Saturday, August 24, 2013

My first week as a ...



The only constant is change.

I have just spent my first week at work. My job at the school, the reason I was hired, is to train the teachers here in best practice. I have my Reading Power, 6+1, PBL, Mind-Up (just to name a few) resources in my office, ready to share what I use in my class and what we find are good strategies to deliver our curriculum. 

That’s my job… but not yet.

This past week (and for the next two), I have been employed as the headmistress/deputy head/ acting head/ acting deputy head of the school. I have neither been told my role nor told if the role will continue all year but because the Headmistress left at the end of July and the Deputy Headmistress is away until September 10th, the role of administrator has fallen on me.

I met with the deputy head before she left to get an outline of what she needed me to do. Information for the staff meeting, expectations for the schemes, topic outlines, lesson plans, homework, novel study, classroom decorations, timetabling…

OMG! I don’t know how these teachers survive.

I have a 3” binder full of schemes for term 1. The term schemes are pages long for each subject. They have to divide the term into the number of lessons they will teach (50 for English for example) and then make a chart outlining each lesson, the objective, the activity and the resources used. They do this for English (50 lessons), Math (50), Science (20), Geography (10), History (10), and Citizenship (10). There are specialist teachers for PE, Art, Music and French who do this for each grade.

The progress of the schemes this week was hampered by 2 days without power and one day without ink in the printer. Not to mention that some don’t even know what the curriculum is because their assignment has been changed (randomly as far as I can tell) and they don’t have hard copies of their Learning Outcomes. I have one teacher who has asked me to find out what her geography curriculum is for the year. No small feat!

Topic outlines are a one page (thank goodness) document that basically states what the big topics are for each subject. These get sent home to parents.

Lesson plans are TWO PAGES per lesson. They are kept in a book and each Friday the book is collected to see if the lesson plans are all there and detailed. Each plan ends with a reflection of what went well and what needs to be changed for next lesson. Imagine having to write those each day for each lesson and then imagine being the poor teacher who is assigned the role of looking at all the lesson plan books after work each Friday.

That same teacher is also assigned the job of approving homework. Each teacher has to plan his or her homework for the week, write it and hand it in on Friday for the following week. It gets approved then photocopied for the students. At the staff meeting, we talked about homework (and how I don’t give any!) They face the same issues as we do: students don’t do it, a parent does it, they copy from one another, and they write the answers as the homework is being corrected. I suggested giving less homework this term. They are all quite excited about that. We’ll see if that becomes a reality.

Ah, novel study. I thought they needed one novel per term but I found out at the staff meeting that they actually need two: one for the class and one for book week (theme: Books are Bridges, Sail Away - hmmm.) They have maybe 50 novels to choose from. The Headmistress loved Roald Dahl and the classics so most of the books available are those. The grade 6 teacher came to ask me if I thought her students would prefer Animal Farm, A Tale of Two Cities, or George’s Marvellous Medicine.   Several of her students are ESL. I suggested George. The grade 5 teacher is doing Gulliver’s Travels. Grade 4 is The Enormous Crocodile. The other grades have not made their selection. Teachers have one copy of the book for the whole class.

For book week, we have decided that they should select Adventure books to go with the theme. Again, the books have not been selected, there is only one copy, and each Friday the students will have a project to do over the weekend to go with the novel that they don’t have. If they don’t do their project work, they miss art/pe/music but the teacher is the one who keeps them to complete their work.

As for timetabling, I spent Friday chasing the high school music teacher to make sure that the primary students would have access to the music room which is shared between the two schools. Our music teacher told me that last year there were primary classes that were at the same time as the high school and so those students never had access to the music room or any of the instruments (secondary is most important and takes priority over primary.) The French teacher still doesn’t know her schedule for the high school so she can’t book her primary students. The computer teacher wants nothing to do with the primary kids and refused to come to the staff meeting. Each time the primary secretary called him, he hung up as soon as he knew it was her. I have given him the 3 and 4 year olds at 8am followed by the 5 year olds at 8:40! Don’t mess with me!!!

