I apologize for going SO long without an entry here. Here are the more interesting things going on in my life:

Last Saturday we had a mandatory teachers meeting at the school. I was a little annoyed about it because I was only informed about it on Friday, but oh well. The meeting was supposed to start at 8:30 and teachers were encouraged to get there at 7:30 to work on lesson plans with other teachers of the same discipline. Not wanting to be the only one hanging around at 7:30, I tidied up my house and arrived in Mozambican fashion at 8. I met with some of the other English teachers to talk about the curriculum and challenges that we were having in the classroom and I met with the other chemistry teacher to coordinate our lessons.

The meeting ended up starting at 9:40 (surprise, surprise!). We start every school day with the singing of the Mozambican national anthem so we also kicked off the meeting with the national anthem as well, which I thought was kind of funny, but they took it very seriously. The director and the assistant directors of the school each spoke about what would go on at the meeting. The meeting was basically called to assess and discuss the results and grades from the first trimester. Each teacher for each class is required to calculate their passing rate so for each grade the subject with the highest passing percentage and lowest passing percentage was read off and the teachers were called on to explain what happened either positively or negatively. Luckily my classes of English and Chemistry were not on the top, nor on the bottom for each grade so I wasn't put in the hot seat. Oh and when I say "low passing rate" I'm referring to 25-30%, yes, THAT low. It's a problem.

On the up side, we had been told in training about how lots of teachers and schools change the grades of their students to look better on paper to the government and to therefore receive more funding. I was very impressed at this meeting to hear the teachers stand up and justify failing their students and refusing to change the grades. It's true that there are a lot of kids here who just don't care about their grades and just don't study at all and deserve to fail. I was impressed that the teachers stood up and said that the kids deserved the grades that they got instead of breaking under the pressure of the superiors. Some even accused other teachers with high passing percentages of changing grades.

There is also a problem with illiteracy in the school. In primary school (1st-7th grade), the kids are never held back. They can fail all of their subjects, but will ultimately still move onto the next grade. Therefore, if kids aren't taught well and are just passed along, some kids go through the system without really learning to read and write. Luckily I don't run into these problems since I only teach 10th, 11th, and 12th grade, but I can definitely see how challenging that would be for the 8th grade teachers.

There were about 30 teachers at the meeting and maybe 8 or 9 of them really guiding the discussion about challenges and passing percentages, but of course about halfway through the meeting the director felt the need to call me out and ask me if I wanted to contribute something. Up until that point I truly had nothing to contribute, but I decided that I really should say something so I ended up bringing up some issues that I and the other teachers have been having with night classes. It's one thing talking in front of a group of kids in somewhat gramatically incorrect Portuguese, but it's a bit more intimidating doing it in front of 30 of my colleagues, but I survived. I even made a joke and they all laughed---SUCCESS!

The meeting lasted about 3 hours, but it was all really important stuff and I was able to keep up with all of it in Portuguese which was nice. It was also nice to spend more time with the other teachers and I definitely have a more friendly relationship with them now.

Classes are all going well. I absolutely love teaching English--especially for the benefit of those kids who really want to learn. One of my 10th graders lives at the Catholic missionary church in my town with other students who will enter the seminary in Maputo after 10th grade. He constantly asks me for help and stays after school once or twice a week to practice his English with me in conversation or he will read a book in English out loud so that I can help him with his pronunciation. He is just so adorable and really really wants to learn English.

Also my 11th grade English classes had to write a skit to perform in class this week that had to do with fashion and clothing (because we just learned all of that vocabulary). One of my classes asked if they could come in on Saturday to perform it because they didn't think they would have enough time to do a good job during class on Friday. What kind of high school kids ASK to come to school on a Saturday? When I announced it to the class that it would take place on Saturday a bunch of them stood up and started cheering...crazy kids.

That's all for now--more updates (and pictures) coming soon!