Heroes’ Day

A highlight of the week was Monday’s Heroes’ Day Celebration. The day commemorates the Namibian War of Independence which started on August 26, 1966. Namibia won its independence on March 21, 1990. There are Heroes’ Day celebrations all throughout the country but the main one for this year was in my town, Otjiwarongo. The celebration included the President, Prime Minister, and many other government officials. There was a military parade complete with jet flybys and parachutists with country flags attached to their ankles. There were short special performances of 10 culture groups in their ethnic dress, music, and dances. Through it all, there was live music and dancing whenever there was a transition from one speaker to another or from one activity to another.

Adding to the excitement for me was that I had gotten to know some of the ethnic performers. Sixty men stayed at our hostel and 60 women stayed at the primary school hostel next door. They were here so they could practice their performance at the venue but also there were various meetings and parties throughout the weekend. I got to know some of the performances because they would practice on our grounds and often sit around a fire, talking, and singing in the evening. They were all gone by Tuesday morning, so my focus totally shifted to school.

Much of my time this week has been researching and reviewing more classroom management techniques and lesson planning. Half the battle of classroom management is simply being prepared with engaging lesson plans. I find this very difficult since 7 of the 8 periods are a strange 37 minutes with 6^th period as the exception with 44 minutes. This is not much time when it takes several minutes for the class to settle down, for me to provide the objective and leave time for a conclusion. The other challenge is not having the same classes each day. I can lecture and describe an activity for the next lesson, but it may be 2 days before I see them again and time will be needed for describing the activity again. I continue working on it and seek advice from other teachers. I am not alone with this challenge.

I reported to school Thursday and Friday and the learners start tomorrow. Reminder, this is not the start of a new school year, this is Term 3, the final term of the school year. It felt good seeing all my colleagues and finding out how my learners did on their final days of school and their final exams. I was gone longer than expected and I hoped they did the work I left them. It seems that my Math and Computer Studies classes did relatively well but many of the Physical Science learners did worse than they did the last 2 terms. This makes me sad because I realized after seeing the final exam that I did not cover all the material in the summaries and activities I provided. However, I also told them they were responsible for everything in the textbook and these were included there. I did the best I could.

All for now with all my love,

Ellen