First Days of School

Thursday - Friday, 26 - 27 August 2010

The first day of school was a half-day, which was nice. The kids met their new teachers, took a tour of the school, got accustomed to their classrooms, etc. My aide and I wandered the school and introduced ourselves to the 6-to-11 year old classrooms, the classes from which we might have students.

My 6th grade math class went okay. We didn't have tables or chairs in that room until the night before, I was pretty impressed by how quickly it went from an empty room to one that could be used as a classroom. I had the children look through the textbooks, I discussed the units we would be doing this year and about when we would be doing them. It's great to have a well-defined curriculum, because otherwise I wouldn't have a clue as to what we're going to be doing this year! But it's nicely divided into 10 units (plus 2 "selective" units that you can teach if you have time); with 180 days in a school year, you can assign 18 days per unit and easily determine about when you should be finishing each unit. The units are also closely correlated to the textbook, so, although you don't have to use the textbook, you can easily move through the textbook--which greatly helps someone who hasn't taught 6th grade math before!

We went over some math terminology--I've learned that in a class with mostly non-native speakers, math terminology is often the part that really throws the kids off. You might be an expert in math, but if you don't know what a "product" is in English, how do you know what to do when the problem says to find the product of two numbers?

Since we had little to do, my aides and I took our own mini-tour of the school, exploring some of the buildings we hadn't looked at yet.

On Friday, I started pulling kids to test them. I was glad that I didn't have to teach that day (except for math--we started a Pre-Test), and that I could focus exclusively on testing. I got about 3 students tested in one day! The other teachers were quite happy that I was helping them with testing. Until we finish testing the students, we won't know who goes into my classroom and what groups those students will be in.

We had an Elementary School assembly in the afternoon, where all the teachers introduced themselves. The head for all the schools in Kazakhstan (and perhaps Central Asia) was there, he was very enthusiastic & the kids loved him. The kids surprised us all when he asked if they knew the "Success Orientations." Success Orientations are 8 "orientations" that are important for success in life--character education basically--and QSI, the school's organization--stresses these skills. Skills such as responsibility, caring for others, independent endeavor, etc. But, well, most schools have something like that and the kids really don't pay attention. So we were rather impressed when, on the first day back to school, the kids could remember all eight of these orientations. Even pronounce "aesthetic appreciation" correctly. Remember, most of these kids aren't native English speakers. So that's impressive.

The weekend was going to be a long one--Constitution Day on Monday--and in the end, I think this is a good way to start a school year. The students have two days to adjust to their new classrooms, meet their new friends, learn the rules & procedures. It takes a while to get into your study-mode and away from your play-all-summer mode.