Work Update

February 25, 2011

The first two weeks of school have passed without much ado. The first day was the 14^th – I went in the morning and I was “salusalu”ed (official cultural welcome) along with Koki, the school’s Japanese volunteer teacher. I haven’t been since then though because there’s been work in the office. Sort of.

The first week we had a huge day-long meeting sitting down with the 2011 annual plan appointing coordinators for each activity, then selecting working groups. I’m the activity coordinator for:

Reading Assessments,
Teacher Training,
School Libraries, and
the Provincial Teachers Observation Form,

and I’m in the working groups for:
Lesson Plan Formats,
Provincial Examination for grades 4 and 6,
Report Forms,
Provincial Scholarship Policy Guideline,
Leadership and Management,
Provincial Education Policy Guideline,
Teachers Personal Information, and
Student Discipline Policy.

I’ve been struggling to keep everything straight in my head. I keep forgetting things and confusing myself, and I go from feeling overwhelmed to feeling like I have nothing to do. It’s really irritating. It’s like I have to write myself a daily to-do list and stick it to my forehead. But that wouldn’t even work because it’s still impossible for me to plan ahead, and I’m still too new to be able to do anything I want to do. I’ve just been very frustrated.

This week I did the drafting for the Provincial Teachers Observation Form, so it’s ready to be presented to that working group, and I’ve almost finished writing the reading assessment, which I’ll do a trial run with at the school here in March.

Next week we have a week-long workshop here in Sola. A group is coming from Vila to talk about a literacy program. We’re bringing in 1-3 teachers from every school in the province.

After that I’m going to start going to school. Do the reading assessment, as I said, and attack the libraries. I still haven’t even seen the secondary school library, or met the English teacher who runs it, so that’s top of the list.