As One Week Ends, The Next is Almost Over

It has absolutely amazed me how the time has flown by since our arrival here in Liberia.  Tomorrow (Thursday) will mark 8 weeks since we left home - EIGHT weeks!!  Last week we had our testing week, and I meant to write a blog describing it to you all.  Somehow the week flew by and I never got around to it, and then now it's Wednesday afternoon of the following week?!  Whoa.  Anyway, better late than never.

The school year here is separated into six marking periods, each of which lasts approximately 5 weeks.  After those 5 weeks of instruction we enter into one week of testing.  Just like I remember "exam week" in high school, this is a serious week dedicated only to taking tests.  Junior and senior high students come to school on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for tests, and elementary students come Tuesday and Thursday.  Each day there are one of two tests the students are given 80 minutes each to take.  So, overall, it is a very short week!  Especially as a teacher - my only obligations are to monitor a class during testing, collect my completed tests, grade them, and turn in my final grades.  As you can imagine, last week felt like a bit of a vacation in the midst of the semester - a welcome one if I do say so :)

At the end of period 1 I calculated my grades for the first time.  When I arrived here, I believed that every one of my students would pass... I would pull them up out of their misery in math, make it a fun, exciting class they loved and succeeded in.  Let's just say things have not gone exactly according to my plans.  In my 7th grade classes, I have about 10 students (out of 30) failing in each.  In my 8th grade classes, I only have 3 failing in one class (!!!!) and about 8 in the other.  It's hard for me to see this happen.  I want so much to be able to go to each student and say, "OK, what do we have to do to get you to pass?"  But I physically can not do that when I have almost 30 students failing, and 150 others I'm still looking after.  I tell them on an almost daily basis to come ask me for help if they don't understand, but they only rarely come for help.  It is a source of frustration for me.   

In the meantime, we are back in the full swing of things this week.  After realizing how amazingly quickly one period can pass by, I feel myself pressed to try to really focus my time during each period.  There is so much material I want to cover in each of my classes, but I feel like there will never be enough time.  In reality, I know that much of what I want to get done will not happen, so I am trying to focus on the important things.  I am trying to go back to the foundations of math - times tables, addition/subtraction and multiplication/division, and make sure my students are confident in each of these.  I am trying to teach my Bible students better writing skills. 

As we cruise through period 2 here, I ask that you remember my students.  Pray that they have the drive to succeed, that they have the humility and the courage to ask for help when they need it, and that I have the patience demanded to help each person I can.  Although I realize that expecting each student to pass first period may have been a bit naive, I am hopefuly that maybe, just maybe, by the end of the year we can accomplish that goal in each of my classes.