Kasese’s Better Half

 The city that we live in is an interesting mix between natural, geographic beauty and polluted, metropolitan mess.

This juxtaposition obviously has its drawbacks, but yesterday did well to illuminate the high points of Kasese living.

After what felt like decades away from Enoch, we were finally able to reconnect for a hike in the hills yesterday afternoon. His friend Louise, a retired parliament member, joined us enthusiastically.

I mean come on; the woman turns 61 on Wednesday. 

She’s incredible.

The views from the top were to die for.

The top of this particular hill is the future home of the region’s king.

Before heading home, we stopped for some tea and enjoyed each other’s company a little longer.

Believe me, the fresh air was just what the doctor ordered, but it certainly tuckered us out.

This morning, as we made our way to school, I’ll admit, I got a bit sentimental. Every day that goes by makes it more and more difficult to accept the inevitable end that this adventure is nearing.

When I leave, I can just take them all with me right?

Anyways, slowly but surely the school has begun to regain its usual activity. At the end of last week, I was teaching to a class of only 16 students, and today I was happy to see that all but two of my P2’s had returned.

For the past week or so I have been teaching about different measures of time. In English we’ve begun a project on 2014 calendar development and in math have focused on telling time. When I first began the education program at the UW, I was working with a class of 2^nd and 3^rd graders to whom I was responsible for teaching time; so, when I saw the theme of this unit I was convinced that my experience would carry me through no problem.

No.

While relishing in my own confidence, I had failed to recognize that some of my students here had literally never used a clock before or even been exposed to the 24 hour schedule that we follow. (In Uganda, the day begins at 6:00PM, not the 12:00AM time that we’re used to.) Here in lies the major problem with my preliminary assessment requesting that students create individual daily schedules. P2 is a class of hard workers, so it was no surprise that they finished the task I’d given them regardless of their confusion.

After reviewing their work however, I began to notice a trend. My students were pretty consistently writing that they woke up somewhere around 1:00AM. I immediately found myself questioning their understanding, for obvious reasons. But, after a little digging, I was able to discover the major difference in the Ugandan time scale, adjusted my instruction accordingly, and finally began to see some progress.

To help familiarize my students with this new order of thing, I made a daily schedule for the time that we spend at school each day. My kids have promised to maintain this routine after I leave, but even so I’m hoping that a little exposure is better than nothing. Fingers crossed!

I will say that this activity went surprisingly well.

Throughout the past few weeks, I’ve also spent quite a bit of time assessing my students’ reading abilities. I had recently discovered a series of texts perfect for small group reading and organized them by levels. Once I’d completed my makeshift version of a running record for each student, they were relatively neatly separated into groups.

The process was tedious but certainly worth it.

Today was my first day implementing reading groups during library time, and I’d say there’s still some work to be done. The process of participating in reading groups requires that students be willing to share their opinions, and with this group of learners operating in their second language, that’s not always a cakewalk.

I was glad to have been scheduled for library on back-to-back days of the week, figuring that the repetition of reading groups would help the confidence of my class, but unfortunately we were informed rather abruptly at the end of the day today that the radio has deemed tomorrow a public holiday, which of course means…no school…again.

At this point all I can do is appreciate the fact that now I get to catch up on my laundry.

**Sigh** someday we’ll have an uninterrupted week of school with these kiddos.