Day in the Life
Anna Regina Multilateral, by Alex Berry
Getting to Anna Regina
So last weekend, we were met at CPCE (our orientation site) by Gary. He's a gym teacher at the school and also is responsible for the lab. He was really good friends with last year's volunteer. Anyway, he guided us through the eventful process of getting to Anna Regina. From Georgetown, you can take a taxi or minibus across the Demerara River. The river is crossed by some sort of floating bridge that somehow comes apart to accommodate ship traffic. From looking at it, its clearly not a drawbridge, so my guess that it swings open, though it could somehow retract on top of itself. Once across, the bridge, the main road runs along the coast to Parkia, on the mouth of the Essequibo River. This is about an hour drive, depending on how often the minibus stops or how many tractors, horse-drawn carts and puttering mo-peds you get stuck behind. From Parika, a speedboat is used to cross the Essequibo River. The river is pretty wide; it takes about 45 minutes to cross. The scenery is beautiful though. Lots of primarily or completely undeveloped islands with dense foliage and protruding palm trees. The speedboat drops you off in Supenaam on the Essequibo Coast. From here another minibus or taxi is used for transport to Anna Regina, about 40km up the only road, which again, runs along the coast. The Essequibo Coast is one of the areas where rice is grown in Guyana. So along the road you're flanked on one side by the Atlantic Ocean and miles and miles of rice fields on the other.
Anna Regina
Anna Regina is the capital of Region 2. I was told recently that it is the newest village in Guyana to reach town status (the 7th town overall), so it is still pretty small. However, the basic amenities are provided, as they are in most places on the coast. Supermarkets, hardware stores and an internet cafe are all within walking distance of the school. So far (knock on wood) we have not had any electrical blackouts, and the school dorms have excellent water pressure. The water pressure has dropped a little now that the students have moved in to the dorms, but no one can complain about running water on the 3rd floor of a building in Guyana. The town has a handful of restaurants, bars and there is a lake resort nearby (the beach is very flat and muddy), so Keith and myself have the means to entertain ourselves. Everyone I have met in the town has been very friendly and talkative. I think it is going to be a great place to live.
Anna Regina Multilateral School
The school is about 4 blocks off the main road. There is a main academic building, a computer lab and bike park building, administrative offices and shop area, auditorium/gym and dormitory. The main academic building is 3 stories tall. Only one classroom wide, to maximize breeze effects. The rooms are simple but nice. Students either sit in chairs at clustered desks or at 2 person benches in front of rectangular desks. Chalkboards are painted plywood. Classes are separated by walls, in contrast to some schools, where a mobile chalkboard is the only separator. The school has a fully stocked chemistry lab, though some of the chemicals look much older than me. There is also a physics lab, though it is not so fully stocked.
photo courtesy of John Brock
The Class Schedule
At Anna Regina, there are about 25 classes worth of students. The students do not move around, instead teachers come to them. The day is broken up into 7 45 minute periods. To make the schedule, the deputy head teacher (assistant principal) makes the schedule out by hand. So he's working with what amounts to a 35x25 grid (period-day vs class), on paper. So he sorts out who's teaching what, where for the term. There is no daily schedule, each day is different. For the most part, a teacher will teach a given course 3-4 times over the week. So those are the constraints. It's like a bad brain teaser, and I can only imagine the massive headache it would be to solve this logic puzzle even with the help of a computer, which the DHT did not use. The end result is a massive chalkboard in the staff room with the class schedule written in (photo here). Naturally, there are a lot of conflicts (everyone here calls them “clashes”) when teachers find they are scheduled to be in 2 (or even 3) places at once. So naturally the schedule is still in flux, but here are the classes I'm currently scheduled to teach:
Year 8 Integrated Science (1 class)
Year 9 Integrated Science (5 classes, the entire 9th grade)
Year 10 Physics (1 class)
Year 11 Physics (1 class)
Beginning in year 10, students are split into streams, based on their professional/personal interests. Among the choices are Agriculture, Science, Arts and Technical. Only the science stream students take subject-specific science courses instead of the general integrated science (physics, chemistry and biology).
Dorm Life
Due to some mix-ups, Keith and I are living in the dorm. We have been told this is a temporary situation, as we are waiting for the region officials to find a suitable house/apartment for us. While its a little frustrating to be able to completely settle in, life in the dorms has been nice. Last week was quiet before the students arrived (and the aforementioned water pressure!), but now there is a lot going on. Some of the dorm children are beginning year 7, so this is likely the first time they've been away from home. There haven't been any incidents yet, though.
The First Day
Today was the first day of school. Because you can never be sure who all will exactly show up and especially for year 10 when the students are redistributed into streams, there is a lot of paperwork and administrative work that has to be done on the first day. I'm sharing a base (homeroom) class with Reshii, a math teacher who's taught at the school for about 5 years. I'm glad to have someone to show me the ropes. We have the year 10 Tech stream class. So today Reshii went off with the other year 10 base class teachers, and I hung with the 10 Tech kids. We did a few math games, chatted a little, and the students caught up after their summer break. Unfortunately I won't be teaching any courses to these students beyond the 15 minutes of base class every morning. It was a pretty casual first day. Tomorrow I think we will be able to begin school in earnest. I'm eager to start meeting my students now that I'm beginning to learn my way around the school.
