School

The school year is coming to an end, the kids are doing their final tests and then on Friday the school year is over.  The reception (Kindergarten) kids have already finished for the year and are out for the summer.  The oldest class (grade 7) has been out for about a month because they had a national standardized test in the middle of October and are waiting for the results.  The results should becoming back in December. 

I have to admit that I have not tried to take photos of the school while the kids are there because I am afraid that there will be kids everywhere asking me to come and take photos of them.  I am already surrounded by kids wanting my attention even when I do not have a camera in my hands.  I did bring my camera to the class 7 graduation, so I took a few pictures before we went into the church.  It was crazy and kids did some funny poses.

The first of three photos taken while the camera was around my neck, I did that so I could get some funny photos

Second Photo: You can notice that the kids on the left started to move towards the center.  One of the kids wears a yellow bag like a cape every day, it holds his books instead of a regular backpack.

Third Photo: I just noticed when I was looking at them now that there is a girl who is in the center of each one of these photos.  I do not know how she does it but she did.  Abby is in the background she is also being mobbed as well.

So my days are usually fairly open and I have quite a bit of flexibility in what I do.  Some times it feels like I am not doing anything.  Though I do not really know what else I could or can do because the school year is winding down.  My days always started by going to the reception (kindergarten) and reading a book to them and having them repeat back to me the words.  This usually is a little bit hard at the beginning of the week, but after they have heard it for 5 days they are really good at following along.  Then I go to class one and read the same story to them, they usually catch on faster.  When I am done I say good bye, and they all start screaming.  It started one day when they were yelling and I just left, so they got into the tradition of just yelling every time that I leave.  

After reading to those classes I read to class 3 and 4 three times a week, usually around 10 in the morning.  I also read to class 5 twice a week and class 6 once a week.  It has taken me a while to figure out what books I should read and how I should read them.  The first little while I was basing them on books that I had read in North America to North American Kids.  Their English comprehension is not as high as in North America, it makes sense because it is their second language. In the last few weeks I was reading the same book to basically the whole school.  But I was reading it differently for each class.  For the younger classes I would just read the main words, for the middle classes I would read the whole sentence but change the words into those they could understand.  For the older classes I would read the book as written and then ask them harder questions about the story. I would like to read to them more next year and maybe try to get the kids who do not understand to read more. It is hard with those who do not understand because they do not understand English and me I do not understand SeSotho.

I started in the last few weeks having fun with how I read to the classes.  I found out that kids like to whisper back the story to you and it gets kids engaged again.  I also have been reading pretending that we are underwater.  They love that and they still say the words, at first they just made noise while moving their finger in front of their lips. Though they are less into it when their teacher is in the room, because I think they are afraid that they are playing and will get into trouble.

This is the library, it is a regular classroom that has a single book shelf of books that I lend out to kids and teachers to read.

After I am done reading to the classes I am in the library during their lunch break.  They can come and ask for a ball to play with or they can read books.  The attendance to read books in the library comes and goes.  Some times it is completely full, other times there is no body there.  I have been getting National Geographic magazines those have gotten a few more kids interested in reading at lunch time. 

When school ends on Friday I will start working at Growing Nations.  I am going to be landscaping and writing a plan of where the landscaping will be going.  What the priorities could be and in what order things could happen. So I will be using some of my university planning education to use here in Lesotho.