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| General Timetable for Kingswood College |
I decided, however, to give you an idea of what a typical day consists of because I've been asked by a few people. Beware, it's a long post.
The table above shows the timetable for Kingswood. Every day is a little different. Anna and Wellyna's school (Victoria Girls School, VG, a fee-paying public school) has an even crazier schedule. They are on a 9-day rotation! At Kingswood, every Monday is the same, every Tuesday is the same, and so on. I've taken over two Grade 10 Life Sciences classes, one Grade 9 Geography class, and I'm helping out with one Grade 8 Natural Sciences class. I'm also observing a few other geography classes (they put earth science in with geography...I'm not the biggest fan of this because the teachers don't go as in depth as we do in an earth science class in the States).
I leave home and walk to school around 7:10 am. The walk is only 8 minutes or so. School starts at 7:30 am, but on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, classes don't start until 8:00 am because students either have assembly or chapel.
If you look at the table, you'll see that we do not have passing time between classes. This makes it incredibly difficult to keep track of students. Teachers are not necessarily allowed to let their students out early, but students are expected to be to their next class on time. One teacher, for example, makes late students sit on the floor for the whole hour even if the lateness was caused by another teacher teaching up to or past the end of the period. Other teachers, just tell the student to be on time next class and don't make it a habit. I was told that the reasoning for this is because students would walk too slow to their next classes if they had passing time, so they decided to do away with it so the students would come faster. Maybe they will learn how to teleport soon; that would be helpful.....
Everyday we have tea/break from 10:00 to 10:30 (yes, this is an old, English-settled community). For break the school provides coffee (instant), tea, fruit and grilled cheese with tomatoes for all the teachers. Every. Single. Day. I will probably gain weight from eating grilled cheese every day...but it's too good (and free) to pass up! Tea time is something nobody should tamper with. Teachers take this time so seriously. One week our staff meeting was moved from after school to break time and some teachers were visibly (some verbally) unhappy. Imagine a room full of teachers with their arms crossed and glares plastered on their faces. That's what happened that day. To top it off, the discussion was about the teacher's pay...which no one is happy about.
You also might notice that lunch is at 1:00 every day and it is for one hour. Some days (Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays) lunch breaks up 5th period (this happens with 3rd period for tea/break on Wednesdays and Fridays as well). The lunch break up is very strange, because class is for a half hour followed by an hour lunch and the class resumes after lunch for the final half hour of class. This ends the school day. The reasoning for this, however, is for the cafeteria which provides lunch from 1:00 to 2:00 for the students everyday. It makes sense, but, academically, it's strange.
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| Life Sciences Classroom |
Academics. I don't know how to make a generalized statement about the academics because I am in 4 different classrooms where the teaching styles definitely vary. However, I will say that the education system does need improvement (this is not to say that the American education system doesn't need improvement because it does as well). A passing mark for students here is a 40%! They claim that they test and mark harder than we do in the States. While I believe this is partially true, I don't think that it would account for a 20% difference. Students are motivated to do their work here (homework is almost always done by every student), but I think that they could study more for tests. The 40% passing rate, I think, does not expect enough out of the students. An 80% or above is treated as an A and they are highly praised for an 80%.
Also, when teachers pass back tests, they pass them back in order from the highest grade to the lowest grade and comment about each student's performance and whether they lived up to the teachers expectations or not in front of the entire class. AHHHH!! I would absolutely hate this. Actually, this happened to me at field camp last summer, and it was terrible. This is such a big 'no, no' in the States, but it's commonplace here.
After school is done, I sometimes go home and plan lessons or read. More often, however, I walk somewhere such as Pick 'n Pay (the grocery store), a bookstore, Rhodes University, VG, or somewhere else. Next term, I will be staying after school helping out with enrichment activities which will last until 4:00 or so depending on the day.
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| The Anglican church in Grahamstown's city center which was founded in 1853. |
At night, I either make dinner or we go out and pick up something to eat. Kentucky Fried Chicken is a big deal here, by the way. I actually had a student as me if we had KFC in the United States. I looked at him and said, "Kentucky is a state in the US, so yes, we have KFC." I also had a student ask me if I eat salad. I told him, "Yes, I do eat vegetables, and no, I do not eat McDonalds often." He looked genuinely surprised.
We normally are in the house by 7 pm. The three of us have been out past that time, but we would never be out alone past 7 because it's too dangerous. My first week here I felt incredibly trapped, but since we've gone out more and I know more of the city, things are going better.
Well, that's about it for a typical day. Congratulations if you made it through that long post. As I said, I'll be putting up a blog post about this past weekend's adventures soon!
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