A Day In the Life at Anna Regina
September 20th, 2010
6:00 – Wake up, brush teeth using water bottle (no water pressure on the 3rd floor this morning)
6:30 – Go running. Make it almost a full 30 mins. Usually when I run the sea breeze is in my face on my way home, but today it was on my way out, which is less than ideal but I survived.
7:00 – Take dinner plates down to kitchen. Return library keys to the canteen for the librarian to pick up (the internet connection is in the library, so the librarian lets us use it over the weekend). Fill water bucket outside in event water pressure does not return before breakfast. Kill time camped in front of fan, listening to music and writing in journal waiting for water to be pumped up to the tanks so we will have water pressure. The students are all dressed and ready at this point.
7:50 – Water pressure returns. Wait for Keith to shower, then quickly shower.
8:15 – Hurry to ground floor of dorms to the cafeteria for breakfast. Peanut butter and white bread with some sort of rice/tapioca warm drink. As far as breakfast goes its not my favorite thing here (mmm fried plantains and scrambled eggs), but its not bad.
8:45 – Sign in at the office and pick up chalk for the day. Students line up by classroom in the common area outside the academic building. The national pledge and school prayer are recited. Any announcements are made. The students then orderly enter the building. Attendance is taken in homeroom and any business that needs to be attended to is addressed (books, classroom cleanliness, school sponsored savings programs etc). This should theoretically end at 9, but never does.
9:00 – Periods 1 and 2 (theoretically) start. Everyone has the same teacher for two periods, they call it a double. I have grade a 9 science class. We are doing ecology so we go outside to observe the various habitats surrounding trees in the school compound. For 9am, it's still pretty hot.
10:00 – Break. Today we have a student led assembly before break truly begins. An 11th grade class gives some food for thought, leads a prayer, and the students are encouraged not to litter on the school grounds.
10:30 – Period 3 and 4 begin. Some classes are doubles, some are singles. I have both periods free on Mondays, so I spend my time in the staff room preparing physics lab exercises. I also pick up some textbooks I can let students use for in-class work.
11:45 – Lunch break. I finish planning and head back to the dorm cafeteria. We have greens, chicken and rice.
12:45 – Students again line up in the common area for any other announcements and proceed into the building. More time for homeroom activities, and attendance is taken.
1:00 – Periods 5, 6 and 7 begin. I have another 9th grade science class for periods 5 and 6, so its back outside. Its really hot now. I hide in the shade while pretending to oversee. I have 11th grade physics for period 7. In between 6 and 7 I have to run back to the dorm to pick up some fabric and paint I left in my room, related to school sports which are coming up later this week (that's a topic that deserves its own post if there ever was one). For period 7 we go over some lab procedures we'll be doing next week. I only get to meet with my physics kids once this week because of all the sports disruptions, which will take half a day Wednesday and all day Thursday and Friday.
2:45 – Class ends. Kids line up in the common area again and proceed off campus. Some stick around for lessons or to play ping pong or cricket. I play ping pong with some kids for a while. They are better than me, but I manage to have a few moments that surprise them. I'm actually not too bad, just really rusty and inconsistent.
4:00 – Sign out of school. Head back to dorms to change out of my teacher clothes. Collect laundry from outside.
4:30 – Spend some time in my room lesson planning lab experiments for physics a bit.
5:45 – While dinner is served at 5pm, the cooks leave our food out for us if we come down late. Today I went down just before 6. Chopped cooked okra with a few bits of chicken and rice. I've never really eaten okra that wasn't fried or in a soup before, but its pretty good.
6:30 – Spend about an hour working on grading spreadsheets. The teachers here make elaborate tables by hand, but I think that if I attempted this they would be so full of errors that it would take 4 or 5 attempts to get it right. So instead I'll print them out so I have a hard copy but keep the main records on my computer. I can still approximate the format relatively well, which will hopefully keep me out of trouble come grading time.
7:30 – Shower. Water is running, for now. The dorm kids have study time from 6-8, so after study time the water can go pretty quick. The shower head in my bathroom doesn't work, so I shower in Keith's bathroom. His light doesn't work, but the light in his hallway lets enough in to be manageable. I hand wash today's boxers as well, to cut down on my laundry accumulation.
8:00 – After brushing my teeth, its time to hunker down in the mosquito net for a little entertainment. I have been able to get a WIFI signal in my top bunk on some nights, but not tonight. So instead I watch a couple of T.V. episodes on my laptop. I've been rationing out my movies and books so that I don't burn through them all at once. I'll listen to music for a little while and then try to be asleep by 10, as 6am comes pretty early.
photo courtesy of John Brock