its hard sometimes

July 8th 10:40am

Yesterday morning I got a chance to experience what a primary school is like in Gulu, and I think it's safe to ay that I'll never look at elementary school's the same way again. I also know for a fact that when I hear my little Pine's Lake peanuts complain about ANYTHING next school year I'm going to give them a hardcore reality check. I was able to get a picture of the classroom that I observed with all 85 six year olds in it, and I think I'm going to blow it up and put it above the board in my new classroom next year.

Alice picked me up yesterday morning around 10am so we could head over to St. Mary's and make sure we had everything prepared for our senior english class. I cut out (ripped out) newspaper articles from the Vision and the Monitor, and I had the class work in cooperative groups to dissect each article for honesty, integrity, validity, and to provide their own opinion as to how that article fit into their personal lives. The lesson went and awesome and horrible at the same time. Awesome because some of the students exceeded my expectations and really got into it. Some of the students are furious about Mugabe in Zimbabwe and the fact that nothing is being done about it by the international community. They were able to discuss the importance of international attention and the ethical responsibility of journalists to describe the truth so the world can then do something about it. On the other hand, however, I had a group of students who didn't take the assignment seriously at all, giggled the whole way through, and looked ridiculous when they sent their representative to defend their opinions with the class. 

I realize now that I came to Africa with A LOT of false impressions. I thought that school here as such a privilege that everyone strived to do their best, but in reality, school is school no matter where you go. I hold myself back from any sort of classroom management, I let ALice handle that, but I'm starting to believe very vehemently that if these students don't want to get into it, I will continue to push them anyway. I'm only here for 3 more weeks so I'm not trying to change the world overnight, and the students who don't want to achieve are in the minority, but it still infuriates me at times that I can't light a fire under their asses (metaphorically of course), to get them motivated.

Before I taught my senior 4 class though, Matt and I walked over to the primary school to meet with the headmaster and then observe a P1 class (1st grade basically). Walking up to the school we stumbled upon the headmaster caning a child, which made going into his office very uncomfortable. He was nice to us when we got in there, even though ethically it was very difficult, we kept our mouths shut and sat in on the P1 class. Primary school students react a lot differently to us than the high school kids, so it took the class a good 10 minutes before they were finally able to stop staring at us and turn their heads to the board. Some students never stopped staring though, and although I'm very used to the company of young children, even I was getting a little uncomfortable. Aside from the cultural differences though I started to really enjoy my time there. Teaching high school is strange for me because I'm not used to it, so it was nice to feel like I was home again, interacting with the little minis. A major difference, however, is that these students are used to a much different way of life, almost like survival of the fittest, or exactly like that. STudents by where I was sitting in the back of the room weren't paying attention, they were hitting each other (literally punching) and getting away with murder. The teacher was doing her best, but with 85 kids what can you do? Well, her answer to that was a teacher's helper. I had left by that point to go teach S4, but Matt stayed and told me that a P1 student would walk around the room with a stick, seek out the kids who weren't paying attention, and with the teachers permission would beat the children as he walked around the room. How's that for peer pressure? Sometimes it is extremely hard to get used to the differences here, extremely hard.

On our way back from school, Alice told me that her husband (who abuses her) is trying to come back into the picture. Not in a good way of course, but he has hired a babysitter and is trying to take her 3 little girls away from her. Not because he wants to spend time with them or because he loves them, but because he wants to have control over ALice and basically jut wants to make her life harder. She told me that in Uganda, the mother has rights to her children under the age of 7, but once at 7 the father can take them away. Alice said she'll take him to court though, and if her one daughter (who is 8) wants to stay with her, she can state that in court. I have no idea what this man's mindset can be though, because he must know that his children are terrified of him. He used to beat ALice daily in front of them, and her 3 year old has already stated outright that she will never live with him again. If she can make that decision at 3, i'm sure he made quite the awful impression upon them. ALice is afraid that he will try and kidnap them from school though, so she is going there this morning to make sure that they will not release any of her daughters into his custody. I'm meeting up with her for lunch today, so I'm sure I'll hear how that went.

I have to run soon so I'm going to check some e mails and then head out. After lunch with Alice I am going to the Invisible Children Office to shadow a mentor for the day, to check up on scholarship recipients and visit their homes to monitor their progress. I'll be back at Ma Computers later though to work on a professional development workshop that Matt, Casey and I are implementing at St. Mary's on Thursday concerning Active Participation, so I will definitely write more later..