First Day of Classes

Yesterday was supposed to be the first day of classes and the day we received our teaching schedule. That of course didn’t happen since Mozambique runs on a different time schedule than I’m used to back in the states. 

I got up early and was told to be at the school by 7am…at 6:30 I was already ready and looking out my window to see if the students were getting ready. No one was in uniform and they were still eating breakfast! Finally at 7:45 everyone showed up and we had an assembly to start off the school year and introducing all the professors. That afternoon we had a 2-hour long meeting where we were supposed to get our class schedule but instead we talked about everything but that. (My roommate found out at the meeting that she was now going to be a professor since she’s been helping write the new lab tech course curriculum…that was a surprise for both of us.)

This morning we were told to show up at 6:45am to sing the national anthem and then for classes to start. My roommate and I went outside to wait at 6:40 and we started the anthem around 7. Thankfully the director of the school had all the class schedules finished and we received them this morning right before classes started. It was really nerve-wracking not to know the schedule until the morning of classes! I’m a person that really likes to be organized and have a schedule so it was a little unnerving not to have any idea what time or where I’d be teaching!

I’m teaching 22 hours of English and Informatica (Computers). I was pretty surprised to be teaching computers since my supervisor made it seem like I was off the hook for that. At least it’ll help me improve my Portuguese! I’m teaching 8^th and 11^th grade English and Computers. In the 8^th grade computer class I’m supposed to be teaching the class without computers….we’ll see how that goes!

My first class was 8^th grade English. The students were about 11-14 years old. I was told the livro de turma (class book with rosters and grades) would be in the room as well as chalk. When I got there nothing was in the room. Thankfully one of the students went and got me chalk, which was really helpful! All in all I’d say the first lesson didn’t go half bad. I had a lesson plan ready with an introduction game to get them talking in English and boy did that turn out differently than what I had planned! When I got in there I realized that most of the students have a very basic knowledge of English so I had to talk a lot in Portuguese for them to actually understand what I was telling them. The game did not go over well. All they were supposed to do was find the person with the same card number and introduce himself or herself (say “My name is….” I am ___ years old.” Etc). Well after about 5 minutes we finally had everyone paired up but when I told them to begin talking and completing the sentences on the board they just stood there and then walked back to their seats. I think I have a long way to go before trying to play that game again!

At the end of the 45-minute class one of the other English professors at the school and I looked over the curriculum for the 8^th grade class. While we were doing that another professor came up to me and told me I was supposed to be teaching an 11^th grade class right then. I am supposed to be teaching 11^th grade but half of the students aren’t here yet so my class got cancelled for today. I guess this other group of 11^th graders didn’t have a teacher so they roped me into teaching.

At first I was a little panicked because it was a 90-minute class and I had no lesson plan…I was wondering what the heck I was going to do for an hour and a half with these students. Turns out they know about the same as my 8^th grade class but could play the game a lot better! I had them practice introducing themselves and writing sentences about their lives. Class was a tad difficult because they had no chalkboard or anywhere to write so I just had to use my notebook. When we came across the sentence “I have a girlfriend or I am single” they asked what if we have more than one? I laughed & asked how many they had—one of the boys said 7! After talking with the class I found out that they were all seminarians in their first year studying in Nacuxa. I was pretty shocked when I found out they were seminarians because one of the students said they had 7 girlfriends. I asked if they were going to have girlfriends once they became priests and thankfully they all said no. We all got a good laugh out of that conversation!

Overall I’d say my first day wasn’t half bad. I was a little freaked out at first but now I have my first class under my belt. Tomorrow is my first day teaching Informatica so we’ll see how that goes since it’s all in Portuguese…