Week 56 (12 – 18 Aug 2007)
Picture left: Car park on Open Day (full?)Picture above: Andrea helping to pack the food parcels on Open Day
Andrea was still on duty on Sunday and fairly busy. I rested and read in preparation for my tour of duty! The service was much as usual and the car had it’s last bathe before the students leave.
Why is 7am so early! True the view is great but I would prefer to be awake as I try to lead the Monday assembly. The students were having the same problem which is not surprising as the written exams don’t start until 9am. One of them was mine so it did start promptly. But at 9am there were no other teachers around and I couldn’t help much. Eventually they appeared, except and invigilator for the S4 mock exams. It seems they were forgotten and no one had arranged to cover for the teacher who has not left the school and is in Kampala or somewhere equivalently far away. Two of the student took it upon themselves to find a reliable teacher so it was of no surprise to me when I saw Andrea organising the exam! She knew enough Physics to find most of the mistakes in the paper – of which there were many. We had some UK visitors from YWAM and their two children. They were considering coming to Arua in the near future to work. In the evening I volunteered to check the mock Chemistry papers as I don’t teach S4. The papers are set by the Arua Area Education Office so that all schools can do the same ones and have a fairer comparison. I only found 40 or more errors in Paper 1 which contains 50 multiple choice questions. Some had no correct answer and others had more than one possibility. Many errors were basic typographical errors – a nightmare to a chemist but at leas the questions were understandable to the students.
The exams started on time on Tuesday after the fuss we made yesterday and due to the extra efforts of the kitchen staff to get the breakfast ready early. The Chemistry papers seemed to go OK but it took a while to read the corrections. Paper 2 had fewer errors – but still too many.
The exams started very late on Wednesday. This was partly because at 9.15am the Biology teacher was still stapling the papers together with no sense of urgency. I wondered why they had not been stapled together the day before. I offered to help but by that time she already had help and they were almost finished, but managed to delay for another 15 minutes or so. One of the other papers was even later. The secretary was still typing it at 8.30am and then had to run off about 8 pages on a Roneo stencil machine. The Principal was around so I left him supervising. I continued with my marking the rest of the day. By the time I am writing this I can’t remember exactly what happened on each day nor what I’ve written and even though I’ve tried to check it’s easy to miss something, especially when it’s your own writing. Anyway, at some time in the last few weeks Andrea and I were actually around when a game of Scrabble was started. Andrea insisted that no three letter words were used (as they usually play). I don’t like Scrabble much but played to be sociable. I got reasonable letters and won, probably for the first time ever. Andrea was surprised as she tends to use words more than I do. She was second. The English teacher came last – but he complained about the rule change! There was a slight wind and by the end Andrea and I were actually cold. The others had coats of course!
We went to town on Thursday then for lunch with Cathy. She experimented on a pork curry-like lunch to give us a different taste from what we and her family are used to. It was good to have something different as well as catching up with the news. We returned to school in time for the last school assembly of the term where I gave the report of the week on behalf of the teachers on duty. I also promised that as the students were expecting the exams to start at 7am on Friday, that I had a watch and a white skin the exams would start on time! But I’m an idiot at times. If the exams are to start at 7am then I need to be up long before that! I must be weary to make promises like that. Oh, well. We returned to the classrooms again that evening and I gave back (or divided, as the students say) the exam papers to S3. The marks were as low as expected but not significantly different from last term even though the paper was hard. There were a lot of calculations and some students had difficulty finding the mean (or average) of three numbers. We chatted to some and Baker told me a little more about his village in north-eastern Sudan. Most of the boys in that area don’t get any education as they spend most of their time cattle raiding. He was excluded and sent to school because of a weak leg and severe limp. He wants to do something to help the other boys but doesn’t know where to start! Join the club! It’s the sort of thing that could be a future AIM TIMO Team project where a group of people commit themselves to live in a village, often remote, to learn the language then teach English – and where possible about Christianity. Northern Sudan is Muslim so there are dangers with this, but it could happen. Alternatively, or as well, Baker could set his sights on becoming a teacher! It is very moving talking to a youngster from such a background who clearly wants to help his village and is where the real missionary work is being done. It’s a privilege to be able to get to know some of these folk and makes us want to support them in any way we can.
