My First 2 Weeks of School

I am going to try and give only the highlights of the weeks.
To start off on Monday morning(Jan 19) I left my house at around 7.50(school starts at 8am) and I ran into a fellow teacher(or so I thought). As we walked to the main building and went to the head office I soon realize that she is my headmistress. Note at this time I had no idea that she lived right next door,I just assumed she had come from another one of the houses.
She welcomed me to the school and apoligized for not being able to pick me up on Saturday, she had sent the Dean of Studies to do that. She then asked if aside from my teaching responsibilities if I would also be able to become point person for this internet forum between my school and a school in England. I said sure, not really knowing what it was or what I would be doing..haha..
Then I spoke with the Dean of Studies and she introduced me to the Head of the Biology/Chemistry department. I proceeded to sit in on one of his lessons, for over 2 hours. Not going to lie although it was nice to see "how a Rwandan teacher teaches," it was a little boring. For the rest of the day I either sat in the staff room or went to different classrooms to have the girls ask me questions.
Although it was nice to speak to the girls, they sure do ask a lot of questions. The most common question asked is are you married, single, or searching, and I kid you not they used the word searching. Just to give examples of the types of questions I get asked I will share with you the 'best' ones: -Are you born again? (aka what religion are you)
-Can you manage to run when you are fat?(at first I could not believe that she asked that so I didn't have a response, so the girls thought I did not understand, they then mymed it for me)
-Does it hurt to have multiple holes in your ears?
Now I had been prepped on the fact that the students would ask many questions and that it is up to me if I would answer them. I answered a great many, but I did say a few times that I would not answer. The reason for this was that since I did not know what students I would be teaching I did not want to get too friendly with them too quickly.
Another 'interesting' thing that happened on Monday was lunch. So we had been told on the previous Friday that unlike what we originally thought, lunch would not be provided for us. Thinking this I packed a PB&J for my myself. Well what do you know, my school has lunch for teachers, but I was not going to let my food go to waste, so I ate it. This puzzled many teachers, and many told me that from now I shouldn't bring my own lunch.
Tuesday consisted of me sitting in the staff room waiting to be told what I would be teaching. I did find out one of my class: S5 chemistry. S5 would be our equivalent to 11th grade.
On Wednesday I had my first lesson. It was supposed to go from 8-10.30, I only made it till 9.45 with what I had prepared.
Luckily on Thursday it went a little better since I only had to teach for 50 minutes. I also found out on Thursday that I will be teaching chemistry for S1 and S4 once those students arrive, which they aren't sure when that will be.
As far as I can tell Friday went a little better too. It was a 2 hour class and I planned to play Jeapardy. Believe it or not it went over pretty well. Instead of having individual contestants I had the entire class play against me. Basically it went like this, after the category had been picked I would read the question and then wait for one of the students to shout out the answer. If none of them knew the answer then I got to answer it and get the points. As designed the girls won. I had picked categories that could be a review, but also fun. By far the favorite category was Famous Scientists, which was a little funny because this is the category that I got the most of my points in.

After the first week I was feeling pretty good that it had not gone horrible so that gave me some encouragement that maybe I really can do this. All I had to do then was worry about week two.

So week two was comprised of 2 things. Me sitting around the staff room on my computer and me teaching my one class(which only amounts to 9 hrs a week).
Overall my classes went well. I had my first encounters with some discipline issues and I think I firmly showed them that I would not tolerate anything like that. I know that I might have been a little more stern then the situation warranted, but I wanted to make sure that the girls understood my position on how I would run class.
Another interesting aspect of class was the inquires about my notebook. So like most teachers do I have a lesson plan for each class, and maybe more importantly the notes that I am going to give. It should be noted that the students do not have text books, so any and all information has to be given from me in note form. Well after class the students ask for my notebook; evidentally that is sometimes how it is down here. I am not okay with that. If I am taking the time to write it on the board and making sure I give enough time for them to copy it, there should be no reason why they don't copy what I write and then expect me to give them my notebook. I informed them that never in my secondary or univeristy history did I ever see or hear of a student asking for the teachers notes because the student had decided to not take notes during class.
My second week of school also had me assigning my first homework, or as they call it dormwork(I'm at a boarding school). Now I had expected them to do the work together, but I assumed they would get the correct answers then. Wrong. Out of five questions I believe that they got 2 of them correct and another almost correct. This was a little of a let down because I had thought I had made the homework easy..
Now I must explain why I sit for such long hours in the staff room. The first reason is that I know once S1 and S4 come to school I will be teaching more hours and I want to get used to be at school during the day. Also since school does give lunch(for free), there just is no reason for me to be elsewhere at lunch time.
The other reason, and most likely the main reason is because the staff room has wireless internet. And lets be real, like most young Americans I am addicted to the internet. In my case I am mainly addicted to cnn.com and then I switch between bbc and nytimes. For those of you who know my routine of reading through cnn every morning you can imagine how my 2 and 1/2 weeks of orientation made me feel out of touch with the world. Also since internet connections here are not as fast as in the US the other times I did go to internet cafes and pay I did not want to waste my money on waiting for news pages to load. So the last week has made me feel a little more at home since I feel more "in-touch" with the outside world.

Well thats about it for my first 2 weeks of school. I can say that I am very lucky to really like(dare I say love)chemistry, so I oddly enough really do get a joy out of reading my text book in preperation for classes. I will also admit that I give major props to teachers after I have experienced those blank stares of students or those long pauses when noone answers your question..haha.
I also want to admit my 2 strongest fears regarding the upcoming year. The first is that I think I can cover the material in way less then a year or that there is no way I will be able to cover it all in a year. My second fear is that I have been entrusted with covering a set of material and what if when I looked at the curriculm and then planned my lessons I did not include some information that the students will later see on the national exams they must take.

Speaking of fears, I found out that this week(starting Feb 2) S1 and S4 will be in attendence. That means I will now have my full schedule(though I have yet to find out what that will be(said on Sunday night). So this means that I essentially have another entire first week to go through... I can only hope that it will be as good as my first first week.

On a great side note about my school, the national O-level exam that the students take after S3, the grades/rankings came back and my school moved from 9th place in the country to 3rd place. wohoo for them!


Also for the sake of putting it up, here is the daily schedule:
8-8.50: 1st Hour
8.50-9.40: 2nd Hour
9.40-10.30: 3rd Hour
10.30-10.50:Break
10.50-11.40: 4th Hour
11.40-12.30: 5th Hour
12.30-2:Lunch
2-2.50: 6th Hour
2.50-3.40: 7th Hour
3.40-4.30: 8th Hour