Tuesday 6-17-14

Tuesday 6-17-14

                What is the proper way to make a hobbit house? This is the discussion I got to have with my children this morning. Oh how I love them so much at times such as these. I got them breakfast and they got dressed. They both wanted to know if their uniform was dirty enough to be considered dirty J. I told them to wear the dirty-ish uniform today and tomorrow and that after that they can wear their normal clothes for the rest of our trip. Jove found a picture of a hobbit house he made in chekechea yesterday with Teacher Logan in his shirt pocket. I had him put his name on the front with the date so we could frame it for his bedroom since there is a hobbit village on his walls. I told the kids I would get into the shower and to please not fight. I come out of the shower to hear them debating on whether or not the hobbit house can be just grass or just flowers. Jove thinks that there must be one or the other, Ayla on the other hand believes there may be both. Now that is the way I like to start my day, with a giant smile from ear to ear. How I needed that so badly.

                Teacher Logan came over and had some tea and breakfast with us. I made peanut butter banana and jelly bread yesterday so we could have something tasty for breakfast. The kids were happy to have him over. Someone from Hands4Africa was going to come in the house today to pick up one of Mamaliz’s couches for the new house that the new teacher will be staying in. So I got it set to go and with Logan’s help I moved the small couch out of my bedroom and into the living room to take the place of the other that is leaving. When the time came to leave we all left together and made our way to school.

                Upon arriving at school there was much writing on the chalk board. Ayla asked if she could erase then started repeating over and over to me that some wouldn’t erase. I told her to not do it then. I was trying to deal with Grace, who had yet again not done her homework.  I have the meeting with her grandfather tomorrow, but she and her brother do not want to be in the school, they both have told me and other teachers as much. It turns out that her grandfather showed up to school at one point yesterday afternoon to see if Grace had come to school, that he saw them leave for school. She and Daudi were both absent yesterday. They need to just be out of the school, and I may say as much tomorrow. Once I finished with the Grace nonsense (I had her work on the homework at a corner table during class and she wasn’t allowed to participate in class until she was done. And if she wasn’t finished and giving it to me tomorrow morning she will not be coming back to the school) I went to finish erasing the board. Sure enough, some of it would not come off. I brought Teacher Grace in to check it out. We finally realize it is a white crayon that wrote “St. Mary school oye good school St Mary”. She said it was not there at the end of the school day and the girls came to clean the classes yesterday, so it had to be them. The cleaning job is supposed to be Blandina’s mother’s job, but she has been having one of her daughters and her daughter’s friend do it instead. She will have to start doing it herself like it was arranged. The girls are writing on the board with crayon, many of the crayons, colored pencils, pencils, and erasers have all been going missing over the last week or two.

                So, when I finally got to begin std1 I had more issues. We were working on rounding to the nearest tens spot and many are having a hard time with this, that is why we were working on it more. I explained again how to do it, and then give 10 numbers for them to round. I even had a number line showing at which point you round down and which point you round up. They could use that to reference if they so desired. So many of the kids cheated. I knew that they were because of the same wrong answers of the children that sat near each other. There were two that cheated off of Ayla and she didn’t even know it. She usually gets all correct, but today she missed one. She rounded 63 down to 50, and of course the ones around her had 50 on that same number. The easier ones to tell were when they had 43 rounding down to 18, yes, 43 rounding down to 18 and everyone in a group would have that same answer. I had four of them redo the similar problems when they denied cheating. I was disappointed that Joan was one of them and she lied about it. When they could not reproduce any correct answers I told them that is how I know they were cheating.

                We finished up rounding and we had just a few moments left in class, so I told everyone they could go use the toilet before their next class. The kids here have no bladder control and have to go every hour. They nearly all ran and pushed to be the first one to the toilet. I went outside and told them to come back, that I was tired of telling them to walk every time they go to toilet. I gave 100 sentences to all that went out to use the toilet and ran. I let them know that they must do one sentence by one sentence instead of doing all the I’s then all the will’s so on and so forth. I even let them know that I would be checking at the end of the day to see if they tried to do their homework in class and that if they did, I would be giving them 500 of I will do my homework at home. I figured with the warning I would be good, and not have too many extra sentences to give out. I walked into std3 and within a minute someone comes in to tell me that Angel is doing her homework. I went in there and she was trying to erase that she was doing it already and she was doing it I, I, I, I, will, will, will, etc. I gave her 500 sentences of “I will do my homework at home and I will do it correctly”. Again, I was hoping that seeing that I would give out sentences like that, the rest would not do it.

                On to std3 and I really hoped it would be better. I started with the flash cards and all of that, then I asked the few kids that had homework for me to bring it up. Evander had done it in the bad way, not one sentence at a time. It made me so sad. I had to give him 100 sentences of “I will do my homework one sentence at a time”. I have told them this so many times. They will not learn anything from the sentences if they do it one word instead of one sentence at a time. Within the first minute I had to yell at the kids for pushing and cutting in line during flashcards. Then when I started our math quiz Samweli Stan and Farida started speaking Swahili. I don’t like to punish for them for speaking their native tongue, but there is a time and a place and my classroom is neither. I had to give them homework for it. I just got to give out homework over and over it seemed. All the teachers have been letting them know, they have all had too many warnings and homework from other teachers all regarding that topic. Within five minutes of that, Samweli started with it again. Everyone around him heard him, but because I didn’t I told him he would get this one last chance. I caught Farida and Evander sneaking and trying to do their homework I gave them in class. So they got more sentences saying that they will do their homework at home. I talked to the entire class about how much I dislike giving this much homework, but if that is what I need to do based on behavior, I will do it. I really wish they would all just behave for my last week of teaching them.

