September Newsletter #2

Things have been a little busy around here lately, but here's the latest newsletter update I've just sent out.

School Life

So I'm now into week 4 of the Christmas Term here at ARMS. I think I'm starting to get into a routine. Here are some things I find interesting about school.

Every day, the bell rings and the students line up at 8:45 outside the main academic building. They are not allowed to enter the building before class starts. Just outside the building there's a covered pavilion area, with a podium and two speakers. A microphone is hooked up and any announcements are made. Announcements can range from encouraging the students not to litter, informing them of assemblies later in the day, club meeting time reminders etc. The national pledge and school prayer are recited by all students. The students, who are lined up by their base (homeroom) classes, then proceed into the building in what is supposed to be an orderly fashion. It's certainly more organized than the chaos I remember following the bell in high school. The teachers are expected to inspect the students during the walk in and base class time to make sure their uniforms are appropriate. Every student has to have a monogrammed badge with the school logo on it. The boys often get in trouble for having belt buckles that are too big or leaving the second button of their shirt undone (top button undone is ok). Common offenses for girls involve improper styling of hair (braids or ponytails are expected for the most part) or too much jewelery. Once in base class, attendance is taken. All this is supposed to take place in 15 minutes, though it rarely does. When this happens, first period is just shorter. Irregular scheduling will be a recurring theme of “School Life.”

As far as class itself goes, the students stay in their base classes while the teachers rotate around. This has its advantages and downsides. One positive is that there is no hustle and bustle during class changes, as only 45 or so teachers are moving about instead of 1,000+ students. It also means that the kids in their classes get to know each other very well. For the most part, they spend the first 3 years in the same base class, then get split up into tracks where they spend 2 more years together. So I think it helps greatly as far as student bonding goes. On the other hand, it's not very useful to spend a lot of time putting a lot of instructional material up in your classroom, since for the most part you won't be teaching in there. Class changes are governed by an electric school bell out in the covered pavilion. Someone has to throw a switch to ring it, so sometimes the bell is late, sometimes early and sometimes it doesn't ring at all. The bell is also outside the school building so sometimes it can be hard to hear, adding to the intrigue. Students get a 30 minute break in the morning, and an hour break at lunch. After lunch the lineup and march into the school is repeated, giving way to afternoon classes.

Almost all the administrative work that classroom teachers go through to make a school work anywhere in the world (department meetings, club meetings, paperwork etc) happens during the day. So that means for clubs and meetings, you can meet during break or lunch, or just whenever you want during the day. Inevitably, when these meetings run over, teachers have to stick around and wrap up. While this is going on, the students in whatever class you're supposed to be in are just left unsupervised. The same thing happens when teachers who are organizing things like sports and have things they have to attend to, their students are left unsupervised. There are no substitute teachers in Guyana, so if a teacher is sick or takes leave, the students are left unsupervised. Sometimes the bell will ring for staff meetings in the middle of class. When this happens, all the teachers leave their students, you guessed it, unsupervised. If this sounds like a recipe for disaster, you'll be pleased to hear that for the most part, things stay pretty orderly. I haven't heard about any school fights, and only occasionally have I had to stick my head in a next door classroom because the noise was disturbing my class. I have in general been very impressed with the students discipline and behavior.

As far as coursework goes, I'm just beginning to start asking for some graded assignments in my classes. The official school policy is to have at least 3 graded assignments per term, one of which should be a test. This excludes final exams, which happen during the second-to-last week of school, so most students are given 4 assessments per term. I plan to do a lot more because that's what I'm used to and it helps me ensure my students are learning, but I think it will also mean that I have a lot of grading to do. The school has a photocopier, but it is currently not working and I have been warned not to hold my breath for its repair, so all assignments must be written on a chalkboard and copied down by students. The school has a library with some books and I believe all students have received textbooks for maths and english classes, but for other courses, books are scarce. From what I have heard from teachers at other schools, I am very fortunate to have a library of any sort! Book scarcity means that teachers have a certain responsibility to provide content in note form, so the students have something to study for their exams. This results in a lot of writing notes on the board to be copied down, which is not the most stimulating practice for teachers or students, but that is the reality facing these students. On top of that they have been doing this for a long time, so they're pretty good at taking notes from a chalkboard. The chalkboards, by the way, are all plywood painted black. Some of them are nicely finished and are a pleasure to write on, but some are very rough and just devour chalk. Also, they're magnets for graffiti. Sometimes I'm impressed with the students ability to read what I'm writing through the accumulated chalk dust and the gouges in the board, but I guess they have a lot of experience in that regard. In general, I've found the students to be pretty delightful. They generally behave themselves, are a little quiet but are willing to answer questions after some prodding and have a surprising love for learning and attending school. I'm not sure if its just a fuzzy memory or the reality, but I have been pleasantly surprised with the students versus my expectations based on my own time in high school. So despite all the things that certainly seemed chaotic during my first few days of school, I have settled into as much of a routine as I can manage, am thoroughly enjoying teaching and am now working on improving my teaching techniques.

