9/19

On the way to school this morning we passed a big truck that was in flames.  It was pretty scary since there aren’t firefighters here, just locals standing by.  The truck remained on fire for about 3 days.  People were working alongside the fire trying to salvage any of the goods that it was carrying.  There are still remnants of the truck on the road two weeks later.

Truck in flames

My lessons went better today.  English went very well. This week we were finishing up learning times of the day, so I taught my kids a days of the week song earlier in the week.  By today, the kids knew the song and were singing it loud and proud!  Today, I started teaching common foods.  It was fun because I myself was learning some of the common foods.  There were about 20 common foods that the students were supposed to learn, so I split the foods up into two groups, and today I brought all of the foods that we had at our house into school.  The real life examples are great, especially for English Language Learners. 

My math lesson went better today, but it still wasn’t great.  One thing I am struggling with is setting expectations and establishing routines in the classroom.  Several times I have planned a lesson or activity and not anticipated the need for very direct and specific expectations, which has caused chaos.  But this is something I need to do, because the students are not used to doing much else other than sitting in their desks and writing whatever the teacher writes on the board.  So these are things that I need to work on in presenting my lessons.

All week at school Katie and I were hearing and even seeing things associated with caning which had us really upset.  It is really hard to hear students coming to you and telling you they were caned for not knowing an answer or for talking in class.  Today during games time, one teacher had a group of older and younger students all crowded around under a tree, and then Katie saw one of the older students hit one of the younger students with a stick right in front of the teacher.  In fact, the teacher was leading it.  This caught us really off guard.  We asked some of the students what the meeting was for, and they told us the older students were being trained to beat the younger students for speaking vernacular or for having their shirts un-tucked.  After all of this, we decided we wanted to talk to Enoch about it.  I knew caning is something that is present in schools here, but I was under the false impression that it kind of faded its way out at the school we are working at because of all the progressive things going on there already.  After talking to Enoch, he confirmed that it is okay that caning is going on.  He even went as far as to say that it is necessary to keep the students in-line.  He also confirmed that the older students were trained as prefects to beat the younger students, so this behavior was also okay.  Enoch rationalized this, because this is the discipline used at home.  He said no parent would ever be infuriated if their child came home and told them that they were being beat at school, rather they would assume they deserved it.  It saddened me to get this information, but it was kind of one of those bite your tongue moments.  Caning students is definitely one of those cultural practices that I will never fully understand.  All I can do is obviously not beat my students in class, and use different forms of discipline that will hopefully be noticed and someday used as alternatives.  I should also note that neither my teacher nor Katie’s teacher has ever beaten the students in our presence.

Related to this, I have seen the effects of the beating rubbing off in my classroom and throughout the school in general.  The students are very quick to hit each other.  In fact they are constantly swinging an arm at someone, hitting a wrist, slapping a back etc.  It is just what they know.  If a student wants a “rubber” (an eraser) that another students has, they go up to the student and literally smack them to get it.  Or if a student is unhappy with another student, they just go up and hit them.  And of all of this without anyone even thinking twice about it.  This obviously creates a very toxic classroom environment.  So I have made it clear to my students that hitting is not something that will happen when I am teaching.  I promised the students that I would never hit them and in return they should not hit each other.  If students are hitting one another when I am teaching I give them one warning and then the second time they spend 5 minutes inside with me during their games time.  While I don’t want to infringe on this cultural practice, it is just not something that is conducive for a learning environment, so this is my respectful approach to dealing with it while I am teaching.  Another thing I hope to do to improve the classroom community is start doing some morning meetings.  This is something I wish I could have done from day one, but it is difficult because this type of teaching practice is definitely not part of the curriculum.  But as a teacher, it is something that I know is so important for developing relationships with the students as well as the students developing relationships with each other. 

We had lots of rain tonight in Kasese.  And then for dinner Katie and I got creative and made falafel (we found a mix in our kitchen left from one of the other groups), chapate to act as the pita, and some potatoes for a side.  We quite enjoyed the change-up of flavors and were impressed with our big meal we put together!   

Molly and I

Evan fell asleep in my arms today...precious!