                It was lunchtime and I so badly needed it. I have Ayla and Jove some love. Ayla asked if I could bring her cup home that housed her worm she found in an orange this morning. Jove gave me a piece of newspaper that contained a bunch of dirt. He informed me that it was a new kind of dirt and he liked it. I told him I would bring his treasure home as well. It started to sprinkle on my walk home, so after I unlocked the door and emptied my arms of stuff, I went back outside and collected the laundry off the line. Logan showed up a few moments later because he also noticed the rain and he had clothes drying also. I was telling him about the day so far and we talked about if the three kids we were going to invite to Mikumi on Saturday did not behave this week then we will tell them that we were planning on inviting them as a thank you for helping us while we were here, but that we cannot reward bad behavior. I hope it doesn’t come to that, but today Joan cheated pretty badly off of Ayla then lied to me about it. Farida spoke in Swahili in class when she knows she isn’t supposed to and been given many hundred sentences about that exact topic by another teacher. And Samweli has been acting pretty badly the last few days, in school and out of school. I don’t get why he thinks he can act like that. Just because he thinks he is my child as of late is no excuse. I don’t let my own children act even close to that.

                I was a few moments late leaving to get back to school. I remembered I wanted to make bread for the kid’s dinner tonight. I had planned on making bread and hotdogs. As I was kneading the dough, Isaac came by to check on a few things. We talked for a few moments, but because of that I was behind on mixing the dough. I hurried and got it split into two bread dishes and covered them with a towel to wait until after I got off of school.

                Std2 was okay for the most part, but I had to give four students homework for speaking Swahili in class. And it wasn’t like it was all at the same time, but one after the other at different points. As if they couldn’t learn from the first, or second, or even third student’s mistake. I even told them all about how std1 and std3 were in trouble for doing the different issues. If only they could have learned simply from that. As I was doing flash cards with std2 Grace came in to tell me her book was finished. I asked her if I could see her homework then. She told me the homework wasn’t done, but the book was. I knew this was bullmavi because I numbered her sentences myself and she had enough room in her notebook for 98 sentences. I informed her that if she did not finish by morning she was not going to be a student at St. Mary’s anymore. I am just done with that child. You cannot force anyone to learn if they refuse to even try.

                When it was time to check the std1 std3 classes to see who had done their homework during class time, I had to give out so many more sentences. I ended up giving out 7,200 sentences all together between the 40 students. I should never have to give out so many. No one had more than 700, but oh my goodness, today has been one of the most difficult days I have had to deal with the entire time I have been here.

                As I was getting ready to leave, the teachers asked for white paper for the tests. They wanted me to type up everything, but I told them I would be too busy. Our tests are next week and they don’t even have them done. They wanted to give them to me on Friday and have me spend my whole weekend typing them up. I let them know I could make copies, but will not type them all up with that little amount of time before testing. I will have them write up their tests on scratch paper, then I will have Logan help me correct on Thursday, and then they can write up on white paper to have me make copies. I figured that was a fair enough deal since they are waiting until the last moment.

                Ayla and Jove were good so I told them that we could each get a half cake and a maandazi. We got the half cake on the way home, the maandazi was up at bismillah so we stopped at home to change clothes and use the bathroom. Frank was here trying to fix the internet. I was told that Simba Net will come tomorrow to fix it. Man do I hope that is true. I showed Frank the wasp next so we could get that gone since they are angry little bugs. Then we walked up the hill to get the maandazi. On our walk back a bibi was walking with her hand open and had many stones. I, with very limited Swahili, told her to come to the school next Tuesday and I will buy some then. There was a decent size piece and she only wanted 5,000 for it, that is only about $2.50 maybe $3.00, so this I will do. Some of the stones looked nice too. There was one amethyst that was half clear and half purple, I think I will want that one, it was very cool looking.

                The bread dough from lunchtime had risen so much that they had joined together and spilled out of the pans. I had to punch it down quite a bit and decided to break one of them down to attempt at hotdog type buns. They turned into nice little loaves, but not buns. I got the kids set up with one little loaf each and some hotdogs with ketchup. They were pretty happy. But man would they not be quiet. I kept trying to tell them that I just needed a little quiet time to be able to type my journal, but every few seconds it was one thing or another and every time it was something that really wasn’t important. I am trying so hard to not snap at them because they really have been pretty good, but I just wish they could realize that I need a little peace at the moment. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

                Today has just been made into the most wonderful day. I was getting the kids baths ready and Jove decided he wanted to read a bob book. He started over three times, but he actually did it. Asa our little Jovie has read his first book. He was so excited he said he would read some more. Then he danced around like a goofball saying “Oh yeah, oh yeah, I am going to have a cat, I am going to have a cat”. For those of you that don’t know, both of our children had the same deal. They may get a kitten when they learn how to read. Jove read “Mac” today. I am one happy proud Momma.

                After an hour of trying to get the kids to sleep and them just not cooperating with me, I decided to use the cell phone to call Asa. He has always been a place of peace for me. I went out back and brought the flashlight with me. The phone doesn’t work in the house. As I talked with him and told him about the crazy up and down day I had today, bats, hundreds of them were swooping all over outside. Many would try to swoop down at me because of my talking. It was so cool. I turned the flashlight off a few different times to see what would happen and all the more would try to swoop down to get the sound of my voice. I think if any came closer than they did (about a foot away) I would have freaked out. I am glad that none actually landed on my or got caught in my hair or something like that. One of the times I had the light off, I saw so many stars shining through the tree leaves. One even shot down. I love when I am able to see a shooting star. The only wish I could think to make would be that my last two weeks would go a little better than the last week has gone. I guess I am just ready to be home.