The centre of attention

Day 14 – May 15

Very little to report today on the school front, as my classes went off without incident. Nevertheless, it was a bit of a breakthrough day. Around noon I was heading back to the staffroom from the toilets and there were some Form II girls sitting on a step studying. I asked them what they were studying, and so started a whole conversation.

My contact with the Form II kids has so far been limited to “hello” and “good morning, Sir” in the schoolyard since I’ve been teaching the Form Is for the last two weeks. Thus there hasn’t been much of a relationship and frankly, I thought that they were somewhat indifferent, but today showed me different. I started talking with the girls about this and that, subjects, languages, school, etc., and before long, there was a whole circle of students around us. As we continued, more came out of their classrooms (as usual, they weren’t doing much in there anyway), and the throng of students continued to grow. They were asking all sorts of questions about me, my family, Canada, and everything else.

It went on for over an hour all very naturally. It was great to develop a bit of a rapport with the Form II students and will make the start of teaching them next week that much earlier…although they’ve kind of stolen my self-introduction bit!