School Begins… Perhaps

We have reached the point that all students enjoy so much… the first day of school. Or so I thought. I arrived at site under the impression that I would be teaching chemistry, only to be told shortly thereafter that I would be teaching English. I was less than joyous about the transition, but it would mean a little more free time, since lesson planning would take less time. School was all set to start the 16^th of January. So on the 13^th of January, Adam and I strolled over to the school to see if there was anything we do to help, and to find out what we were teaching. To our surprise, nobody knew what anyone was teaching, because the schedule had not been made yet. But they signed us up right then and there. To my surprise, I remained a chemistry teacher! It’s a rare day when a peace corps volunteer arrives in Mozambique as a science teacher, and actually remains a science teacher. I rank among those lucky few.

So we had part of the information we needed to begin teaching. We were still waiting on how many classes, and when exactly we were teaching. They quickly assigned all 9 turmas (sections of a class) of 8^th grade chemistry to me, and 5 turmas of 8^th grade English to Adam. This means I’ll have 18 class periods throughout the week. But as of the Friday before the beginning of classes, there was no schedule of when I would be teaching, which also means that none of the students would have a schedule…

The first day of school rolls around, and all that is planned is for a ceremony in the morning, which apparently everyone else knew was all that was happening, except for us. We were anticipating school. But no, that would far too logical. Our director calls a staff meeting right after the closest equivalent of an assembly this country would have (it was outside, only staff members had chairs, nothing could be heard, and the district administrator showed up late for it), and tells us that the schedule is still not done. Cool, we had somewhat suspected as much. So we return to our quid pro quo; reading lots and watching tv/movies at home.

Round abouts 3pm, a teacher working to make the schedule came by our house to ask if we could give them the scheduling program that we have, meaning that no scheduling had been done. Therefore we guessed that there wouldn’t be any classes on Tuesday. We were right. Come Tuesday afternoon, they were almost done with the schedule. Hooray! So Wednesday morning, we went up to school to discover when we teach. The results were somewhat dismal… teaching all afternoon on Fridays, despite asking to have Fridays off. But we bounced back from that; how often do things go perfectly according to plan.

So now that I have it all figured out, here it is: I teach 9 turmas of 8^th grade chemistry, which meets twice a week. I currently don’t know how big each turma is, but a conservative guess is 80 students per class… it’s going to be quite a wild ride for this first month of teaching, trying to get my bearings. But I am excited to get started, and make tons of mistakes (in Portuguese, teaching, and every other facet that I possibly could) and learn along the way.