First Day of School

I am teaching Standard 2, grade 2, at Assumption Primary School where school starts at 8:00 and ends at 1:05 🙂  We have the wonderful opportunity of walking to school.  The walk to school is about a 20 minute walk down the street, then right on another, than right on a muddy dirt winding road to the school.  The route is pretty busy but the locals are starting to recognize our existence and realize that we are going to be staying for awhile!  The salesmen, for the majority, keep their distance!

Assumption Primary School is a Catholic school, where the headmaster is Sister Agnus, and she means business.  The staff there are very welcoming and always let us know that we are free at the school and are at home.  It is a very young staff which is cool because they have many plans and places that they want to take us to around town. The Tanzanian teacher that we are working with, Neema, a 23 year old Tanzanian who is awesome and doing some great things in her class!!  She is wonder women!  She does some brain gym activities without evening noticing while also doing a lot of whole brain teaching where she is constantly asking the students a question and they have to respond with the answer for at least three times.  Due to the lack of resources, a lot of the day is spent with copying work from the blackboard.  In class exercises and homework exercises are both copied by the student for every subject.  This is very time consuming!! She does use the switch which was interesting to witness, but the kids are very well behaved!

I was so surprised how well behaved and smart these second graders are.  They are extremely polite, independent and smart!!  They sit so still during class so it is nice that we have a chance to play with them after school to see them be kids.  I believe Assumption school is doing some great things regardless of lack of resources.

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