One year, down.

It’s officially the end of my first full school year here at St. Therese JSS! I can’t believe I/we made it!

Here’s some hilights from the last month or so.

The kids write exams for the last month or so of school. That means no real classes, but lots of time spent “invigilating” – either supervising learners studying or writing exams. It also means the learners are bored pretty much all of the time.

We had a few days where the learners really did a ton of work cleaning up the school and hostel for the end of the term. It’s great what an active role they play in keeping up the physical side of the school – they cleaned classrooms, washed windows, raked the sand (I know, I don’t get it either), watered the trees and plants, picked up rubbish, cut down invasive shrubs and burned the old branches. I definitely enjoyed watching their fires!

Teachers have been busy with marking exams, but the atmosphere is a lot more relaxed when we’re not actually planning and giving lessons. I’ve tried to spend a lot of time preparing for next year – I have my plan for the year finished and my worksheets for the first term finished and sent in for copying. (If we want a lot of copies, we have to send to town for them.) I’m hoping to do a lot more learner-centered work next year. This won’t really go with the traditional style of teaching here, but I really think it will help to get the kids more invested. If anybody has ideas about this, I’d love to hear them!

Most of our local churches had their confirmation, baptism, etc. services within the last month or so. I didn’t get to see all of them, but I saw the two confirmation services where a bunch of my kids took part. It was really cool to see these services here – they are considered really important within the church cultures and it was cool to see my kids taking them so seriously.

I’ve been getting more khoekhoegowab (local click language) tutoring from one of my learners. He taught me 4 days a week for the last month or so. He’s focusing more on reading and writing than speaking and listening, which means I’m still not great at conversations… but last week he gave me a test and I wrote two full letters and a police report in khoekhoegowab! This language is insanely difficult, and it’s taking me forever to grasp just a tiny bit of it. But still, I’m pretty proud that I can say anything at this point! Tita ge nesi kaise #nisa a.