Start of the School Year

So school's back in session here in Tanzania, which is nice, because it was basically 2 and a half months of not really having an actual job, which was a bit much. Yes, there was IST and a couple of holidays in there too, but that's a whole lot of not teaching. But last week we had our staff meeting, and then we had two days of all the teachers (except me) having to do beauraucratic (which apparently I can't spell and am too lazy to look up right now) stuff at the ministry of education, verifying their employment and what not. (I ran into the teacher who lives next door to me, who's currently getting his masters and therefore not really a teacher this term at all, on one of these days. He asked me "Were you aware that all the teachers except for you are in Moshi verifying their employment?" Why no, no I was not.) Anyways, so classes started on Tuesday. I'm teaching Form 1 English again, which is great, cuz that's exactly what I wanted. I like form 1 English. There are fun, simple syllabus topics, and I think it's super important that these kids get a good foundation cuz all the rest of their educations will be in English. Also, it means I get to teach the Baseline orientation course, which I really like. Baseline is a 6 week course to get the new Form 1s up to speed with their English before diving into the regular syllabus. It's a really awesome, totally teacher friendly book of lesson plans in three areas (language, social sciences and math/science). So I'm glad I get to teach it. And then between internship teaching and my first 2 months at site, I've already taught about 3 months of the syllabus, so I have a good idea of how I want things to go this year. There was also some talk of me teaching ICT, but I don't think this is gonna happen, because my school is one of the very few in the country that actually takes the ICT NECTA exam, and there are topics on the syllabus that I just don;t know myself. Plus, while I can use a computer, I am not in any way trained to teach them (unlike English, which I'm good at) and I worry that my school is a little too dependent on Peace Corps volunteers as ICT teachers (the last 3 volunteers before me were all ICT), when there is a Tanzanian ICT teacher at the school. So I'm not teaching ICT, but I might help Miss Scola with some of the practical, how to use a computer topics, which are the things I actually do know how to do. We'll see. I'm not real clear on how me helping her would work. Also, in addition to my English classes, we're continuing the English club, and we're starting a Life Skills club, and some of the teachers at the school want me to help get the school a library, so I'll be putting together a grant proposal for that too. (We already have a bunch of books, and 2 classrooms that the headmaster has given us permission to turn into the library, we just need furniture so that the students can actually access the books and have a place to study). Plus there's a chicken project and a stationary project that my counterpart and her husband already have going to raise school fees for some of the students, and it's possible that I'll help with that too. So it's not like there's a shortage of things for me to be doing around here. Anyway, its really nice to be back teaching again finally, and my classes have been going well. The students seem much more comfortable than I was worried they might be, which is great. I think it's a really good think that they have baseline to get them comfortable first. (The first lesson was an hour and 20 minutes of nothing but greetings. Very Tanzanian.) But next week I'm off to Dar for my first meeting as the Kili/Arusha VAC rep, which I'm excited about, but it's kind of weird to be leaving for the first complete week of teaching. It's not the timing I would have chosen, but I'm really interested to see how the meeting goes.