Term One 2010

Well it really has been too long since I last updated this blog. I am sorry for that. Things have been busy.

The last time I wrote anything it was just February and school was about to start. This school year in Rwanda was pushed back about 3 weeks because there had been teacher training sessions going on throughout the country. That meant that instead of a 12 or 13 week term, it would become a 9 week term, and although 9 weeks may seem like a long time, in this case it was not. By the time all the students arrived, classes and schedules were sorted, it was time for midterms, and before one knew it, it was also time for end of term exams.
Normally report cards for the exams are given the last day before the students are sent home for the break, but this term the teachers and administration of my school(like many schools in Rwanda) decided to give reports back in term two because we wanted to maximize the amount of teaching days that we could.
This year it was decided that I would be teaching only organic chemistry. I was given 3 senior 4 classes. One of the classes was a new combination for our school, PCB(physics, chemistry, biology).
I must say that after a year of teaching the same students I had not really realized how much my students had gotten used to my speaking, because my new students wow, what a reality check. I really had to grade my English much more than I had been doing by the end of last year.
I also decided that I was going to rework my notes from last year to try and improve on how and what I taught. I did decide that I would give my students my notebook at night so they could copy everything on their own, therefore leaving me to discuss the notes in class and not having to write them on the board, which saved me a lot of time.
Before I knew it the term was over. It felt as though we had just started to really find ourselves, me getting used to them, them to me, and then bam-term is over.

Overall I think the term went well, though it was a little strange for me to not have to do as much prep work as I did last year since I was teaching material I taught/prepared last year. This left me a lot of free time. I tried to use the time as much as possible, though most of the time I found myself with not much to do. Well, what I found myself doing was planning my vacation for the term break..haha..