Student Howlers or Sometimes You Don’t Know Whether to Laugh or Cry

This week has been a long, weary fight. A fight against way to much late homework, a fight against lame excuses, and a fight against the growing tide of apathy resulting from the countdowns being up in the dorm. So, here are some of the things that have had me laughing in the midst of all my battles. Student ‘howlers’ that have made me laugh out loud while marking less than stellar papers and worksheets. All of these were penned by real live grade 6 or 7 students in my classroom this term; no brains were harmed in the producing of these lines!

“lemon rhine” instead of rinds

“breath-stroke”

“The Persian Golf”

“The worst thing at Riley plantation is being wept with the cattle nine tail.”

“gumy bares.”

"The Gulls overcome" when translating a Latin sentence

I am one of those fiendish grammar teachers who likes to ask kids to write sentences to prove that they actually know how to apply those rules I'm teaching them. I always tell my kids to have as much fun as they can with them--just make sure they meet the requirements. This is now my all time favorite interrogative sentence:
"Miss Burklin, do you become batman after light out?"

I wish... I wish...

Parting shot:

Beach Birthday Party

The highlight of this week for the kids was birthday party on Wednesday. Birthday party is not my favorite event; it means that three days in a week are all but lost from a teaching perspective and behavior definitely goes downhill, but it’s only three times a year… This term we decided to do something TOTALLY DIFFERENT.

Yes, we, here at Sakeji, broke tradition. No show! No skits!

Instead, we made bonfires,

played volleyball,

and roasted marshmallows. It was wonderful. Can we do this every birthday party?

Not much to say about last week...

Last week was a challenge...

After spending the weekend fighting the worst sore throat of my life, I spent the week on antibiotics because we are pretty sure it was strep, and I began to feel better fast. My chillin's on the other hand thought that I was too sick to notice their tom foolery, but they were WRONG. So, it was not the nicest end to a sometimes difficult week as I struggled through the discomfort and tried to make up for the fact that I was too sick to do much marking over the previous weekend. I was on duty this weekend; busy, but fairly good, and now I'm trying to get my head back above water in the sea of marking that piled up.

I'm thankful that I'm feeling so much better, and I'm thankful for the fact that even though my kids totally sluffed off last week, they were very considerate of my weak voice during classes. I'm thankful that I'm off this coming weekend, and I'm thankful that I have some time to work tonight. So, that's about all I have to say for now. I leave you with this picture:

It was a week!

Not much to say about this last week. We had half-term on Monday and Tuesday which while not relaxing per say, was a break from the hectic schedule we’ve been running with these last five weeks. It’s great to have Jill back; she had a bit of a week transitioning back into her full load, but thankfully she had the weekend and half-term to get over the worst of her jet lag.

I succumbed to the nasty sore throat that has been going around the students on Friday, managed to hang in there till Saturday lunch, and have been spending the weekend aggressively resting and drinking soothing fluids. Hopefully I’ll be functional tomorrow, and this will continue to get better quickly. Update: It's strep, and I'm now on antibiotics and already starting to feel better. Thank you for a nurse and good drugs!

Things are so damp right now that it is a constant fight to keep your cloths and shoes from mildewing. Here I'm drying some shoes with my fan on my trust cloths rack--you do what you gotta do!

Something I made over halfterm was this little holder for the unfortunate number of "No Name" papers I receive on a weekly basis. Why yes, there are penalties for such carelessness, but it hasn't seemed to cut down too much on incidents yet. *sigh* I keep telling them it's the easiest question on every sheet...

Parting shot: Look how full the dam is!

Leaves, Paper and Clouds

Hey—another busy week! Imagine that… Notable happenings of week 5 were as follows:

* Jill made it back safely, and was the hero of the hour as she brought the textbooks I ordered back with her. Wow, marking Latin was MUCH easier with the proper edition of the teacher book! So very thankful… I also have some grammar quizzes for my 6th graders now.

* In the grade 6 & 7 classroom we wrapped up our science unit on botany, and now that I am marking the exam, we’ll be moving on to history. I’m excited—ancient Sumer, here we come!

* I waded through the leaf collection projects my kids did for science and was once again amazed at the sheer variety of plants that grow around here.

* One evening last week we noticed this amazing phenomena—the sun was setting at just the right angle behind the big cumulonimbus cloud to create the amazing rainbow effect at the top. I love the Zambian skies!

* I continue in my paper making adventures with the senior girls Rally group; here are a few pictures of the process.

And the finished result:

Of course around these more interesting things were lots of marking, play and sing (solfedge sight reading) for a grade in the senior music classes, several hours of teaching, and the many other little odd jobs that go on during a typical school week here. This Monday and Tuesday are half-term, so there is a bit of a break from routine, but when we are so thinly staffed it doesn’t end up being as big of a ‘break’ as it might be. Let’s hope the rain holds off tomorrow!

Parting shot: The heavens declare the majesty of God…

Snapshots

A few pictures from this past week. I was very busy, but a few things caught my attention as 'blog worthy.'

This is what my dad's birthday card looked like--I was just glad that they all fit on the front! The Zambian Postal Service raised the international postage rates drastically in December, from K5 to K25, but they haven't printed bigger denomination stamps yet. Good thing my dad loves stamps!

More boxes were unpacked and distributed; these ones are lots of lovely new school supplies. I totally get excited about binders, pens, and notebooks...

It's that time of year again--the time when you always have laundry drying in your house! My drying racks basically don't get put away from January till April. In this case, this is my damp laundry that came back from the school wash, so I went ahead and put it on hangers to more greatly facilitate putting it away.

In Rally I'm helping one girl at a time make a sheet of recycled paper while the others make paper beads. Here are a few of them, hard at work.

Well, I'm off this weekend, so I'm going to go do a bit more marking before I put it away for the evening. God is good!

A Visit and Recorders

I had my busiest weekend—lots of dishes, two rivers, and junior Sunday school in the afternoon. On top of that, some representatives from CMML, MSC, and Echoes (the American, Canadian, and British Brethren mission organizations) came out to talk about future planning. I always enjoy it when people from CMML come through; I so often feel forgotten out here. As I told Phil last night, it is such a gift to feel heard. So, thank you so much for taking the time to come out and visit us cantankerous, crazy, stubborn, opinionated people that you are supporting out here!

This last week I was really excited that the food order boxes were unpacked, as that meant that I got one of my boxes of things that I had ordered way back in August of last year. In this particular box was the new shipment of recorders that I had actually needed just that day for the grade 5 students. We start the kids on recorder in grade 5 here at Sakeji, and then get them into private piano, guitar, flute, or trumpet lessons in grade 7 or 6 if we have enough teachers. It was such blessing to get these just in time for the new school year!

In science class we are studying Botany, and on Friday we talked about the parts of a flower. So, we dissected some Flame Lilies and Hibiscus so we could experience the parts for ourselves. Here is an example of one of their papers:

Parting shot: We've been having a lot of very cold, rainy weather here; sunsets are a rare privilege!