Its August?

End of Term 2

Term 2 came to a close. Schools all over Kenya closed a week earlier than had been originally scheduled because of the August 4th Kenyan referendum on a new constitution. Looking back on this term I think it went a lot more smoothly than my first term at Bande and the weeks really flew by. I am much more comfortable in the classroom and feel like I am making more of an impact on the teaching styles of the other teachers and connecting even more with the students. The term of course had its ups and downs but I've learned so much and I think things will continue to be challenging but the longer I am here the more equipped I feel to face the challenges. I try to omit most of the downs on here and focus on the ups, but maybe I shouldn't do that... it doesn't give the whole picture. The highs in Peace Corps life are incredibly high but the lows can be really low. I am still incredibly happy to be here and I wouldn't want to be doing anything else anywhere else right now, but that doesn't mean I don't have bad days. I would have to say my biggest challenge at my school is the use of corporal punishment (caning) as a form of discipline. I've come to terms with the fact that I can't expect caning to go away over night but I am working with the administration and the other teachers to try and move my school away from this punishment. This of course doesn't make it any easier for me to see the students being hit, but I have found ways to cope and I have gotten a lot of support from other PCVs and the Peace Corps Kenya staff. As far as the students' classroom performance the form 1s once again performed really really well in biology with the lowest grade for the whole form being a C-. I've been so happy with how hard they work and even as we add more and more information they still continue to do well in their exams. My form 2s had kind of a rough time with their end term exam, it was the longest, most challenging and most comprehensive exam we have given to them and a lot of them struggled with the graphing questions and I think some were just intimidated by the length of the exam itself. But its good to see the areas where the students need some extra revision and we will be tackling a lot more graph questions so they can get comfortable with those. The end of the term snuck up on me for sure, and things were complicated when I got stuck in Kisumu on medical, I came down with a stomach thing that turned out to be dysentery (what am I a character on the Oregon Trail game?) and needed a few days of lying in bed before I could travel back to site. I was lucky that my fellow teachers stepped in and when I got back to site they had finished calculating all of my students grades and had completed their report cards for the term, I am incredibly lucky to work with such a great staff! Now it's time for a month off from teaching to recharge for the last term of the year!