Apples and circuses

I arrived at work prompt for my 9.30 class, which given that getting here for 10 is the norm was a great achievement for someone that is suffering from a cold, but even though I had seen one of the students 15 minutes earlier no one turned up.  So a bit sad because I wanted to involve them in the Apple Day, but this meant I could go and try and do the Apple Day for a bit.

Some time ago the owner of Bilikana said he was going to get some trees to plant, so I said can you get some apple trees as well so that we can feed the children.  Well I meant 3 or 4, instead we have got a whole field full of them. The tractor started by digging 10 rows and then a group of family members came and dug a bit deeper every 10 feet or so. Lots of rocks in the ground making it hard work: I did a couple of holes in the day and that was me finished, but this group apart from a short break for lunch dug enough holes to plant a 160 trees today.

Anyway having not had to teach my first class, I went back in and my head asked if I could cover her English class as she was on apple duty. The idea of her English class is to consolidate what I have taught, to help explain what I have taught and to check what I have taught so me covering her lesson is not really on, and I have already covered three lessons so far for her this week, but I felt the tree planting was a great opportunity to get the kids involved so luckily all year two were together so we went through some key words e.g. plant, dig, water and then the kids were all encouraged to come out and help dig. They are used to helping on the farm, but I want them to do a little scientific project round the trees, by noting how much they grow in their time at the school.  Some of the kids really got stuck in, others were like - no.

I then had a nice extra lesson with year one, this is a sort of optional lesson and I usually just see one or two for catch up work, but today I had all sorts of bits to make a circus and rather than forcing any of them to do work, which I feel  I have to do when teaching formally just did a nice informal session. The children are so creative it is easy to set them off and them sort of sort things.

The last class starts at 2.20, most of the kids get there early so have to hang around a lot, which some of them do by sort of following me, which when I am trying to sort things ready I find sometimes nice, but most of the time a bit annoying as it takes twice as long to do anything.  We are listening to a short version o Last of the Mohicans, amongst other things and have a lot to do if we are to finish it before the end of term, so when 10 minutes into class, my head asked to borrow the boys for 10 minutes, which then turned into 50 minutes, to move beds, the whole class got scuppered.  The beds are in readiness for the summer school.  Sadly I will not be involved with this because the school gave us no information on the timings, pay, responsibilities so I just felt it they cannot give me information, I am just going to go home, and I had already booked marking work, but this is typical of the conundrum that is working here. People can do brilliant things like organise planting a field of apple trees, they can even garner the people to move beds suddenly, but they have paid a lot of money for me to be here to teach English, then mess around with lessons and provide such poor information at times, that one cannot organise anything.

Anyway the nice thing about today is it was warm so it was lovely to be able to be outside, join the parents ( I even got an offer I think from one of the men!) and just do something different.