First Week of Practice School

Well, it’s over. That’s a good thing. Well, technically it’s not over, because I still have to grade all the exams I gave, but the classes were over. Two hours a day, except today, which was 4 hours. I also had an allergic reaction to out-of-season mangoes, so I’ve been popping benadryl all day. In short, an exhausting day.

Practice school is incredibly frustrating. I don’t know the students well enough to call them by name, and we were interrupted by the fete for Ramadan, so it’s been hard to get an understanding of where their understanding of physics is. I can’t assume that they’ve learned all of the necessary math and physics behind what I’m teaching, and I’m not starting at the beginning of the year, so there’s a lot of background work to do, which basically took up all the time this week. Maybe next week I can prioritize better.

The Guinean school system really fails its students by not passing on critical thinking skills. Students have knowledge, can recite definitions, and can use a formula to find an answer if given all the right info to begin with. There's no curiosity, no questioning why, no examination of the scientific method,  no emphasis on creating your own answers using previous knowledge and logic. It's incredibly frustrating to try to get them to see links between things.

Today, I gave two tests, both of which I consider to be at the level of 9th graders, but I hadn't had a chance to get to the new material, and it is summer school, after all, so review is fine. But in one of my classes, a student cheated. Clearly. So I took his paper and forced him out of the classroom. Corruption is rampant in Guinea, and it starts by allowing cheating to happen. If people benefit instead of losing by cheating, they're more likely to take the easy way out. If I can teach my students one lesson, it's that honesty and hard work are more valuable to them and their country than cheating and making money dishonestly. 

The weekend should have fun parts (going to a waterfall and out dancing with the family) but I have to plan for 2 Terminale (that's 13th grade) classes, as well as correct and grade all of my 12th grade work. It's a LOT of work and I have no idea when it'll be done.