Teacher On Duty

As i said in my last post last week I was assigned to be teacher on duty. Up till now I am pretty sure that the headmaster, second headmaster, and academic master really haven't had much faith in us, and therefore haven't really given us any responsibilities. During midterms they did not trust us enough to monitor the tests, it was that bad. Well now that all the student teachers have left and there are now only 5 of us teachers they kind of have no choice but to trust us. Gretchen had her week as teacher on duty the week before me and was assigned to do it with Makala the second headmaster.

Let me take this time to give you a run down of the teachers at our school, it will make things a lot more clear later on.

Makala- he is the second headmaster, he is from Dar and is 27 and probably the tallest person in the district, because everyone down here is short. He comes across as kind of a baby sometimes. He loves to come over and listen to my Ipod and hates walking around after dark (personally i think he is afraid of the dark). Anyway most of the time he is quiet and soft spoken and always refers to me as madam. Things turn though when he is dealing with students, suddenly he is loud and has a really scary and semi threatening tone an LOVES to piga (beat) the students. This morning in fact he informed me that it was good to piga the students because it gets their brains working in the morning....typical.

next we have Kassim- he is the academic master and oddly enough has basically been gone for most of the term, we are still not really sure where he went, but now he has returned and is back in action. He is from around this area and therefore is short and also semi soft spoken when you hang out with him. I have never really seen him teach a class but apparently he loves history and Geograph (because they don't ever pronounce the y on anything). He is also a big fan of pigaing the students because in his mind it builds character.

Finally we have the Old Man- He is the other English teacher and he is not really old by American standards but here he is Old. He has also been gone pretty much the whole semester which is my excuse for not knowing his name. That and the fact that when he signs in in the mornings he has worse hand writing than me and i cant read his name. He is also super quiet and only likes to piga the students when it is really necessary, but he always walks around with a huge stick to intimidate the students.

Now back to my week, I was assigned to be teacher on duty with the Old Ma. From the onset he knew my thoughts on pigaing the students and told me that this week he would try to do things my way. My way included hard labor for the kids who misbehaved. He liked the idea of hard labor so Monday afternoon all the students who were in trouble got to move bricks from one side of the campus to the other, i am not really sure why they moved them but hey it was something to do. Being teacher on duty basically means you are the secretary/ disciplinarian/ monitor. When the kids want to leave campus for any reason they must ask you. You make all the announcements in the mornings at the assembly and at the end of the day you dismiss them. All week long i would have kids coming into my classes to ask if they could go home because they were "sick."

Everything ended up going great the Old Man restrained himself and did not piga the students all week because as he told one of the parents who was up at school one day and did not understand why I was against pigaing the students, "in America they are taught that hitting people is against their human rights" after he made this comment there was a silence and then they both laughed at the idea of human rights and students actually having any. Needless to say I survived being teacher on duty even though i had to be at school early and stay late, although i am fairly certain that the students thought me being teacher on duty was a joke, because when i would go around doing uniform checks they would just kind of giggle as I passed...Oh well they like me and they respect me and listen to me when I tell them to do things so I am okay with it.