Sir Samuel Baker School

Today was my first day of school. I am teaching 3 sections of S3 mathematics (this is approximately equivalent to grade 0) that each meet 3 times per week for 80 minutes. My team teacher is Acire Simon (pronounced Ah-cheer-ay). He is a quiet and kind man who is married and has four children. I am hoping I get to meet the family because his two youngest are 1 and 3 years of age! So cute! I looking forward to working with him over these next 5 weeks as he seems as excited as I am to exchange ideas with an international teacher about teaching.

Some of the challenges that I believe we will be working to combat this summer include:
-Students dislike for mathematics
-Students thinking that they cannot do math
-Students arriving late to class
-Students not completing their work/reading for class
-Students not participating and asking questions
All challenges that we see in classrooms in the United States – so I have lots of ideas and Acire is excited to try new things, I believe.

The classroom setting is quite different. First of all it’s all boys. LOTS of energy! All the boys sit at wooden desks that look a bit like church pews with tables. 3-4 boys cram into a table that is made for only 2. They each have one book (this is amazing…usually students have to share one book among several students) and one notebook. They all write in pen. I have not seen a single pencil yet. They also LOVE getting a red check mark on their paper. It’s a little bit wild and I will need to bring some more structure to their independent practice just for my own sanity. Right now they will work on problems independently and when they get an answer will shove their notebook in their face and wait for the red check that communicates that they are correct. Did I mention there about 60 students per class? It’s utter chaos if they ALL have the problem correct at the same time. Thankfully with Acire and I both in the classroom we can each only have to deal with a 30-student pile up. Again…something to work on.

As for the rest of the school – everyone is SO friendly. The teachers greet us every day in English and Acholi. They get a real kick out of hearing us practice our Acholi – it’s clear that we are pretty horrible but they are very encouraging. I have gotten to know many and the atmosphere is much more relaxed. When we are not teaching, which is more often then not, the teachers relax in the staff room. Scrabble it the game of choice to pass the time. It is AMAZING how good they are. I have been too scared to play as of yet but may give it a go next week. They will have solid blocks of words, words that I often do not believe are English words until I look them up and find out, yep, it’s a word. Crazy, seriously crazy.

Needless to say, I’m loving the interaction with the people at my school and am really looking forward to getting to know them better. I feel so privileged to have this opportunity – hopefully I will be able to reciprocate the learning experience for my new friends.