My Daily Routine

Dugan begs for more, so I will relent.

I teach a group of seven kids (when all seven of them show up to class, which isn't really all that often). There names are: Charles, Moses, Blessing, Simon (prounounced here like the feminine, Simone), Evans (Ay-vonce), Selase (Say-lah-say), and Doe. The class is officially titled Junior Secondary Schooling, but I think it is more on target with the curriculum of freshmen and sophomores in high school back in the U.S. Anyways, I've been teaching them mathematics, general science, and English language since day one. I was completely thrown in without any assistance, but I'm figuring it out slowly.

In math, I just finished teaching a unit on geometric constructions. It was highly reminiscient of high school geometry class, except no proofs. (Strangely enough, I actually enjoyed proofs, so I was sad to see that I wouldn't be teaching them).

In science, I have taught such random things as the digestive system, dental health, plant biology, and human reproduction looms ahead. I am really not interested in teaching sex ed, not here, not anywhere. There is a reason I teach elementary school, and not junior or senior high.

In English, I flip randomly through the poorly-wrtextbook (which is written by a Brit named McGuiver!) looking for things to go over with them. I still don't have a very good grasp on how much English they understand, orally or written. They're very good at pretending they understand me, which is terribly frustrating. So I try to show them some tricks when writing and speaking that they might not catch on to through conversation (like when to use I/me, how to use commas, etc.) and building their vocabularies. We've been studying antonyms, synonyms, and homonyms. This morning, we played a bingo-esque game practicing these things. Hopefully, they picked something up. At least it wasn't quite as dull as it usually is.

So, that's what I do at school. Here's a glance at my day-to-day routine, in general:

Between 5 am and 7 am (depending on how well I slept the night before and how loud everyone else is being): Wake up and have free time until breakfast

7-7:30 am: Breakfast, usually some butter bread (nasty stuff), a tiny "omelette" of sorts, and a cup of Milo, which is basically hot chocolate fortified with vitamins

8am-2:30 or 3:30 pm: School, with two breaks of 30 minutes each, at 10:20 and 12:35. The younger kids get out at 2:30, my class stays until 3:30. Of course, I'm not teaching during this entire time, I have a lot of free time during these hours, and my lunch is usually around 11:30 am)

2:30-4:30 pm: The kids do chores and homework, help prepare dinner, play - I have more free time

4:30 pm: I eat dinner around this time

5 pm: The younger kids eat dinner

5:30 pm: The older kids eat dinner

5:30-6:30 pm: Clean up from dinner, more chores, play, more free time for me...

6:30 pm: Devotionals. Now this is where it gets interesting. All the kids set up three or four benches, sing songs, and pray. It's typically a highlight of my day, because I'm being entertained, even if it only lasts about 20 minutes.

7 pm: If there is electricity, homework is done. If not, the kids are sent to their rooms.

8 pm: Lights or not, kids are sent off to bed. By 8:30, pretty much everyone is sleeping. Expect me, because I haven't used up hardly energy all day. So I lie in bed, falling asleep between 10 and 11 pm.

As you can see, the kids work really hard all day long, at school and at home, and I have a lot of free time on my hands. These kids do so much work every day! It makes lazy Americans such as myself look even lazier. But if I try to pitch in, or do anything for myself, I am quickly asked to sit back down, just let one of the children do it. I suppose it's nice in some ways, but I am growing very tired of being seen as helpless. I can't wait to be able to do things for myself once more.