Once the deputy head is back, I am not sure what my title will be. I am hoping just “trainer” as I was supposed to be but maybe if I was headmistress, I could affect some instructional change. I have told the primary teachers that I will be their advocate for the year. Four classes don’t have SMART boards (so why am I training them on its use?) One class has a board but no pens because they were taken for repair about 6 months ago. If the power goes out, they have no generator but the high school does. There are maybe 200 books for the children but none in the class and no text books. They have only one copy of novels for study. There are no manipulatives and no supplies for Science. The kindergarten teacher came and asked me to get toys for her class. They want a garden. They have to ask for each item they need (like a pen or a piece of construction paper) and then sign a book to say that they took it. There are students with special needs but no support teacher.

And this school has so much more than the government schools here that I visit to volunteer.

Students start on Wednesday. It is going to be an interesting year!

Sunday, August 18, 2013

Pro-D?



These are my notes from the pro-d workshop last week.
 
Imposed professional-development is never enjoyable. Yes, sometimes it can be interesting and yes it can be enlightening but unless you are the one planning it and you have a big passion for the topic - hence why you are the one planning it – it is never really enjoyable. 

However, I will never complain about imposed pro-d, ever again. PROMISE!

I won’t go into the full description of our two days of pro-d because you may never read my blog again but I do want to share some things that made me go “Hmmm…”

“Learning never ceases to end.”

“Communication is fast or slow, depending on how the two people communicate.”

“I want you to get into 8 groups. Two groups will review standard A and 2 groups will review standard F.”

“There are 12 of you so break into 4 groups of 4.”

“Severe dyslexia and disabilities – we don’t want that.” (said by a teacher)

“Standards are international. If you go for a pizza at Mcdonald’s  anywhere in the world, it is the same.”

“You have 40 minutes to work so an hour or 40 minutes and take a break or a working break to be back in 40 minutes.”

“There are three parts: 1 (…), 2 (…) and number 4 (…)”

Of course these statements are taken out of context but still, some are the same no matter what the context!

Teachers are awful listeners and that is why we teach. We don’t want to listen to anyone else except ourselves. Ugandan teachers are even worse. I don’t envy the presenter! He had a tough crowd of people coming late (an hour the first day and 30 minutes the second day yet everyone wants to end on time!), chatters at the back, cell phones ringing, texting, and just general behaviour that we would not accept from our students. But, we also sat on wooden chairs from 8:30-10:30, then 11:00-1:30 and 2:30-4:00 without any break, he ended both days with group presentations where everyone had to share everything in detail that they had written, and no-one could read or hear what the groups were sharing.

At 3:30 on the second day, we were listening to the groups share their communication tables (when do we need to communicate at school and how are we going to do it? Yes, really. Now think of ALL the possible times we communicate as a staff for ANY reason at all related to school.) The presenter kept telling the groups to present faster but that’s like asking molasses to run faster. People just talk slowly.

My group was the last to present. Corey and I had two young men in our group who were agreeable to anything so instead of a table, we did a flow-chart. Anyone who knows me knows that I work in colour. Our poster had arrows and lines and words all in alternating Christmas colours. I volunteered to present. When I put our paper up, Corey said that there were lots of whispers around the room.

“My group decided to present the same information but in a different way. We created a flow-chart of some of the times we need to communicate with parents at the primary school. Groups have already talked about some of our points so I will only share two.”

I did. Quickly.

“Thank you. I’m sorry if I spoke too quickly, that’s just what I do.”

I got the most "enthusiastic" round of applause for the afternoon and everyone started to get up to leave. But the presenter had a few more words to share. This took another 45 minutes as he recapped everything we had covered for the day.

Sam has spoken a lot about cultural differences and I know that Canadian culture and Ugandan culture are different. I know that time is fluid here because of traffic jams but when someone is “there” but not “here” because he is chatting and enjoying a cup of tea, that becomes disrespectful.

As of this Monday, I am the presenter. There will be a few challenges ahead! But hopefully I can make my presentations more engaging and model that “talk and chalk” is not the only way to get your point across. 

