[Creative Title Concerning Calm Chaos]

Yeah, I couldn’t actually think of a good title for this one.  Things are going fairly well.  We should be moving into our apartments this weekend!  Galen will be getting here Friday evening-ish and we will finally have our P.E. teacher!  As everyone knows, I love kids.  However, I told Gail yesterday that after this year I might never want to have kids of my own.  Of course, we all know I’ll end up having kids and loving [almost] every moment of it.  I have had to call on several virtues in order to keep my sanity this week; the champion of all virtues was, of course, patience.

This week did not start off on the right foot, which is rather unfortunate.  I woke up Monday morning with a sore throat.  Ick.  Whenever I get sick, I usually get sick for either a long time or just a really intense case of whatever it is.  For example: two winters ago I had a nasty cold for 8 weeks.  Eight consecutive weeks out of my winter (including Winter Break!).  That’s approximately two months.  Which is also 1/6 of the year.  Fancy math, I know.  Anyways, the point is that I had a sore throat at the beginning of my first full week of classes.  I figured it would only get worse, but luckily it was only accompanied by some mild chills.  I think the sore throat was caused by some nasal drainage.  It is very dusty here and the air seems really polluted.  These old Toyotas and Suzukis expel a lot of exhaust.  And not the clear kind; dark, black, smokey fumes in a giant puff out of the exhaust pipe.  Gross.  And I’m breathing it daily.  My throat felt a lot better today, so hopefully this was one of those “your body is adapting to its surroundings” and I won’t have to deal with it anymore.  I haven’t used cough drops in a while, but now I’m really thankful my mom packed a bag of Halls Fruit Breezers [thanks Mommy!].

So where this calm chaos comes in is with teaching.  Sunday night, Gail, Zelalem, Kyle, and I sat down to discuss the schedule.  It was supposed to take 45 minutes to an hour, but it took at least two hours.  Please note: one of the first nights I was here, Kyle and I sat down for 4.5 hours to fix the schedule to incorporate more computer classes for the students.  In the end, we decided to scrap the schedule that we had edited and make a more logical schedule.  With the troubles in English classes, it became necessary to hire a full-time English teacher (preferably a native English speaker) with Kyle assisting full-time.  This meant that Mr. Olata would teach Computers (he has a certificate in computer science) and Mr. Deresse would eventually become a full-time teaching assistant to whatever classes needed assistance (most likely grades 1 and 2).  Ms. Meazash would then teach all of the Amharic classes.  The beauty of the new schedule is that I am now able to focus on what I really want to do, and what I thought I was going to do: Virtues education.  A nursery teacher who has a Music background is now teaching Music for grades 1-3 and I am teaching grade 4 Music which only meets once a week.  I am teaching all of the Virtues classes, which meet on Fridays.  In addition to Music and Virtues, I am teaching Reading for grades 1A, 1B, and 3.  Of all that I am doing, teaching Reading to grade 1 is my least favorite.  Next week will be better when the class is split in half (half attending Computer class and half attending Reading), but I do not like reading to 20 five-year-olds.

Gail edited the schedule that night so that grade 1A English would be taught first period every day of the week, grade 1A math would be taught second period every day of the week, and so on.  Before, the schedule was just a bunch of classes plugged in different places so it was hard for teachers to keep straight where they were headed next, and even more confusing for the students.  When we went back to school on Monday, there was a lot of miscommunication.  Some people thought we were using the new schedule, some people thought we were using the schedule Kyle and I had edited, and some people were still stuck on the old schedule.  On Tuesday, there was further miscommunication as Mr. Deresse took over all of the English classes with Kyle.  What was supposed to happen was Kyle would shadow Mr. Deresse and Mr. Olata for this week, and then next week Kyle and Mr. Deresse would teach English together as Mr. Olata taught Computers.  Computer classes are cancelled for this week so that Mr. Olata can show Kyle the ropes, which is why my reading classes include the entire class instead of just half.

With all of the miscommunications, I was somewhat on the outside observing since my course load lightened immensely for Monday-Thursday.  Tuesday morning, Kyle mentioned to me that we should really hold a five minute teachers meeting in the morning so that everyone knows what’s going on instead of each person being talked to by either Mr. Jemal or Ms. Hana.  While I agreed in my head, I was the wrong person for him to suggest to – I have no power!  Tuesday after school we had a teachers meeting after much confusion and what seemed like some hurt feelings.  We fixed the schedule situation and also discussed students with language barriers.  There are two children, one in grade 3 and one in grade 1A, who do not speak Amharic or English.  This makes it very difficult for the children to communicate with the teacher and their peers, and also impossible for them to learn anything in school.  We are going to talk to their parents to see if they can assist them in learning English and/or Amharic at home.  We are emphasizing English because the classes are all taught in English and it would be more beneficial for them in the long-run.  There are also several students throughout the primary school who do not speak English or have very poor English.  We will be recommending after-school tutoring for these students.  Then there is the third group of students: those who speak English but not Amharic.  These students will be left in their Amharic classes, but Ms. Meazash will be preparing difficult lesson plans/coursework for them to complete in class.  One family of brothers will be also having their mom tutor them in Amharic as she is from Ethiopia; the kids were all born in the United States.

