September 7th - The First Day of School

It was the first day of the new school term and the first day in the new school – everyone was very excited! The day started with an opening assembly with everyone standing in a circle area outside. One of the teachers kicked things off and then handed it over to Steven's brother Michael, the Head Teacher and in his lovely quiet way, he talked about about the school's motto – do the right thing, at the right place, at the right time and in the right way – the respect he has of the kids was so clear. We then introduced ourselves and then everyone headed off to class.

Everyone was nervous about 'teaching school' as we all had very little idea what to expect - so the night before we decided to initially 'observe' in pairs and then take it from there. Anna and I had the Standard 5s, the oldest class – theoretically about 10 but our range was 10 to 13. There were 6 kids on Monday and by the end of the week there would be 13 with a few stragglers showing up and 3 new students joining thanks to the new school (including one of the girls I'd been teaching last week who was really bright – I was thrilled to see her in class).

The theory of observation was an interesting one as no teacher showed up ... so we found out where they were in the math text book and got them going on that. We were working with them one on one and I was helping an older girl who's tendency was to just ignore the questions – her basic skills weren't very good which impacted her ability to get some of the other concepts – but we persevered and she was understanding and able to repeat the examples – we celebrated at the end with a high five and I loved to see the pride and satisfaction on her face – it absolutely made my day. Later, one of the teachers came by to start us off on English – using the text, he had the class read the story, led a brief discussion and then they were to work on the questions in the book and we would help them and mark their work. They do like their 'ticks' – and if it is a red pen all the better – and from what Michael said, they are important – something the parents will look for when they go home at night. (Over the week they got used to my 'stationary kleptomania' and realized they needed to specifically ask for their pens back when I was done marking or it would disappear ... and they weren't going to let that happen, the pen was too valuable!)

We broke for lunch – rice and beans – simple and good. We ate in the small staff/book/supplies room with the teachers and had a chance to compare notes with the others about their morning and also look at the schedule. The schedule was detailed – 6 classes of 40 minutes starting at 8am, with a 30 minute recess in the morning, an hour and a half lunch and then 4 classes in the afternoon until 4.20pm. And given that the older kids had an extra period at 6.30am, it was a very long day for everyone. So far the morning hadn't gone exactly to schedule ... but this was Day 1 and we were all curious to see how things would evolve as the week progressed.

In the afternoon we observed one of the teachers cover social studies and it was very interesting to listen to – he covered some of the traditional tribal ways from earlier times and to my surprise, it did touch on circumcision, both male and female – happily, the message was that female circumcision was being discouraged by the Kenyan government - for health reasons ... The last period was flexible and so we had an open Q&A session – to help them get to know us better, we said they could ask us any questions they wanted – I was on the hot seat first ... How old was I? Was I married? Did I have any children? It was the census all over again ... only their reactions were more exaggerated than the census takers ... they nearly fell out of their seats in gales of laughter when they realized I was 42, not married and no children. However, I did get a few points when I said I'd been to university, had my own home and a car ... though I'm still not entirely sure they thought that was the better side of the equation to be on ... We also asked them what they wanted to become – I loved the answers – everything from airplane pilots, to doctors, nurses and teachers and even one girl who wanted to be a Member of parliament – I was absolutely thrilled by that!

It was the end of the day – we'd survived – and it was a very quiet evening as we were all tired from our first day.