Wish me luck!

Saturday, August 10, 2013

Perfection Not Required



I have to start with two pop culture references…

Remember the episode of Friends where Ross gets a Cassio keyboard and performs a concert for his friends? Remember how awful it was and how proud he was and yet how embarrassed his friends were?

Remember when Will Ferrell in Elf sings to his father when he first meets him because his father thinks he’s an Elf-a-Gram for his birthday? “And I’m singing….cause I’m happy…I’m your son…You’re my dad…” The words aren’t important, just the way it was sung.

Now put those two together, add a very loud microphone and you have the church service that is happening down the hill from us. You need to throw in a few Hallelujahs and also put the song on repeat for 20-30 minutes (performed live mind you) in order to get the full experience but that’s pretty much it. 

I actually thought initially that it might be an auction with the speed of speech and calling out but after the first hallelujah, I knew that I was wrong.

Going back to the “musical” performance…

My experience in church is very limited. Apart from a Christmas service, I do not attend. However, Christmas services in Kelowna are spectacular. Go to Trinity Baptist and you see a full production with sets and lights and costumes and well-rehearsed actors. Evangel has a great band. Last year Mum and I went to New Life and as we got there, the singers were rehearsing and the band was warming up. They were wearing coordinating clothes and wanted to make sure that everything looked and sounded perfect.

The performance we are privy to here is far from perfect. I was saying to Corey that it would be the type of thing you would hear at church if one of the congregation members’ 6 year old son or daughter had just got a new keyboard and had asked a friend to sing and they wrote a song especially for church so would it be okay for them to share because they have been working so hard? Everyone would smile and giggle and clap because they were so cute and tried so hard. So much potential!

“Keep practicing and soon you will be able to perform each week/sing with the choir/play with the band.”

Here this is the performance that comes each week. We roll our eyes and shake our heads and wonder how it could possibly be ignored how monotonous and off-key and repetitive the song is.

But maybe the Ugandans have something to teach us about the importance of perfection.

If you go to London Drugs, all the tools are “professional” quality. Get salon perfect hair! Chef quality food! Professional carpet cleaner results! And we search for the items that will allow us to be as perfect as we can be or to have a perfect home or a perfect family. Even a perfect dog groomed with professional quality doggy shampoo. Don’t go out without your make-up! 

We are not allowed to just be average. If we can’t do it perfectly then we might as well not even bother trying. We are controlled by our fear of embarrassment. If we can’t do it perfectly, we don’t want to do it at all because someone might laugh at us.

Here they don’t laugh. Here they applaud or encourage or just ignore. Apollo, our lovely driver, often randomly does a little dance as he walks to the van. James sings. Signs have spelling mistakes.

Water is life. Reflesh with us.

New salon openning soon.

But so what? It’s not as if we don’t know what the signs mean. We don’t think Apollo and James are insane. 

We had a meeting with Sam and Ahmed earlier this week. Sam repeatedly said, “Be free.” I think that is the most important lesson Ugandans can teach us Mzungu.

Relax. Be Free. Enjoy the moment and don’t worry about perfection. Just be you. No-one minds.

Wouldn’t that be liberating??

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Another rant...



No thanks, we don’t need your crap.

When you donate something, you should feel a little pinch. That’s your stinginess rebelling against the action. If you donate the old coat that you would never be caught dead wearing, that’s not generosity, that’s cleaning out your closet.

The container arrived yesterday after a prolonged stay in the bond area. Nothing that has to with bureaucracy is ever easy here and rules change each year but at least it has arrived and the contents are all fine.



Ediga came to fetch us after the container was emptied (to be lifted off the truck) so that we could collect our items that had floated their way across the ocean. “Anything that isn’t books belongs to us,” we told the men who were reloading the boxes into the container. We got all our sanitary kits, the rolls of PUL and flannel, the duffle bag filled with little dresses and shorts from the Alliance ladies, and a few extra duffle bags that I figured someone had put in for us or for the Days for Girls Uganda team.