Well, the exams did start at 7am on Friday. Or at least the S3 Biology did. The others started within a five minutes! I arrived at the staffroom at 6.30am in complete darkness and the lights weren’t working. As expected, the Biology paper of five separate sheets had not been stapled so I set about this – using our own stapler as I knew I wouldn’t have time to find one of the working school ones. So imagine me sitting in a staffroom with no light – it gets very dark here if the moon isn’t shining – with my “miner’s headlamp” torch frantically stapling the paper together. The students were around and some came to watch! But they already know we do very odd things. I finished at 6.45am and as no other teachers appeared I took all three sets of papers to the classrooms and started to get the students into the classroom. It’s the first time I have seen students cheering when they see their exam papers! Or was it because they were on time and they wouldn’t be kept waiting so could go home sooner? The other teachers eventually appeared and I had a quiet 90 minutes invigilating the Senior 1 CRE (Christian Religious Education) exam. Andrea spent part of the morning continuing to help the girls sort out the wool and stuffing they needed to continue knitting over the break. Another of the Sudanese students asked for more copies of the daily Bible Reading booklets to take to his village near Juba. As we spoke he had no money to neither get home nor return. But folk here live “by faith” daily and he didn’t seem unduly worried. We said goodbye to the students before the staff meeting at 11am. The meeting finished at 2.30pm and covered a range of topics. I remember thinking that if I am ever in a UK teachers meeting again I will find it relaxing and constructive in comparison! Much time was spent on less relevant matters and the urgent and important ones were skipped over. I’m still not sure if anything was actually decided or if there was that anything will change. But things work differently here – and slowly. We also discovered that even though it was decided in a previous staff meeting that the S4 students would not be coming back early for extra lessons that now they would. And we found this out from the students rather than the teachers. We were a little upset by this. But little was not the word Andrea would use! We suspect that it has not be costed properly especially as they don’t know how many students or teachers will come or who will supervise them. It will be interesting to see what happens but I suspect Andrea will be under some pressure to teach S4 when she was hoping for a longer break in order to prepare other materials.
It was very quiet on Saturday. No students. No preparation – just marking and reading. It was a break we needed.
Why is 7am so early! True the view is great but I would prefer to be awake as I try to lead the Monday assembly. The students were having the same problem which is not surprising as the written exams don’t start until 9am. One of them was mine so it did start promptly. But at 9am there were no other teachers around and I couldn’t help much. Eventually they appeared, except and invigilator for the S4 mock exams. It seems they were forgotten and no one had arranged to cover for the teacher who has not left the school and is in Kampala or somewhere equivalently far away. Two of the student took it upon themselves to find a reliable teacher so it was of no surprise to me when I saw Andrea organising the exam! She knew enough Physics to find most of the mistakes in the paper – of which there were many. We had some UK visitors from YWAM and their two children. They were considering coming to Arua in the near future to work. In the evening I volunteered to check the mock Chemistry papers as I don’t teach S4. The papers are set by the Arua Area Education Office so that all schools can do the same ones and have a fairer comparison. I only found 40 or more errors in Paper 1 which contains 50 multiple choice questions. Some had no correct answer and others had more than one possibility. Many errors were basic typographical errors – a nightmare to a chemist but at leas the questions were understandable to the students.
The exams started on time on Tuesday after the fuss we made yesterday and due to the extra efforts of the kitchen staff to get the breakfast ready early. The Chemistry papers seemed to go OK but it took a while to read the corrections. Paper 2 had fewer errors – but still too many.
The exams started very late on Wednesday. This was partly because at 9.15am the Biology teacher was still stapling the papers together with no sense of urgency. I wondered why they had not been stapled together the day before. I offered to help but by that time she already had help and they were almost finished, but managed to delay for another 15 minutes or so. One of the other papers was even later. The secretary was still typing it at 8.30am and then had to run off about 8 pages on a Roneo stencil machine. The Principal was around so I left him supervising. I continued with my marking the rest of the day. By the time I am writing this I can’t remember exactly what happened on each day nor what I’ve written and even though I’ve tried to check it’s easy to miss something, especially when it’s your own writing. Anyway, at some time in the last few weeks Andrea and I were actually around when a game of Scrabble was started. Andrea insisted that no three letter words were used (as they usually play). I don’t like Scrabble much but played to be sociable. I got reasonable letters and won, probably for the first time ever. Andrea was surprised as she tends to use words more than I do. She was second. The English teacher came last – but he complained about the rule change! There was a slight wind and by the end Andrea and I were actually cold. The others had coats of course!
