Roll Call

It’s the beginning of a new year. I forgot how chaotic the first week of school is, probably because last year I didn’t even know that I was dealing with chaos. Last year I knew I was supposed to teach two sections of S2, so on the first day of school I strode into an S2 classroom and taught an improvised English lesson for two hours. Later I found out that those were not my hours, nor my students. The schedule of classes hadn’t been written yet. I’d taught a random assortment of senior-level students, some of whom apparently still remember that first lesson.

But this year I knew better. I showed up on the first day of school with a book to read and nothing else. Teachers are supposed to arrive at 7am, but by 7:15 I was still the only one there. At 7:30 a few students arrived and started playing basketball. At 8am the other teachers began trickling in.

Beginning around 9am, we convened in the staff room and had a two-and-a-half-hour meeting to discuss the problem of starting classes late every year.

I spent the rest of that day and most of the next mobilizing students to clean out the classrooms and the teachers’ room which were littered with old homework assignments, candy wrappers, broken pens and other school-related debris. On Wednesday we met with the dean of studies and wrote the schedule of classes collectively - no small feat, since nobody wanted to teach on Fridays or after lunch. When we finally finished, I asked if anyone thought we’d be able to start the following day. Everyone including the dean agreed that we couldn’t start until Monday because attendance wouldn’t be high enough until then.

The next day, I slept in later than I intended. I woke up to a phone call from the dean telling me to come into school. “You’re teaching today,” he said. I told him I didn’t think we were starting until Monday. He chuckled and hung up on me.

When I got to school, the students were mopping out the classrooms for a second time. With nothing else to do, I spent the day getting to know the new secondary school teachers. Most of my friends from last year have been transferred to other schools, but the new teachers seem like a good group. One in particular, a chemistry teacher, has been extremely helpful to me already. He’s taken over Theotine’s job of translating for me during staff meetings.

I started teaching yesterday. We had another staff meeting in the morning but fortunately I wasn’t scheduled to teach until around 11am so I got a chance to introduce myself to both of my English classes. They’re an incredible group, even more enthusiastic than my students last year. I find myself wondering how many of them I’ll really get to know before I leave. Right now there are about 60 students in each section, nearly twice the amount I had at the end of last year - a conspicuous reminder of the staggering dropout rate.

At yesterday’s staff meeting, a district official urged the teachers to “work together as a team” to keep our students in school. He didn’t elaborate. He couldn’t, really - students drop out for a multiplicity of reasons, everything from unplanned pregnancies to sick parents to financial problems. I figure if I can keep just one student in school who might have dropped out otherwise, it‘s a success. I wonder if the other teachers feel the same way.

New year, new faces, new challenges. But this time, I’m at least a little bit better prepared. Last year, my mantra was “don’t panic.” This year, it’s “bring it on”!