We got the bags and boxes home and looked through each one to make sure we hadn’t missed anything. I didn’t cherish the thought of having to return to the container to try to find a lost box but it seemed that we had all the sanitary supplies we had sent. As it was, Ediga did manage to find another box of pads and he brought that home for us.


I opened the duffle bags that were “new” to me. One had fleecy blankets that someone had made. We can certainly hand those out at the orphanages. Three were filled with assorted fabric. Those will go to Days for Girls Uganda, not because they will use them but because they are affiliated with the YWCA tailoring school and will be able to give them the fabric for their students. Then came the last two duffle bags…

USED BRAS, PANTIES and LINGERIE.




I kid you not. We have two large duffle bags filled with used underwear. 

Okay, I exaggerate. There are also three sets of very used, badly pilled boys’ pyjamas.

So here is my rant. Why on earth would anyone think that used underwear would be something worthwhile to send to Uganda? Why would the Ugandans want it? And how on earth are we supposed to distribute them? 

“Oh, I notice you are not wearing a bra. Lucky for you I happen to have two duffle bags filled with used bras in the van. Please come and select one.”

Give me a break.

A few years ago, I came to Uganda in March with Mum and a lady that we saw each year was wearing MY hat that I had donated to Value Village the previous year. It was an unusual pink straw hat so the chance of it being someone else’s hat was very slim. There is a book called “The Blue Sweater” that deals with the concept of our leftovers being sent to Africa. Drive down any street or visit any market and you’ll see people with tarps on the ground covered with used clothes sent from the West. Containers full of them travel across the ocean to stock these markets and clothe the men, women and children in various African nations. It’s part of their market and economy. 

But that doesn’t forgive the idea of sending used underwear and such old crappy pyjamas that no-one would ever make their children wear them in a container half way across the world.

When people ask if they can donate items, I usually say no unless I have a specific market to give them to like the sports jerseys we brought for Youth Sport Uganda. However, I went through all those jerseys. There were many that were thrown away because they were ripped or badly stained. Who would want them? 

Poor little Africans. They have nothing so let’s give them our crap that we don’t want anymore because it’s too used to be useful to us. I would never be seen in it/I would never put my child into it.

I tell people that if you would be too embarrassed to give it to a neighbour or if you would have to preface the giving of the items with “I know it’s a bit worn out/stained/ripped but…” then don’t give it to me. The Ugandans don’t want it either. Why would they? 

Please, don’t send your crap. No-one wants it. Not even the poor little Africans. They have enough arriving on their shores without having more arriving with all the mzungu who land on a daily basis. Sheesh.

Monday, August 5, 2013

Banana "Loaf"

It's not really easy to bake when there are no measuring spoons, no measuring cups, a gas oven that has no temperature gauge, and ingredients that are a little different than what I get at home.

Never mind! I made banana "loaf" (but more like cake) today and apart from a slightly burned bottom (less time next time because I can't have less heat), it is actually quite tasty.



Here is my recipe.

8 small red bananas (these are normally red and look to be on the edge of being brown and over-ripe but normally they're not. However, these were getting to the point of being mushy so they were perfect)
1/3 cup melted butter (or what you think looks to be about 1/3 cup)
1/2 thermos lid of sugar
1 beaten egg
pinch of salt
1 level small spoon (tsp?) of bicarbonate of soda
1.5 thermos lids of flour

Mash the bananas in a wok, your only large "bowl", and mix in the melted butter that you have melted in the oven while it heats up. Make sure to use a dish-towel to remove the metal bowl you have used to melt the butter but don't let the towel touch the gas flame.

Stir in the sugar and beaten egg.

Sprinkle the soda and salt over the mixture and stir together.

Pour the flour into the wok and use a metal spoon to mix it all together.

Pour it into a 8x12 greased baking pan. Spread the batter in the pan and bake for... 20 minutes? I did mine for 25 minutes and it was too much. Turn out onto a dishcloth and let cool. Flip from time to time to allow all sides to cool evenly so that the bottom doesn't get soggy.

Enjoy!