We have survived our first two weeks of teaching. This year seems to be running a lot smoother for us. The administration is going out of their way to make sure that they are providing us with anything that will make our jobs easier. The Censeur even scheduled our classes so that we have three day weekends! Needless to say both Tim and I are feeling pretty good about our last year here as teachers.I am teaching two classes of math this year: one sixth grade level and one seventh grade level. I’m still not sure how my two classes will behave this year. I have a sneaky suspicion that the sixth graders are going to be little hellions. As for my seventh graders, I am lucky that I have some repeaters from last year who can talk to the new one and tell them not to try stuff with me. It only ends with me getting mad and them getting reprimanded.
I have decided to continue on with my Peanut Gallery this year. It worked so well last year that I couldn’t think of any other affective way to get the daydreamers to
pay attention. I have already had peanuts in both of my classes. One of my seventh graders was a little peeved at being called a peanut and having to sit on the floor in the front. He even had a talk with me after class because he hated it that much. After hearing his side of the story I told him this: If you do not like being a peanut you have two options. One you pay attention during my class and do not fall asleep. Two if you hate being a peanut I will simply send you to the school monitor and he can discipline you. Well needless to say now he is going to try very hard to pay attention during my class, but if he does not, he has said it is ok for me to put him in the peanut gallery. :)The only other moderately entertaining story I have has to deal with my sixth graders and their homework. I assigned them all the homework problems at the end of the chapter on Thursday and told them they were due on Tuesday. They stared complaining that I had given them way too much homework. 11 homework problems is not too much homework. After about 5 minutes of their whining, I finally said enough! I told them that 11 homework problems was not too much homework, especially since it was due on Tuesday. I then told that if they wanted to continue to complain that I would make the homework due the next day, because then it would be too much homework. As you can imagine 90% of the class quieted down and the other 10% were quickly hushed by the others. Amazingly Tuesday when I collected the homework, only one kid had not completed the assignment.
Tim has seven classes again this year. His schedule is a lot nicer this year. The Censeur really worked on trying to condense Tim’s classes. Last year he would have an hour class then two hour break follow by another class. At least this year he will be able to do more of the secondary projects that he is interested in.
Thus far, Tim has only gotten into a few “battles” with his kids. He is having some trouble getting the kids to take his class and him seriously. They do not like to listen to him at all. This as you can imagine is a big problem, especially when you have 80+ students in your class. Tim has gotten the permission from the Censeur to make the kids do P.E. when they don’t listen to Tim or when they talk back to him. Tim is a little excited about the prospect of making the naughty kids do suicides or up/downs. He knows that after the first time he makes a class participate in his P.E. class, they will more than likely become model students for a few weeks. Oh Tim is also going to play the Peanut Gallery game this year. Two of his eighth grade classes are my two seventh grade classes from last year. He broke out the game with then on Thursday because a student fell asleep. The students were a bit surprised that Tim plays that same game, but its also familiar. It should be pretty interesting to this year because over have the school will be participating in the peanut game. Its even better because some of the other teachers know about the game and they continue with the game by calling the kids peanuts.
Tim is still working on trying to repair the server. He replaced the motherboard, but now he thinks that BIOS needs to be flashed. Unfortunately the floppy diskette is corrupted and the A drive on the server no longer works. Tim is not at all happy about this new series of problems. He downloaded the BIOS and put it on a thumb drive, but the server is not able to boot from thumb drives. Now Tim is being forced lug the 30 lb server to Ouagadougou. This wouldn’t be such a big deal in most places, but here transport is not the nicest form of getting from one place to another. Tim will have to board a European castoff bus that will be completely packed with people; more people than there are seats. Then the bus will be overloaded with motorcycles, bicycles, furniture, house hold items, chickens, goats and sheep. Then the overloaded bus must traverse 56K of pothole ridden dirt road. Then its another two hours driving on a paved road and he will arrive in Ouaga. Then the fun really begins as he will have to negotiate for a taxi to take him to the transit house. I imagine the negotiation will be a lot harder than usual since he will be traveling with a big computer. Good Luck Tim!
Surreal is doing very well. In all honesty, she is a little pistol. She loves to play games, especially when it is bedtime. She goes to school in the afternoons when I offer math tutoring. The students are very intrigued by our “American” style dog. They find it very hard to believe that she is actually a Burkinabe dog. They love to watch her do tricks. The administration at the school just love to say high to her and shake her paw.
As far as the weather goes its still not too bad out. The temperature hasn't really been too hot at all. Of course we still break sweats when we bike anywhere. Compared to last year the temperature seems a lot cooler. I don't know if we have just adapted to the weather better than we think or if it is cooler this year.One thing that has been a little weird is that it is still raining here. Last year all the rains had stopped by the first week of September. This year we are still getting some showers. Its nice though because the temperature drops so much when it does rain.
