Almost There!!!

August 22, 2009

Hi everyone
Well a lot of things have been going on with stage coming to an end. Our last couple of weeks have been absolutely crazy! With model school coming to an end, everyone is getting extremely antsy. By the way, after teaching algebra for the first two weeks and then switching over to geometry for the last two weeks, I can honestly say I am most assuredly an algebra kind of girl. So in my six days of teaching geometry I had to teach the students about perpendicular lines, parallel lines, rectangles, squares, and rhombuses. The kids had no trouble drawling perpendicular lines, but a lot of trouble with parallel lines. Then the fun really began to happen as I started teaching the students about the properties of geometric figures. They were absolutely stellar with the rectangle. They understood that one right away. Then I introduced the square to them. That went perfectly well until I ask then the question is a square a rectangle? They all of course said no. When I told them that a square was actually a rectangle, well let me just say that was 20 minutes of my life I will never get back ;) The kids really would not believe me that a square is a special type of rectangle. They finally said okay after I wrote the properties of a rectangle up on the board next to the properties of a square. Oh gosh the next day was even more chaos as I introduced the rhombus. They understood the properties of the rhombus and they could draw them very well. BUT when I asked the question is a square a rhomus? They said no, I said yes it actually is... Well there went another 30 minutes of my life arguing with sixth graders. Geeze you would think they could put a little faith in a teacher. When I wrote the properties of the square and rhombus up next to one another, they still would not believe me that a square is a special type of rhombus. The Burkinabé really do not like when one thing can be classified as multiple things. I can hardly wait to teach these two lessons again in October.
Oh I have a fun story about test day! So I ended up giving a joint test with Ryan another PCT for the 6em math class. We divided the test equally 10 pts for algebra and 10 pts for geometry. During the test Ryan and I were watching the students, ok me more than him, but I despise cheating. I ended up catching two different pairs of students cheating. One boy wrote on a piece of paper “Can you do this for me?” It was a division problem I think 75/8 was the problem. Then I caught two girls passing a piece of paper between them on the bench for a multiplication problem. I had all four students write down their names on a piece of paper. I deducted 5 pts from each test since I was responsible for 10 pts of the test. It was really brutal to their grades. None of them got anything higher than a 9 on the 20 point test (10 pts is passing here in BF). One student got a zero on the test after the 5 pt deduction. Ouch!
Well Tim has been having a lot of fun teaching computers. During his last week of teaching, he showed the kids the importance of the Internet and solitaire. What is sad is that he says teaching solitaire was one of the toughest things he taught to them these past four weeks.
We had a lot of closing ceremonies this week. One for the closure of model school and one for the host families. The one for model school was extremely hot and long. The one for the host families was really nice. There were lots of snack foods and pop. The host families got a certificate for hosting PCT and they got an invitation to go our swear in ceremony. Our host dad went to the ceremony. Our host parents got us a couple of gifts this past week. They got both Tim and I matching little purses, and they got me a really nice magnetic necklace. They also had a photographer come our last night with them and take pictures of everyone. They gave us a copy of the pictures :)
Tonight, we ate at a Lebanese hotel. The food was fantastic and a wonderful surprise for our taste buds!