First Day of School

First Day of School

Today was the first day of classes at school, and I am beat but I will try to provide a quick rundown.

 

We started the day, as usual, with morning prayer and mass followed by breakfast.  After that, we walked down to the school courtyard for the student assembly.  Each morning before school, all of the students gather next to the flag poles for announcements and the Ethiopian National Anthem (we are assuming that’s what it is).  Students (1^st-6^th grade) wear uniforms consisting of a yellow long-sleeved button-down shirt, brown trousers, and brown vest.  Upon dismissal from the assembly, students go to their classrooms.  They stay in the same room, and teachers rotate throughout the day.  I taught one section of 3^rd grade Spoken English (45 students) and one section of 4^th grade Spoken English (36 students).  In total, I will have two sections of each class plus after-school classes.  Lesson One: Respect (complete with tribute to Aretha Franklin).  In addition to my classes today, we played with the kids during break times.  After school, the teachers hosted a coffee ceremony to welcome the new teachers (yes I have, occasionally, been drinking coffee…Paula says the coffee here is, “the platonic form of coffee”…whatever that is!).  Today’s accomplishments:
 

1)      Helped a girl fix her necklace that was in pieces during break time

2)      Successfully had 4^th grade students make name tags with their first name only, in English

3)      Maneuvered through a power outage

4)      Sanitized and bandaged my just-slightly-injured toe (scraped it on my chair)

5)      Learned that in Ethiopia, “ ‘Father’s name’ is a student’s ‘last name,’ which is the same as their father’s first name”

6)   One of the students told me that I am a good singer

7)      Almost able to recite the “Hail Mary” prayer in Amharic (well, I still have to read it, but I am getting close to at least being able to say the whole thing)

8)      Downloaded a song within a reasonable timeframe and figured out how to transfer it to my phone

9)     Found what I like to call “a teaching moment” while playing hand-clapping games with the girls during break.  As the number of claps increased, I counted the numbers 1-10 in English and Amharic aloud.  Thought this might be helpful to the girls, and surrounding captive audience of other students, because Paula said her next lesson in 5^th and 6^th grade will be counting in English.  Well, I guess she said counting after twenty...but anyway, I figure it's still good for the kids to hear.

10)      Survived Day One of classes!