The Schedule is set! (Written 2/6/06)

After 2 weeks of waiting and kind of going along aimlessly, today was
quite a productive day – even though we did not have school yet again
because of the rain. In fact it was so bad this morning that I got a
precursor to 'the call' from the Peace Corps – the one that tells us
to pack up our staff and get ready to be consolidated. They just told
us to stay where we are because Apia was apparently flooded really bad
today. Luckily, I'm on high ground so all the water just runs down
hill from me but it was nice to have one more day of vacation – I
almost feel like I'm back at a school in Tennessee (rain/snow –
they're both the same). Anyway, Father Kevin finally got the class
schedule finished over the weekend and it's a dozy of a schedule. I
will be taking the year 12 and 13 classes (called 'senior classes' and
these will be kids taking Computers as an exam course) with about 20
hours a week plus some after school computer classes. BUT, I will also
be overlooking the myriad of teachers that will be in charge of the
year 9,10 and 11 classes (called 'junior classes' and these are kids
who are not taking Computers for an exam but for the exposure). I was
suppose to have a definitive counterpart, but that person hasn't shown
up yet so using the teachers we already have, Father Kevin came up
with the idea to have 2 teachers teach one computer class (because
there will be close to 40 kids in the junior classes) but these
teachers are obviously going to be teaching other classes as well so
they won't be people I can sit down and pour knowledge into since they
already have prior commitments. Also, Chanel works on a 6 day schedule
(instead of a daily schedule that's always the same) in which every
day is a different setup of classes so that a student's Tuesday class
schedule one week will not be the same schedule the next week. Like on
Day 1 I don't have a first period class, but on Day 5 I will – it's a
strange system but it's worked so far and it allows all the classes to
get the full attention of the kids at some point (instead of the
morning time get cranky kids and the afternoon classes getting kids
ready to go home). We'll see how it works out – but with the schedule
in hand I was finally able to work on the class structures for the
upcoming year (specifically for the juniors because the senior classes
are basically written in stone) and that felt like a great deal of
pressure off my shoulders. Tomorrow should be interesting because the
teachers don't yet know that a few of them will be taking computer
classes and I may have to give them a crash course on computing – so
I'll be teaching students and teachers at the same time. If anyone
ever said that the Peace Corps was going to be a cakewalk, a time for
vacation – my adventure so far is proving that little statement wrong.
Wish me luck! L8r.