Estamos prontos para escola

I have been working at the secondary school for a little over a week now. The opening ceremony for school was today and the students also learned what classes they are in for the year (the student’s class does not change when she moves to another discipline, and actually she doesn’t move because the teachers change rooms, not the students.). I have also learned that I will teach 2-3 classes in 9th grade, which is the grade I asked for.
I asked for 9th grade for a couple of reasons. First, the kids are relatively young and impressionable, which means I can mold them into whatever I want = ). I asked for 8th grade but my director said it wasn’t hard enough for me. Second, 9th grade chemistry continues with inorganic chemistry while going a little deeper into things (atomic structure and electron orbitals, bonding, chemical reactions, molar mass, and all that good stuff). 10th grade chemistry, however, introduces organic chemistry. I’m not sure why the Mozambican government chose to put organic chemistry in the curriculum. I learned organic chemistry in my second year of college and I didn’t mind it, but then again I was in a molecular and cellular biology major and all around me people were complaining about how hard it was. Even though I have only actually witnessed one 10th grade chemistry class while in Namaacha, it seems like the Mozambican school system reduces the good science of organic chemistry to basically memorizing lines and symbols. I’m not saying some college students in the states don’t get away with doing exactly this, but at least the extra information is presented if they want it. So in other words, I’m glad I’m not teaching 10th grade chemistry this year. I would consider it next year in order to teach the same students.
Last week we were busy putting the classes together. We don’t have software so we’ve been doing it with student folders… and it takes a long time. We started with separating the folders into grades… 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th. The 10th grade pile was about twice as large as the others because there are national exams in 10th and 12th grade and a lot of students fail them, which means they have to take the whole grade over again (even if they failed just one discipline). At one point we had to separate the 10th grade students into “new”, “repeat”, and “twice-repeat”. My pedagogical director said if a student fails a grade twice they have to sit out for two years, but one of the students said it wasn’t true. I think the oldest person I saw in 10th grade was born in 1968.
Besides doing the work I think it’s been helpful to meet the teachers (and have them get used to me standing around) before school starts. I still can’t understand much and people have to make an effort to speak in words I can get when they talk to me. However when people are mindful of their vocabulary and speak slowly I can usually hold down a conversation alright… the problem is then I don’t know what to talk about sometimes. Before I came to Mozambique I certainly didn’t appreciate how much effort foreigners exert when they come to the states.
I was wondering today how other people cope with the challenges of learning a new language. There is one teacher at my school (I still don’t know his name – I just think of him as the bald guy with cool shoes) who is very talkative and jolly and always says hello to me, but he is also learning Portuguese. When he was young his family moved to Zimbabwe to avoid the civil war. He came back to Mozambique a couple years ago and speaks pretty damn good Portuguese considering he had no formal training. I can’t imagine him sitting silently and patiently, watching people like I do. But of course as I’m writing this I realized he had Chona to converse with people before he learned Portuguese… but what about other people?
Sometimes I forget how recently the civil war ended. There are two teachers whose mothers were pregnant with them during the war and they stayed in Mozambique through the whole thing. One day Bald Guy told me they were like stones… “nao tem medo de morrer” (they aren’t scared of dying).
Last Friday I was told it was going to be the first day of school and the students would come with parents to meet the teachers. Instead the teachers worked to finish up the classes and some students showed up for a bit, sat around outside, but then left after a couple minutes because there was nothing to do. People are just getting out of the holidays so school has been kind of slow to start up. I also think this year school starts two weeks earlier than previous years. Another thing about last Friday: we had to run out of the classroom because smoke was blowing directly inside from a huge trash fire next to us. School sure is different here!
I can’t think of much else that is worth writing… probably when classes start I’ll have interesting stuff to report. So I’ll just end with this:
Today I was walking to school and I saw two dogs cowering in fear. A woman was standing in front of her house holding a rock and threatening the dogs. I noticed the dogs were standing unusually close together and they were awkwardly standing back to back… oh, I thought: they are doing it. I remember Leah’s stories from Guatemala of how dogs would get stuck together… The woman threw the rock and it barely missed one of the dogs. They ran across the street and another dog came running up to them. It tried to join in by jumping up on the female’s back. Obviously he didn’t fit and probably got mad so he started fighting with the male. As I was walking away and trying to ignore the yelps another dog ran past me. A dog can’t catch a break in this town.