On Wednesday the schedule worked flawlessly (from what I could see) and I had my music day with grade 4.  As you can remember, I loved grade 4 Virtues.  It was phenomenal!  Definitely a very rewarding experience (Matthew has been cleaning up after lunch every day!  Yay!), but I have learned that no two class periods are the same.  Wednesday was a very challenging day for me.  I had two grade 1A students biting each other.  They were immediately removed from the classroom, two monitors were put in place, and we had a good talk.  It really was a good talk; I had each student explain what happened from their perspective while the other was patient and listened politely.  Then we discussed how this could be avoided in the future and how they could show Respect (Virtue of the Week!) to each other.  They both concluded that they needed to love each other and use verbal communication instead of acting upon their emotions.  One of the things I have started is making the students shake hands when a conflict is resolved.  This includes when they are in time out; after we have a discussion about why the student was in time out, what s/he can do next time, and s/he apologizes (they always say “Sorry miss!  I will never do it again!” and half the time they don’t know what “it” even is; we’re working on it!) I shake his or her hand.  It is a way of finalizing our agreement and showing respect to the student.  So when the biting students were finished with our conversation, I had them shake hands with each other.

My next class was supposed to be one of my favorites: grade 4 Music.  However, the students had just come from break which means they had been running around outside.  They were more hyper than I have ever seen them (ok, I’ve been here for less than 2 weeks) and while I could get the class under control, it only lasted for two minutes maximum.  They were supposed to be completing a music assessment.  I put on the board things that they should know from grade 3 and things they will be learning in grade 4.  I was disappointed to see that 8 out of 9 of them (Rahel was absent) did not know anything (ok, one got treble clef and that there are 4 families of instruments).  Yonaton did really well and I informed him at home that he did the best in the class.  [Last year he was in grade 2 and he was able to skip to grade 4 this year; impressive.]  The student would not keep quiet during the assessment.  They would talk to each other, gnaw their arms (only one student did this), and they would inform me out loud that they did not know anything on the test.  I had already told them 1) they would not receive a grade for the exam, it was simply for me to have an idea of what they do or do not know 2) if they did not know any of the answers, to turn their paper over and remain silent until everyone else finished.  Why did they feel the need to inform me of everything they did not know?!  I could not take it anymore.  I had everyone put their head down for exactly one minute of silence.  One student chose to make noise and I made him leave the classroom.  After the minute was over, the students worked on the exam while I talked to the student outside of class.  He apologized for being disrespectful and said he would try harder.  The class still was not staying quiet so for the few that were working on the exam or staying silent, I put their names on the board with big stars next to them.  The students are so used to having their name on the board for being “bad” so one of them said “Ms. Jasmin!  I was being quiet!” and I said “I know!  Thank you!  I appreciate your Patience and Respect for the class and myself; that is why you get a star by your name”.  He then smiled and continued to work.  At one point, I was on my way out of the class to get Mr. Zelalem to talk to the class about behaving appropriately and being respectful and the students all said “No!  Ms. Jasmin!  What are we doing wrong?  Why do you need to get Mr. Zelalem?” so I stopped and explained to them how they were not listening to me and were not being quiet.  They all apologized and started working again.  However, this did not last long (again) but since it was almost the end of class I decided not to get Mr. Zelalem.  When I collected their papers at the change of classes, I asked them all to be seated and to please listen to me.  I explained to them how I felt very hurt and disrespected by their behavior today.  I explained that I expect much more from them than I do from the grade 1 or grade 2 students, but today they had behaved as the younger students do.  I told them that I expect better behavior during our next class, or I would immediately go to Mr. Zelalem.  I told them that I knew they could act maturely and that I would appreciate their respect in the future.  They were all very silent and finally a few said “We are sorry, Ms. Jasmin.”  I said “I forgive you and I am glad that you are sorry, but actions speak louder than words.  You need to do more than tell me you are sorry; you need to show me that you are sorry by being respectful and quiet in our next class.”  I thanked them and walked out of the room; apparently English was next because Kyle was standing there with a pile of books.  He said “Hi Ms. Jasmin” and I said “hey” as I quickly exited the building.  I was almost in tears.  Grade 4 really killed my spirits for the rest of the day.  I guess something positive that came from the experience is that I know grade 4 is way behind in their music education and I can now make more accurate lesson plans for them.  Kyle said they were well behaved in English class, so maybe my message got through to them.

In my free periods, I am reading books about the Virtues Project.  I really want to develop the curriculum at One Planet and even make a book for the students.  After some brief reading from The Virtues Project Educator’s Guide, I really want to get rid of the “good box” and “bad box”.  When students are made monitors, they always make two boxes on the board: one for the “good” kids and one for the “bad” kids.  Labeling students like this hurts their self-esteem and also does not motivate them to change their behavior.  If anyone has any other suggestions, please comment!  On a similar note, Mr. Samuel (Mr. Sami) helped me a little with a method of keeping a class quiet.  Since the desks are in three sections from grades 1 and 2, he make a chart on the board with Group A, Group B, and Group C.  Randomly throughout class he will assess how each group is (sitting, quiet, paying attention, etc.) and give them a numeric score from 1-100.  The group with the highest score at the end of class gets a surprise from Mr. Sami.  I might start using this more, we shall see.

I guess after writing all of this, my week thus far hasn’t been too chaotic at all.  It just felt like it and my sore throat wasn’t helping too much.  Kyle and I went out for coffee Tuesday night at Kaldi’s (pretty much the Addis version of Starbucks; it feels like home!) and then went to Raizel’s for cheeseburgers (delicious!).  We also explored the import stores and found that we were correct in bringing face wash – they don’t really carry it.  Also, I am fortunate enough to use the one brand of shampoo that they always have: Garnier Fructis.  They also carry my exact type!  Unfortunately, it is imported which means it is way more expensive than in the States, and for a much smaller bottle.  We’ll see if I end up buying any.

Sorry if this post wasn’t very exciting.  It was added to at three different times and I can’t exactly remember what I have written about and what I have not.  Great, right?