Monday 25th March - What a Day!

Phew! What a start to the week. A comparatively low key Sunday fades into the distant memory as we cope with the challenges of one day.

A Senior Management Team meeting to start the day. We confirmed the publicity about the creative writing competition that I set last week and clarified the procedure for leaving the library cupboard open to students but closing the Reading Scheme cupboard at 1 pm. There seems to have been a lot of confusion here, with the Reading cupboard NOT locked and the middle cupboard locked so that pupils who are desperately keen to read are unable to access books. Baba complained to me that this was the case and said he thought it had been set like this because I might be “peaced off” if the books went missing. I was thrilled with his concern that pupils SHOULD borrow books and if they ended up in their compounds then all to the good of siblings who might benefit BUT if the Reading scheme went missing I would certainly be “pissed off”!

Most of the morning was spent doing appraisals with the Primary school staff. We started with Kemo in Grade 6 and for the most part they were positive discussions. I used the same format for each teacher and covered both their classroom teaching, their post of responsibility and vision for the school. Baba almost had me in tears when he stated how much he loved working in the school.

And so we went into the afternoon knowing that the Staff were meeting to discuss how to work with the Sir Roger Manwoods students. We heard raised voices from the meeting and were not that surprised when Moses came to confess that they were arguing about taking part in the coming census. Apparently the 10 year exercise was going to be improved upon by inviting educated teachers to apply to become census workers. They would receive 10 days’ training and then spend up to 3 weeks collecting data. Rumour had it that each participant selected would receive D700 a day – so no wonder everyone wanted to take part. HOWEVER, if every school was entitled to send 5 teachers that left us with 1 teacher in the Primary school for the week when Sir Roger Manwoods are here! Because? This was all going to start on Wednesday (the day after tomorrow). Not much time to sort out a plan. It was unbelievably complicated to understand who had applied, what the dates were and what to do. With the help of a blue mug to signify who had the right to speak, the initial tension turned quickly to co-operative exchange and a few phone calls to collect more facts and about 1 ½ hours later, we had done all we could to make a plan. It turned out that 5 teachers had applied, although Ansumana was not sure, but many others had filled in their application forms but delayed sending them because of the arrival of the SRM students. Moses phoned Regional Office to find out if these applications could now be considered but the names had already gone forward. Even so, the Officer in charge offered to put forward 5 further names from our school if we sent them immediately. We drew lots for these and everyone accepted the situation

Other points were raised at the meeting which clearly arose from deep misunderstandings about requests we had made. The first was concerning the situation that the students arrive on Good Friday which is (a) a public holiday and (b) during the school holidays which officially start on Thursday but coom0n practice is that they will start on Wednesday. They will also want to be working in school next week, including Easter Monday (another public holiday but also in school holidays). We sent information concerning this quandary months ago. It always falls that SRM come to school during holidays and every year for 6 years the teachers have happily agreed to work a longer term and have their school holidays a week later. We assured them that although we would not require them to teach on Friday, they would be encouraged to come in at 3 pm to greet the SRM party and for this they would be given an extra day of holiday. The same would apply to working on Easter Monday. So in fact, although their government school colleagues will have 2 public holidays absorbed into their school holidays, our teachers will get 2 extra days on top of their school holiday to compensate for working. From being accused by Kemo of sabotaging the President’s public holidays we finally arrived at very willing agreement to work with the SRM students.

The second concern was about my request for teachers to put Early Morning Work on the blackboard. Was this compulsory or voluntary? It turned out that everyone was under the impression that I wanted them to come in as early as Ansumana who is frequently in his class from 7 am onwards. Because he had been praised by Moses for providing EMW for months and this having an effect on his pupils’ test results, all the rest of the teachers were terrified they were being asked to make the same sacrifice. So we worked that one out – they only had to be in class 5 minutes before the start at 8.30 and could even put the work up on the board the day before. And they did not have to spend extra hours marking it.

Oh dear, the lessons we learn in communication. I realise that the people receiving information need to understand not just the words, but the intention behind them AND the shared objective for the content of that communication. Very often when we make requests or statements, our words are repeated, partly in obedience and partly because that is the learned method of receiving information from “elders”, “seniors” or teachers. Understanding the content only comes after much deeper and longer communication processes.

There was no time after all this discussion to run my teacher workshops and so we finished the day working in the office on writing up records. The Alkalo (head of the village) sent a big bowl of cooked cassava, bean stew and a spicy sauce for us around 5.30, so we ate this with a couple of the teachers, the caretaker and night watchman. All vegetarian, so I was replete.

The results for the end of month tests for the Upper basic School were given to me and the English seems very good, but I am concerned about Maths, so I really need to speak to the teacher to see the questions and the students’ scripts.

We finished the day buzzing with what had happened and had no need to cook as we were full of the Alkalo’s food.