We went to town on Thursday then for lunch with Cathy. She experimented on a pork curry-like lunch to give us a different taste from what we and her family are used to. It was good to have something different as well as catching up with the news. We returned to school in time for the last school assembly of the term where I gave the report of the week on behalf of the teachers on duty. I also promised that as the students were expecting the exams to start at 7am on Friday, that I had a watch and a white skin the exams would start on time! But I’m an idiot at times. If the exams are to start at 7am then I need to be up long before that! I must be weary to make promises like that. Oh, well. We returned to the classrooms again that evening and I gave back (or divided, as the students say) the exam papers to S3. The marks were as low as expected but not significantly different from last term even though the paper was hard. There were a lot of calculations and some students had difficulty finding the mean (or average) of three numbers. We chatted to some and Baker told me a little more about his village in north-eastern Sudan. Most of the boys in that area don’t get any education as they spend most of their time cattle raiding. He was excluded and sent to school because of a weak leg and severe limp. He wants to do something to help the other boys but doesn’t know where to start! Join the club! It’s the sort of thing that could be a future AIM TIMO Team project where a group of people commit themselves to live in a village, often remote, to learn the language then teach English – and where possible about Christianity. Northern Sudan is Muslim so there are dangers with this, but it could happen. Alternatively, or as well, Baker could set his sights on becoming a teacher! It is very moving talking to a youngster from such a background who clearly wants to help his village and is where the real missionary work is being done. It’s a privilege to be able to get to know some of these folk and makes us want to support them in any way we can.
Well, the exams did start at 7am on Friday. Or at least the S3 Biology did. The others started within a five minutes! I arrived at the staffroom at 6.30am in complete darkness and the lights weren’t working. As expected, the Biology paper of five separate sheets had not been stapled so I set about this – using our own stapler as I knew I wouldn’t have time to find one of the working school ones. So imagine me sitting in a staffroom with no light – it gets very dark here if the moon isn’t shining – with my “miner’s headlamp” torch frantically stapling the paper together. The students were around and some came to watch! But they already know we do very odd things. I finished at 6.45am and as no other teachers appeared I took all three sets of papers to the classrooms and started to get the students into the classroom. It’s the first time I have seen students cheering when they see their exam papers! Or was it because they were on time and they wouldn’t be kept waiting so could go home sooner? The other teachers eventually appeared and I had a quiet 90 minutes invigilating the Senior 1 CRE (Christian Religious Education) exam. Andrea spent part of the morning continuing to help the girls sort out the wool and stuffing they needed to continue knitting over the break. Another of the Sudanese students asked for more copies of the daily Bible Reading booklets to take to his village near Juba. As we spoke he had no money to neither get home nor return. But folk here live “by faith” daily and he didn’t seem unduly worried. We said goodbye to the students before the staff meeting at 11am. The meeting finished at 2.30pm and covered a range of topics. I remember thinking that if I am ever in a UK teachers meeting again I will find it relaxing and constructive in comparison! Much time was spent on less relevant matters and the urgent and important ones were skipped over. I’m still not sure if anything was actually decided or if there was that anything will change. But things work differently here – and slowly. We also discovered that even though it was decided in a previous staff meeting that the S4 students would not be coming back early for extra lessons that now they would. And we found this out from the students rather than the teachers. We were a little upset by this. But little was not the word Andrea would use! We suspect that it has not be costed properly especially as they don’t know how many students or teachers will come or who will supervise them. It will be interesting to see what happens but I suspect Andrea will be under some pressure to teach S4 when she was hoping for a longer break in order to prepare other materials.
It was very quiet on Saturday. No students. No preparation – just marking and reading. It was a break we needed.
posted by J & A McAdam at 9:07 AM
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