It has been quite a long time since I have written a blog. I wish I had a good excuse, but it comes down to lack of internet and laziness. A lot has happened in the past month, some good and some bad.
Let's start with my class. My 40 rambunctious students have gone through two sets of exams. Can you imagine as a 6 year old taking 3 exams in one day? Yea, me neither, it is really hard. They rocked through it and I am very happy with the out comes. Almost every student improved form the first/mid-term exam to the second/final exams. There was also a lot of changing in ranking. Some students went up in the class ranking and some went down, but over all I am really proud of the out come. Giving exams to Class II was very difficult and writing exams that will allow the students to achieve without having to feel pressed is hard. For the primary school all the teachers have to write their exam questions on the board and the students have to copy them in their exam booklet and answer the questions. I also had to read the questions aloud and found my self reading the same question 40 times. The final exams for term 2, I decided to take a different approach and have a few of my exams printed. It made a world of a difference, but there is not budgeting for the primary grades to have their exams printed. I found that the students are so worried about writing everything on the board rather than the main focus of answering the questions. We have working reading text with real facts and my students have loved getting to know about different animals and places.
After the exams, we had a few days to grade all the exams and type an over view sheet. I also had to hand write 40 report cards. It was very time consuming, but the students were very exited to receive their marks before their 2 week Easter break. A couple days before we went on break one of my best student's, Noah, father passed. It was very sad and sudden, but I got to go greet the family and pay my respects.
I have been spending most of my Easter break in Freetown with friends and my PARENTS. My parents arrived on Thursday of last week and we went straight to Kabala. On the drive up we got to see an amazing rainstorm. They got to meet a lot of my students and a lot of the school staff. I showed them around town and where we buy our food. We went to a good Friday service where they were introduced to the church and then we had a dinner Friday night with our school staff and friends. People got to meet my parents talk to them about Sierra Leone and about having me here. They were all amazed at how far they travelled just to see me for a short while. We had so much left over food that we invited a lot of the neighborhood boys over to eat. They ate a lot of food and danced around the house. Saturday, we went to the beach for two days. It was so relaxing and beautiful. From there we went to Freetown, the capital city, and I got to take them to some of my favorite places and they got to meet all of my Freetown friends. We ate some really good food and got great tans. I will miss them so much, but it was amazing having them here to see what I am experiencing. It was the push I need to remain focus in my goal of being here to teach these kids and learn new things. IT is crazy to think I only have about a month and a half left.
God Bless
Nikki
