February 21 "Truck Bells, Tattoo Drawings, Teaching, and Tantrums"

I have been looking forward to today because today is the day we visit the two Lutheran Community Schools that work in conjunction with the LCCA. D and Pastor B took us to Matero first, which is on the other side of town. Matero had five classrooms and seven grades; five classes go from 7:00-12:00 and two go from 12:00-17:00. We met the teachers and saw a few classes in action. We had been prepared for big class sizes, and coming from a class of 32 during student teaching, I was ready. However, some of the classes were under 20! The two rooms that were split 1^st/3^rd or 3^rd/4^th had 40 kids, easily, in the room though. The public schools in the area put as many as 70 kids in one room, we heard. It wasn’t like that seen in Slumdog Millionaire, though; the kids had breathing space. Some of the teachers left their students alone to talk to us for awhile; that took some getting used to. The kids had a chant for greeting us visitors in each class and it reminded me of teaching summer school last year with our class chant and class greeters. J Some other happenstances at Matero: the road approaching Matero had so many big potholes that it looked like a stream/swimming pool since all the rain was filling them up; a man came in the gate from off the street and offered me two large shopping bags of dead caterpillar carcasses to eat and spread on the ground; we saw their version of “free and reduced lunch”—a pot of porridge the students are able to eat during break; the church’s bell tower is made from a truck frame stuck in the ground; and after we had been in the fifth grade room for thirty seconds and had left, a boy hung a picture outside the window and it was a replica of my tattoo on my ankle—crazy!  Next we headed to Kaunda Square where C works in the am. They have 3 and ½ classrooms (one is tiny) and have grades 1—7 as well, with some in the am and some in the pm. We learned that most of the students were “double orphans” and older than the average, say, 6^th and 7^th grader. I did see a few students who looked like they were 12 in 1^st grade at Matero. And C, the 6^th grade teacher, said she has students ranging from ages 9—17 and L, the 7^th grade teacher, has students ranging from ages 14—21. After seeing what the students are taught, I so wanted to jump in and try to catch them up, but I believe they are doing well according to the Zambian school system. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. However, at preschool, I did get to deal with two crying children and a one year old brother who was dragged along with one of the students. Oh, and mind you, they do not speak English. So that’s always fun. They always seem to understand when I need to discipline though. Naughtiness is universal. J They love duck, duck, goose now since we introduced it last week and they request it often. After dinner, we laid out our lesson planning materials outside on our grass mat, and after 30 minutes, the power on the entire campus went out! At least we were outside with our flashlights already! We enjoyed planning by candlelight and praying that the power would be on in the morning so we could take showers!