Phase 3 and Easter Break

I’m sitting here in my living room with some candles lit listening to Dylan’s “John Brown.” The weather is getting cooler and feels very much like autumn in Ellensburg, with sunny, warm days and crisp, cool evenings that turn into chilly nights. It has been a distinct departure from the clear mornings with afternoon storms sweeping through. Mike and I are both hoping this weather is typical of the winter months, as it will make the long nights much more bearable.

I just finished packing for our two and a half weeks away from site (read: Phil will be within communication range for 2.5 weeks!!!). We have Phase 3 training in Maseru for a week and a half, then head off to Durban for 4 or 5 days over the Easter holidays. It will be strange to be in an urban environment by the beach again. It is apparently a lot like being along the beach in Orange County. Also, they have a Subway. And hopefully olives. And maybe I’ll finally get some of this South African wine that I’ve been hoping for. We’ll see.

It is definitely time for a break from school. After I had 7 students get 0s on a fractions exam (that is 10% of my students), I think it is time to clear my head and get rejuvenated. Each day is two steps forward and one step back. On Wednesday students seem to understand and can do problems in class, and on Thursday they look at you like they had been comatose since Monday and you were diving right into the middle of material. It is terribly frustrating and disheartening some days. Other days I sit down with a kid to explain something and they have an ‘AHA!’ moment and things are good. Dad, I don’t know how the hell you’ve done this for 25 years. Kudos.

And to give you a taste of some of the teaching difficulties I have faced:

1. The curriculum has me teaching about sources of energy for power plants and one of them was tidal estuaries. Not one of my students has been to the ocean. Trying to explain the tide (“Well, remember when I told you that gravity was the attraction of two masses? The moon is a big mass and the ocean is a big mass, and as the moon spins around the Earth it pulls all the water after it.” Blank stares all around with some robitic “Yes, Sir”s) to that group of students ended in confusion.

2. I also tried to give bubbles getting bigger as they rise in water due to the decline in pressure with depth. See difficulty 1 for obvious reason why this was ineffective.

3. I tried to explain power plants. They don’t have electricity.

4. During the sensing organs unit I was supposed to explain X-Ray machines. Nobody had had an X-Ray taken.

5. During the sensing organs unit I was supposed to explain how if some of our senses are bad we can use different machines or tools to aid them. Nobody had ever seen a hearing aid. Not even spectacles.

6. Also, they don’t speak English.

All this to say that things are going slowly and there is a lot of work to do. I think I am going to spend a lot of time during breaks designing labs and different teaching aids. I have no access to a hardware store or Radioshack, so it is going to take some serious creativity and a few trips to town. We’ll see what happens. Maybe we can really spend some time on science fair projects so that they’re worth keeping around.

Oh, and some guys at NGC have spent some time working on sizing a power system for the school (Tad especially deserves some credit) and have done some really cool analyses involving weather patterns and showed how transmissivity of different levels of cloud cover will affect available solar power. I got really excited about showing it to my students, but then realized that explaining transmissivity probably should take the back seat to learning how to add fractions. Maybe next year… But, thanks guys for all that work! I’m really excited about helping put together a grant proposal to get a basic power system put in the school in the short term, and hopefully get some money in the future to expand the system to provide power for a computer lab. Part of the upcoming training is about these types of secondary projects, so we should get some help in grant writing. And having all this great technical data will look great in the proposal, so thanks again.

I’ll finish with a Moment of Zen.

Phil is in Form A Maths at 8:00 am. Phil answers a question, “No, 37/5ths is not equal to 1/2. Where did you even get that number?” Phil looks left out the door because he hears some rustling outside. A cow walks by pulling a chain. It is followed by a large bull, also pulling a chain. Another cow walks by. Students are still looking at the board trying to find equivalent fractions to 1/2. Phil shakes his head a little in hopes of finding some clarity. Nope. He turns back to face the class and try for the 8th time to explain equivalent fractions. “Mashoba, seriously, where did you get 37/5ths?.....”