs/week.
Then the ministry of education changed the school program for hours per subject. They reduced the main coures of 9 hrs/week to 7 hrs/week, further reducing my own load to only 14 hrs/week.[Note how I am not commenting on the fact that 5 weeks into a school year the program of study was changed nation wide] This of course altered all the math and science teacher's schedules, therefore a new revision to the timetable was needed.

I will admit I was a little sad I was only teaching 14 hrs/week because that would give me a lot of free periods. But never fear, in the endless changes of the timetable, I was returned two of my Senior 1 classes, bringing my load up to 20 hrs/week.
And I happy to report that it has been just about a week and a half that my school has used one timetable and I feel not only do I know where I should be, but that when I have to be there(the first weeks were touch and go on that).

Now that the timetable seems stable(knock on wood) and I have taught a few lessons I want to describe my classes.
Starting with the class that I have spent the most time with: Senior 5 BCM2
It is a class of 29 girls. They have a pretty good grasp on English. I'm teaching them organic chemistry. Yes that is right, organic chemistry. And it is not watered down orgo, its essentially what I learned at UD, crazy right. So far so go. This week we will have our second test, so I should have a good idea about if they are really understanding what I am teaching..

Then there is my Senior 4 BCM class. They were all francophone students. Their english is not the same as my senior 5 class. This makes the class slower. Sometimes I have to be inventive to get a point across. And sometimes I have to tell them that it is just a chemistry vocabulary word. I tried to break the words up and talk about each meaning and how putting them together you can then find out the full word's meaning-->did not work. Made them more confused..lets just say I won't be trying that one again. At the moment I am teaching them nuclear reactions and radioactivity.

That leaves my two Senior 1 classes. English is obviously a big problem in the class. I have to speak slowly, write on the board everything I say outloud, and use very very simple words. And even then half the time they still do not always get what I am saying. But they are also the cutest girls ever. When you call on them to give an answer they stand up to answer. When I ask them questions they all want to answer, so the room is filled with this clicking sound(in rwanda they do not snap for attention, they 'shake' their hand so the knuckles crack on each other--I have not yet been able to copy this sound/motion). At the moment we are going over basic chemistry. We did the scientific method and now we are covering what are chemical/physical properties and physical/chemical changes. Soon I will do an entire unit on water and then air. Followed up with pollution. Although this is not necessarily the chemistry I really enjoy it is interesting planning to teach things I have not specifically studied in years(water cycle, water table say what..).

In an earlier blog I wrote down the schedule of the school day. Now that I have my schedule I can say that I teach 5 hours on Monday, 4 hours on Wednesday, 5 hours on Thursday, and 6 hours on Friday. Tuesday is my day off. All my classes are in the earlier periods, so I never have to deal with the last period tiredness that I'm sure exists.
**haha. so I wrote this last night at home, and am about to post it at school in the morning. Well what do you know, on my way to the staff room the dean of studies asked if I would be free later to work on the timetable.. is another timetable shuffle going to happen??.... stay tuned...**