Impressions of a School

Just finished my first full day of teaching at KwaBhekilanga and I've already managed to identify several problems:

Time-Keeping - Neither the teachers nor the pupils seem to have any concept of time.  Although there is a timetable, nobody seems to know what it is and nobody seems willing to follow it.  Bearing in mind that lessons are only 30 minutes each and this was my first full day, I've already been in a class where the teacher (and I) turned up 20 minutes late, and another where we overran by 25 minutes and actually sent the next teacher away.

Organisation - Rather than the "teachers-having-fixed-rooms" system that I am used to, they students are the ones with the fixed rooms and the teachers move around.  This exacerbates the problem with the time-keeping as the students are used to teachers just walking into their rooms as and when the lesson is supposed to be (to be frank, I don't think the pupils have ever been given a copy of their timetables) and some periods they naturally have free anyway so when a teacher doesn't turn up they don't really notice.  This also contributes (I believe) to poorer behaviour as the teacher is entering their space rather than the other way around.  It also means that a lot of time is wasted as questions must be written on the board upon the teacher's arrival rather than being able to be placed there in advance.

Observation Skills/Attitude - This probably sounds quite harsh, but I feel that a lot of teacher either do not know or do not care that their classes cannot perform simple mathematics.  For example, I was in a class today that knew the Pythagorean Theorem from rote, but could not perform simple addition and multiplication - it took 5 minutes to get a pupil to work out "5 + 5 = ?" and I got the answer "3 x 6 = 16" from another student.

During my time on this scheme, I hope to try and make an impact on some of these issues and, even if I cannot solve them completely, make a difference to the achievement of the pupils.

Most of the classes I was in today were fairly chaotic.  In a few, the teacher either assigned reading from textbooks being shared between 5 or 6 or talked about maths at the class, then set some questions, told the class I would help if they had issues, then left the room!  In a way, and not to be mean to the teacher in any way, I hope that for at least the first week or so after I start teaching properly I am left alone as otherwise I think I would feel somewhat uncomfortable undermining the teacher's method in my first lesson with them watching.  But hey! We'll see what happens!

In somewhat sadder news, some of the WiA students at other schools have got invited to funerals of teachers who had recently died, I'm hoping this doesn't happen at my school.

Better be off now - it's one of the coldest days on record in Jo'burg and I'm starting to lose the feeling in my toes from sitting too long typing!