Teacher Workshop Day!

Teacher Workshop Day

We have been having a lot of evening thunder/lightening storms lately, which causes our Internet to go out, which is why I haven’t been able to update my blog since I made it.  

         All of the PLU students went to the schools they would be doing there student teaching for the teacher workshop day on Monday, January 14^th.  Kelli, Nataly, Tasha and I are placed at AI Steenkamp (pronounced like steen-comp).  We arrived to Steenkamp at 7:30 for the start of the meeting.  Everyday teachers are at school, the start their day in the staff lounge with worship songs and a brief devotional.  Their singing abilities are amazing- they sing, harmonize, break out solos/duets/etc, clap, dance, it is absolutely beautiful!  We sat in for the first meeting with the whole staff at Steenkamp.  The principal went over some of the expectations of the teachers; preparation for classes (aka actually planning) is a new expectation of the teachers that will require them to show that they had planned for the day in one way or another.  The Ministry of Education in Namibia just created the Free Education Act.  Prior to this 2013 school year, the state schools could, and did, require parents to pay a fee for their child to attend the school.  As you can imagine, this kept a number of children out of schools because they simply could not afford to pay the school fee, buy the school uniform and provide their own school supplies.  Steenkamp used to charge N$250 (250 Namibian dollars) per child at the school.  This act makes it illegal to require students to payy fees to attend schools.  The government will also provide some of the school supplies: paper, pencils, books, toilet paper, and N$109 per child.  Since this is a new act for the 2013 school year, the principal spent quite a bit of time explaining how this would work and what it would look like for the first day.  And since the school is losing N$141 per child from the new act, the principal is also pushing for the parents and staff to make donations to the school to help make up the difference.  They were also preparing for a number of disgruntled parents due to the Free Education Act, but we had a hard time understanding why… After this meeting dispersed, we needed to see the principal so we could get our placements- always a rough time to try to get in to see her as the procrastinating parents wait to register their children for the school.  A teacher, Mrs. Fontain, who said that Tasha was going to be working in her classroom grabbed Tasha, almost immediately.  Kelli, Nataly and I waited in the office to see the principal for a while before Mrs. Fontain came and grabbed us as well and told us she would keep us company while we waited.  We went to her classroom and helped her set it up, moved furniture, laid down the carpet, covered tables with tablecloths, etc.  Mrs. Fontain, a teacher for over 30 years in Namibia, had quite the stories to tell us.  It was nice that the four of us got to sit and chat with her while we waited for the principal to have a free moment.  After about three hours, we went to check in the office to see if they were ready for us.  The secretary said to give her ten more minutes and then we would be seen… an hour and a half later (they function on “Namibian time”) she was finally ready for us.  The principal is thrilled to have us in her school.   She thinks we are the experts; she wants to learn from us and have her teachers learn from us as well and all she wants is for all of us students to have the best experience possible in her school.  She then provided each of us with a name of a teacher to meet with: Nataly in grade 3, me in grade 4, Kelli in grade 5, and Tasha with Mrs. Fontain in the “special classroom” (special education students).  The secretary took each of us to our classrooms so we could meet our teachers (at this point our cab is supposed to be picking us up in 1 hour).  We drop Nataly off with her teacher first, a women who is thrilled to have her.  Then we dropped Tasha off with Mrs. Fontain again, before realizing my teacher is missing.  We found Kelli’s teacher, who kind of blew her off and gave the impression that she was not interested in having a PLU student in her class.  This is when we found my teacher, Mrs. Somses.  The secretary and I walked up to her and the secretary tried to introduce me to her… but Mrs. Somses wasn’t having it.  They spoke to each other in Afrikaans, so I wasn’t able to understand exactly what was being said, but she clearly didn’t want to have a student in her class.  So the secretary and I walked back to the office and she checked in with the principal about my placement.  It was confirmed that I was going to be in Mrs. Somses class, so the secretary took me back once again.  This time, she was VERY upset.  I still hadn’t even received an introduction, and I still couldn’t understand a thing she said, but it was clear by her body language and tone of voice that she was NOOOOT HAPPY to have a PLU student teacher.  She stormed off and went straight to the principal’s office.  By this time, we had 10 minutes before we had to leave.  So I didn’t get an introduction and had NO IDEA what I was supposed to do, what classroom I should go to, what I should prepare, nothing for the first day of school. 

            Kelli and I talked with our professors, Jan and Paula, as soon as we got back.  They both explained to us that this was very typical, and that often the teachers are intimidated by us: we have great English, we have more teaching skills, and it makes their problem areas stand out more.  They told us not to worry and Jan would come to school with us to make sure we got everything figured out on the first day.  We also knew that the pre-primer (Kindergarten) teacher had told the principal, THE DAY BEFORE SCHOOL STARTED, that she was moving schools and would not be at Steenkamp any longer.  Jan and Paula made a friendly wager that Kelli and I would be the teachers for the pre-primer class on the first day (if we did, they would buy us a drink at our dinner after the first day of school and if we didn’t, nothing!).  Both Kelli and I felt better after the conversation and began compiling books and construction paper that we could use in the scenario that we would team teach the pre-primer class on the first day and went to bed.