First time at computer today. We are at the Monduli teacher’s college in the computer lab. We have been waiting to come here, but the server has been down for ten days because they didn’t pay their bill.
Twelve of us are living in a duplex — eleven women and one man. All are good sports and the weariness of being in such close quarters is alleviated by our cook who prepares delicious meals. He is on loan from a safari company.
There many similarities in the attitude of the staff that I saw in my Zulu High School in 2003. Many want information on graduate schools and hope we can help them (i.e. find “sponsors”). We don’t have partner-teachers as we had expected and we have very small groups. Students were told the night before vacation that they had not passed their tests and would have to come to our Language Village. Many skipped out! Who could blame them!?
After three weeks, some are coming back early and want to join our classes, which is fine with us. I only have 3 “form one” students. They are wonderful and we work with our homerooms every day and rotate the other 10 groups for the remaining four periods. That way we only have to prepare “deeply” for a small number of lessons that we adapt to each group of students. I am having great luck using Maasai folk tales to build English comprehension. I prepare by using culturally relevant materials.
We walked to the market with our students yesterday. A colleague and I took a taxi home with four of our students. It was the first time that three of the girls had been in a car. They didn’t know how to look for the handles to get out.
