First Days of Namibian School (featuring: Steph's classroom)

It's tricky to explain school in Namibia in a generalized, all-encompassing kind of way because Namibia is just such a diverse place in every way, its schools included.

But to give you an idea, for almost the first month of school or more (depending on the school), it is not uncommon for things to always be in a frenzy. Unfinished or changing timetables (aka: the schedule of classes for teachers and learners) can be expected. The number of learners in your classes may go up or down, as registration takes place no earlier than the weekend before the first day of school. It is at this time that parents travel from wherever (oftentimes, towns or villages that are quite far away) to pay school fees and sign up the learner for the preferred classes. (No, this cannot be done online!) Also on the note of learners' families living far away, many schools, including both mine and Kevin's, provide hostel style accommodation, including food, for learners for a minimal fee. This is even common for the primary school kids... which blows my mind because it's so normal here for parents of even young children to very rarely see them! I can't imagine the majority of American parents accepting this!

All this being said, my focus personally has mostly been on letting everyone and everything get settled (especially myself!). I think both of us have been learning to make some serious adjustments regarding what we can expect of learners' level of academic achievement prior to us having them as well as their behavior and cooperation in class, the way school functions, and the way things get done in general.

Kevin and I are both lucky to have our own classrooms and a sufficient number of desks and chairs (a hot commodity which you must always protect! They will get borrowed, often without your permission for an undetermined length of time.). My classroom is actually the library, which is nice because my secondary project involves developing the library physically as well as its use among learners. I've already had A LOT of learners enthusiastically come to borrow books. They even interrupt my class to do it! And make me feel like a bad person for turning them away because they want to READ! Those terrible learners! (sarcasm)

Side note: Donations for books for the library would be amazing! Just to throw that out there for now. They will read just about anything... so anything would be appreciated by these kids.

My classroom from the teacher's perspective (wait... that's me?! haha):

My classroom from the learner's perspective in the back:

The other special thing about my room is that I have a small family of birds nesting on top of the encyclopedias, and last week the chicks decided it was time to attempt to learn to fly. This was, of course, disruptive to my classes, but I suppose that's not such an exceptional thing either. One of the baby birds did manage to escape my room but since he was having trouble, one learner knocked on my door with the thing in his hands so he could put it back in the nest! Oh the things that are normal in Africa that would never fly in America! (haha, pun)

Check it out, you can totally see the baby bird inside!

Here's Mama or Papa bird, who comes in and out of this window regularly with insects and other food for their babies.

Another unexceptional but disruptive thing which took place last Monday morning was that I arrived in my room to get settled for the day and my room (the library) was quite nicely flooded. It is rainy season after all! The building just needs some work, so until the Ministry of Works comes to repair the leaking roof (God only knows if/when that will be), I will just have to come to accept that my room will become flooded during these rainy days and nights. My principal joked that maybe we should just make my room a swimming pool instead and have PE there.

Kevin has not been able to take a picture of his room yet, but when he does I will certainly post it. From what he tells me, if he were to take a picture of it in his current state, you would see a classroom of incomplete rows and the missing desks piled against the walls. This is because the kids insist on drawing on his brand new desks, so his policy is that those desks will be removed until the culprits come after school or during break to clean them!