Dorm Life, Part 2

Keith and I are still being put up in the dorms. There are about 115 kids staying in the dorms. The building is 3 stories. The boys (and the two foreign teachers) are up on the third floor. The girls and two dorm mothers (normally they are one to a floor) are on the second floor. The first floor holds the cafeteria and kitchen. The kids have free time after school until 5pm, when dinner is served. They use this time to do laundry, play cricket, hang out outside, play table tennis and otherwise relax. After dinner, the kids have mandatory study time from 6-8pm in the cafeteria. At 8, the students go upstairs and have some more free time, until around 9pm. At 8pm, once all the kids are inside, the dorm mother locks the door. So Keith and I have been locked out a few times, but its not too hard to shout up or call someone with our cell phones to get let in. If we are on the ball, we can also ask the dorm mother to just leave the door closed but not locked for us, which also helps immensely. On the weekends the children have free time all day and then have game time from 6-8pm outside. There is a lot of cricket played. They also really love volleyball, but there is only one ball, which I have been placed in charge of. A few weekends ago I played some frisbee with the kids as well, which they enjoyed. Hopefully I'll have them playing proper ultimate frisbee by the end of the year. I did play a little cricket with them the other day as well. All those years of shunning softball and baseball have really come back to haunt me!! I whiffed on quite a few easy bowls (pitches). I think I just need a little bit more practice. While the swing is different, the bat is wider, so I think I might become soundly mediocre by the end of the year.

School Sports

Last week we had school sports. When someone first told me about school sports, I was assuming they were talking about a variety of teams that formed throughout the year and competed after school. You know, pretty much what I experienced in high school. Boy was I wrong. In the 7th grade, students entering the school are placed in a “house.” As far as I know, the only purpose of the house is to group the students into teams for sports. At ARMS there are 7 houses. For school sports, each house is assigned two teachers to serve as house master and mistress. Other teachers are also assigned to houses to support these teachers. I was assigned as house master of house 5. Each house is given a color and name, and the name is based on a lake somewhere in the Essequibo Coast region. House 5 was given Ikuraka and the color yellow. No one I talked to knew where Lake Ikuraka was.

So as house master, I had a variety of responsibilities that I knew nothing about. Fortunately I had an excellent, veteran house mistress so I was not completely fed to the wolves. Firstly, school sports only consists of track and field events. Nothing out of the ordinary (sprints, distance runs, jumping throwing etc). Each event was separated into age and gender categories (boys under 14 200M for example). Teacher duties for the house involved facilitating the election of students to house boy and girl positions, filling all the events, providing snacks for the first day of sports and lunch for the second day of sports, creating a banner and determining what the house uniform would be. Filling all the events proved tricky because when we would dismiss the students from their 6th and 7th periods at the end of the day for house meetings, the older students would scatter to the winds. So it took some effort to hunt them down and “encourage” them to sign up for events. Its a job I call House Truancy Officer. The banner and uniform were judged as part of a parade at the opening of the track events. Participants and winners for all the events score points for their houses. We fortunately had a student whose father paints signs for a living, and were able to arrange for him to paint our banner, so it looked very snazzy. We had yellow sashes and yellow posterboard hats for the march. I helped the house mistress cook some fried rice for lunch on the second day in the dorm kitchen (that's a tale for another day - I've never cooked in a wok the size of a Mini Cooper before!).

So after spending almost a full weeks worth of no 6th and 7th periods, we had two days of school sports. There was no class for anyone on either day. The field events came first. All the students theoretically watched their classmates compete in all sorts of events. Because all the teachers were either busy making sure things were going smoothly with their house or monitoring the events, there weren't any bodies available to keep an eye on students who decided to wander off. Also, the field events were held mostly between the dorms and main office building, so it was a bit cramped for all the students to fit in, so there was some allowable spillover. For the most part, I think this was tolerable and I didn't hear about any incidents. However, being in charge of a house means you're responsible for making sure the students that signed up for events actually participate in the event. While there were a few megaphones set up to make announcements, their range was pretty limited. So I had to embark on what I call House Truancy Officer 2: What Did That Kid Look Like? The events went pretty well and were quite enjoyable. I noticed that none of the students doing the high jump employed the Fosbury Flop. Then someone pointed out to me that the landing area consisted of a couple of old mattresses and some pads that looked older than I am. So it was hurdling all the way. ARMS has quite an impressive collection of jumpers and throwers. At the end of the day, the teachers all tried their hands at the throws. Having never thrown a javelin, discus or shot put before, I was pleased to say that I managed to throw them all properly and keep them in bounds. I did not set any school records however, and was surpassed by all the other teachers.

On the second day of school sports, we went out to the schools field, which was freshly mowed. Here we had all the banners presented and the parade. Each house marched around the track in their colors, carrying their banners and leading chants. It was pretty fun. They had two sheds set up to shelter us from the heat, which was nice. Finding athletes was again a challenge, but by now I had moved on to something I call House Truancy Officer 3: The Delegator. I'd just ask nearby students if they knew the child in question and when I found one that did, sent them off to find them. I found this method to be much more efficient. As far as the events went, the students were again impressive. Most students ran without shoes. There were a few teacher events, including the 100M dash (I finished 3rd out of 5 I think), and then at the end of the day, the lime and spoon (think egg and spoon race but without the danger of breaking your egg) and the balloon toss. My partner and I tied with another house for balloon toss champs. I think we were robbed though because the balloon developed a tiny hole which eventually led to our downfall while the other team went out by dropping their balloon.

On the balance, our house finished 3rd overall. Not bad for a first time house captain and makeshift rice cook, I think. The top athletes from the school will go on to compete in inter-school competition, which will take up 2 days next week (more missed class for everyone!). The best inter-school athletes will go on to inter-branch (I think within the entire region) and then the national championships. I think the school had quite a few (around 10 or so) national athletes last year, so I'm looking forward to cheering them on for the upcoming month or so. Getting out of school for a couple of days isn't the end of the world either.

There are a bunch of new photos up on Facebook. Here's the link again.