End of term

Second term finished up this past Friday, which left me a little sad. I only have about six more weeks with my favorite class, the seniors. It’s fully of sassy girls and jocular guys, and since their quips don’t give me any discipline problems, I enjoy the life they bring to class.

All in all, though, its been a great term, the first when I’ve seen results from my students. When I first arrived, students couldn’t summarize stories for a variety of reasons. Some would copy the entire story verbatim. One even copied the short paragraph about the author’s life, but they’re now able to more or less write about the main events of a story with an understanding of cause and effect.

I’ve only begun grading exams, but I’ve already found a prize-winning misplaced modifier: “I want to tell you about a common disease in southern Africa which is diarrhea.” Like the students, teachers also aren’t really familiar with idiomatic English. For example, the Bible Knowledge exam asked why did “”Herod want to kill Jesus?” Do you think it’s C: “because Jesus called Herod a fox.”

Now, photos. This shows all the school blocks. Each building has two classrooms, making four classes total. Teachers move in and out the classes.

You can see an example of a typical Malawian classroom in the other photo. While the freshmen either sit on benches or the floor, our other classes have desks which usually seat two students. The chalkboard is actually a somewhat flat piece of cement painted black.