A Day in the Life: 9-20-2010

September 20th, 2010

6:00 – Wake up, brush teeth using water bottle (no water pressure on the 3rd floor this morning)
6:30 – Go running. Make it almost a full 30 mins. Usually when I run the sea breeze is in my face on my way home, but today it was on my way out, which is less than ideal but I survived.

7:00 – Take dinner plates down to kitchen. Return library keys to the canteen for the librarian to pick up (the internet connection is in the library, so the librarian lets us use it over the weekend). Fill water bucket outside in event water pressure does not return before breakfast. Kill time camped in front of fan, listening to music and writing in journal waiting for water to be pumped up to the tanks so we will have water pressure. The students are all dressed and ready at this point.

7:50 – Water pressure returns. Wait for Keith to shower, then quickly shower.

8:15 – Hurry to ground floor of dorms to the cafeteria for breakfast. Peanut butter and white bread with some sort of rice/tapioca warm drink. As far as breakfast goes its not my favorite thing here (mmm fried plantains and scrambled eggs), but its not bad.

8:45 – Sign in at the office and pick up chalk for the day. Students line up by classroom in the common area outside the academic building. The national pledge and school prayer are recited. Any announcements are made. The students then orderly enter the building. Attendance is taken in homeroom and any business that needs to be attended to is addressed (books, classroom cleanliness, school sponsored savings programs etc). This should theoretically end at 9, but never does.

9:00 – Periods 1 and 2 (theoretically) start. Everyone has the same teacher for two periods, they call it a double. I have grade a 9 science class. We are doing ecology so we go outside to observe the various habitats surrounding trees in the school compound. For 9am, it's still pretty hot.

10:00 – Break. Today we have a student led assembly before break truly begins. An 11th grade class gives some food for thought, leads a prayer, and the students are encouraged not to litter on the school grounds.

10:30 – Period 3 and 4 begin. Some classes are doubles, some are singles. I have both periods free on Mondays, so I spend my time in the staff room preparing physics lab exercises. I also pick up some textbooks I can let students use for in-class work.

11:45 – Lunch break. I finish planning and head back to the dorm cafeteria. We have greens, chicken and rice.

12:45 – Students again line up in the common area for any other announcements and proceed into the building. More time for homeroom activities, and attendance is taken.

1:00 – Periods 5, 6 and 7 begin. I have another 9th grade science class for periods 5 and 6, so its back outside. Its really hot now. I hide in the shade while pretending to oversee. I have 11th grade physics for period 7. In between 6 and 7 I have to run back to the dorm to pick up some fabric and paint I left in my room, related to school sports which are coming up later this week (that's a topic that deserves its own post if there ever was one). For period 7 we go over some lab procedures we'll be doing next week. I only get to meet with my physics kids once this week because of all the sports disruptions, which will take half a day Wednesday and all day Thursday and Friday.

2:45 – Class ends. Kids line up in the common area again and proceed off campus. Some stick around for lessons or to play ping pong or cricket. I play ping pong with some kids for a while. They are better than me, but I manage to have a few moments that surprise them. I'm actually not too bad, just really rusty and inconsistent.

4:00 – Sign out of school. Head back to dorms to change out of my teacher clothes. Collect laundry from outside.

4:30 – Spend some time in my room lesson planning lab experiments for physics a bit.

5:45 – While dinner is served at 5pm, the cooks leave our food out for us if we come down late. Today I went down just before 6. Chopped cooked okra with a few bits of chicken and rice. I've never really eaten okra that wasn't fried or in a soup before, but its pretty good.

6:30 – Spend about an hour working on grading spreadsheets. The teachers here make elaborate tables by hand, but I think that if I attempted this they would be so full of errors that it would take 4 or 5 attempts to get it right. So instead I'll print them out so I have a hard copy but keep the main records on my computer. I can still approximate the format relatively well, which will hopefully keep me out of trouble come grading time.

7:30 – Shower. Water is running, for now. The dorm kids have study time from 6-8, so after study time the water can go pretty quick. The shower head in my bathroom doesn't work, so I shower in Keith's bathroom. His light doesn't work, but the light in his hallway lets enough in to be manageable. I hand wash today's boxers as well, to cut down on my laundry accumulation.

8:00 – After brushing my teeth, its time to hunker down in the mosquito net for a little entertainment. I have been able to get a wifi signal in my top bunk on some nights, but not tonight. So instead I watch a couple episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender. It's clearly a Nickelodeon show, but it's pretty good, and I was able to pick up the whole first season for about $5 in Georgetown. I've been rationing out my movies and books so that I don't burn through them all at once. I'll listen to music for a little while and then try to be asleep by 10, as 6am comes pretty early.

A Day in the Life: 8-26-2010

I'm going to try and do a few of these hour by hour logs of my days just to amuse myself. I also think it might help me note some things I might not otherwise think are remarkable enough to mention in the blog, but you might find interesting. Or it could be really boring.

26 August 2010

7:30 - Wake up sweaty. Brush teeth. Wash face. Shave. Retrieve dress shirt from clothesline outside. Get dressed in nice clothes (khakis and a button down). Sweat*.

8:00 - Go down to the multipurpose auditorium for breakfast. Scrambled eggs, bread, bacon, pineapple and papaya. Mmm. Sweat.

8:30 - Walk about 15 minutes to the nearby secondary school where we're doing our teaching practicum all week. Sweat.

9:00 - Class begins. Teaching the 4th form (10th grade) students about quadratic functions. They said they needed help with it, but in reality, they haven't even learned about it in the first place and also haven't really had linear equations. We find this out after the 3rd day of teaching about quadratics. No wonder they were struggling. Lesson goes ok. Sweat.

10:30 - Second class. Teaching the 5th form (11th grade), same lesson about quadratics. Observed by Ministry of Education Official. Students still struggling. Do activity where we drop a ball and use the time and equation of motion to estimate height (yay physics!). Observer says we need to work on our lesson planning and classroom presence. No surprises there. Nervous sweat.

12:00 - Walk back to teachers college for lunch. Sweat.

1:00 - Ministry observer presents to our class about Guyanese schools. Dress code, appropriate behavior, required paperwork, etc. Hot, tired and trying to stay awake. She goes on forever. Sweat.

4:00 - Discussion with WorldTeach security adviser, Kitty. He tells me that there is basically nothing to worry about in Anna Regina crime-wise. Least dangerous of any of the sites volunteers are going to. Also tells a story about how like 3 days ago he was near the market in Georgetown and some touristy white guy gets hit by a dude on a bicycle. The dude on the bicycle tries to grab the white guys stuff, pulls a gun, and somehow Kitty ends up between the white guy and the gun. He said he just stared at the guy and he backed down. Kitty is a badass. Less sweaty.

6:00 - Dinner in the auditorium. Fried dough and salt fish. Small portions for dinner in Guyana. Sweat.

7:30 - Take cab to Georgetown for trivia night at an expat bar. My group wins because we are mistakenly gifted 2 rounds where our score is doubled, rather than the usual 1 double round. No one says anything. The other WorldTeach team wins the "rum round," where the winner of the round gets a bottle of rum. Delicious rum (we won it the week before). Bar is air conditioned, but we sat outside. More sweat.

11:30 - Arrive home from bar. Shower in the dark (bathroom has lights, but they haven't worked since I've been there). Water is cold, but refreshing. Wash underwear in shower to keep laundry pile under control. Begin sweating immediately after stopping the water.

12:00 - Set mosquito net down over bed. Read a little using headlamp. Sweating profusely. Sleep.

*Old Spice Sweat Defense is awesome, btw.