baby steps

Well, I’m into my third full school year here at St. Therese. I can now say I am one of the oldest teachers still at our school, and there have definitely been a lot of changes just since I arrived in 2012. They’re not huge and impressive, but I am so excited about them.

-St. Therese has expanded from a Junior Secondary School to a full Secondary School! We opened grade 11 this year, and those kids will move to grade 12 next year. It is a sign of confidence from the Ministry because we have to achieve a certain pass rate in grade 10 (last year was 40%) in order to open the higher grades.

-Teachers, generally, are motivated and working hard. This year it seems like a lot of them came with cool and good ideas, and I am excited to work more with them.

-We have opened the science laboratory! It is a project I’ve been working on, slowly, for the last 2 years with another science teacher. We pushed the Science Fair for the kids last year to start getting the school and learners used to the idea of promoting science, and this year we are finally doing labs during classes. I am kind of working as a lab assistant for the year to make sure everything goes smoothly, but that teacher and I spent a lot of time over the last few months cleaning out ALL of the junk from the lab and packing all of the equipment/supplies properly. Now we are just trying to fill in the gaps (our microscopes are probably 40 years old) and stuff like that.

Here's how the lab used to look:

And how it looks now:

      

-The kids ask me questions! For the last two years, I have spent all of my class time trying to hammer into them, “ask questions if you don’t understand.” Some of them finally seem to have picked up on it! I hear them asking other teachers more than ever in the past, and many of the learners I had every day last year still come to me frequently for help. I think it helps that I’m usually still at study, because I am one of the only teachers that is always available to them.

Not like things are now perfect in Tses/at St. Therese. But whether it is my own perspective or not, things seem to really have improved since I came and I am just so proud of everyone here.