Zimbabwean history

Yesterday was a slightly more laid back day compared to Thursday, which was hectic. Most of my boys did not dress up for Mothers' Day but I looked up from my reading register and did a double take when three of my boys had gone all out. I tried to keep my facial expression neutral but I think I may have looked a bit aghast. One had had a great time using his mum's make up - lipstick, mascara, eyeshadow - the lot! and was wearing a sequinned top. Another boy had on his mum's wig and kept it on all day, flicking the hair occasionally out of his face to great effect. The very autistic boy who only joins us for two hours a day for the social interaction had on a dress. I did keep catching myself wondering who they were all day. It was super being able to wear slippers, wish I could teach in my slipper socks everyday. In one of the lower classes, one little boy had dressed up in his mum's lab coat as she is a lab technician and he even had her goggles and mask. He looked very proud to be sporting this but then proceeded to do a rollypoly down the garden slope decked out in all of this.

The standard has been set high for providing staff tea on a Friday. Our head had baked and made cheese scones, banana bread and crunchies. She even managed to source farm butter. Am going to have to think about what I am going to bake. Might make my friend Nina's recipe of hikers' fingers as one thing. My one student announced when I was doing his reading that his parents were expecting me to have already emailed them his weekly progress report - sorry what? This was the first I had heard about this. The head also didn't immediately know what he meant by this but it turned out she had said last term we would give weekly feedback on how he is doing. Sigh, I now have to do a daily rating and comments. I hope all the other parents don't hear of this and want that too. Need to work now on finalising my time table and my weekly records and forecasts for Monday.

So, we did some basic Zimbabwe history and social studies yesterday - well tried to. When I started off asking the class what the politically correct name is for the first people who lived in Zimbabwe, I had been aiming for them to say the Khoisan rather than bushmen. Well I wasn't quite prepared for one little boy's response of monkeys!!! Noooooo, very politically incorrect - but I am giving them the benefit of the doubt that they were thinking of early man and pre-hominid species. I did tell them though that it could be highly offensive. I wasn't about to tackle teaching human evolution, as it wasn't part of the lesson. We progressed from the Khoisan and I asked who arrived 2000 years ago - the answer I got was the Rhodesians! Oh dear. I asked again and was told the British and then the Portuguese. Eventually we got to the Bantu people who were the ancestors of the Shona. They seemed to enjoy the lesson overall though, but were horrified when I gave them homework on a Friday to look up the Zimbabwe flag and draw it and tell me what the colours signify. I think it's good for them to do a bit of research themselves, as a bit of enquiry based learning is not a bad thing.

Was supposed to try teach my Chinese student after gate duty yesterday but I was told I could only photocopy and print before 2, as the generator would then be switched off. I had to cancel my lesson but was just about to print when the generator ran out of fuel, so will have to do it all on Monday. At least one lot of stuff can be sent to Boss in Borrowdale for copying. They are trying to work out if it is more expensive to run the generator for printing or sending it to Boss. Felt pretty brain dead after I finished my marking at 4. Managed to make it through my lesson with my Chinese French student. We did more Greek mythology but he found the relationship between Zeus and his mother "dégueulasse". Went to a friend's birthday braai after with a friend out from England but did feel rather jaded. Got home to a message from my form four student wanting a lesson at 8.30 this morning to help him with another poem by Gillian Clarke titled "Journey". I really enjoy her poems and it is fun analysing them. My student hasn't done any more on summaries for Macbeth and Spies though. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't force it to drink.