Students take up the challenge

I’ve been working away while Ali my secondary boys teacher is on medical leave, to put up student work and make a change to the lab and learning environment. I’d decorated one of the old notice board and today I was intending to do at least another one. Suddenly Ibrahim arrives with Grade 9, he’s doing a substitute class for Ali and he’s not planning on doing anything with the boys. They can either play on the computers of sit and talk. Substitute classes are like that. Even if they are taking a class that they regularly teach, teachers don’t or very seldom do any specific teaching with them. Rather every one sits and does nothing. In a country where education is third world standard, and teaching days are at a premium one would like to think that every available time was taken up with education…. Not so, and that’s another blog post.
So Grade 9 enter the lab, what will they do??? Up steps a Kiwi with some ingenuity, as only a Kiwi would do! They can help decorate the learning environment. It’s not the time for me to be seen climbing on to the furniture to staple things onto notice boards….. I showed the lads what to do and how to go about it and they took up the challenge, and used up a stack of staples doing so, but hey who’s counting. We lined the notice boards with coloured paper, put up Grade signs and put up a examples of student work. Now it’s not pristine, neat, orderly and beautifully lined up, but its student work, and definitely student owned and operated. Next week I shall have more for them to do.