First Day of School

In the past 24 hours, all four of us started school!
After weeks of bureaucratic run-around, conflicting accounts of what we needed to do, and just plain waiting, we finally came to the conclusion that the only way that the girls were going to get into school at any time in the foreseeable future would be for us to enroll them in a private school. After calling around to schools in the phone book, we found one with very reasonable tuition that isn't too far away. It's a Pentecostal high school that is about a half hour drive away from here if the traffic is all right. This morning, however, we found that it took us about an hour and a quarter during rush hour. This meant that they arrived a little late for their first day of school. But, in true Trini fashion, that wasn't really a problem. I'll let the girls tell more about their first day below.
Yesterday evening was my first day teaching at West Indies Theological College (WITC). I had nine students in my Intro to Philosophy class, which is considered a rather large class for this school. The class included students from Barbados and Jamaica--and even one American--in addition to the Trinidadians who made up the majority. Although philosophy was not my first choice of classes to teach (and even though I didn't know I'd be teaching it until just over a week ago), I really enjoyed the class. I felt like I had something to contribute to the students. We also had some good lively discussions, which is exactly what I hope for in a philosophy class. I'm sure that I'll be learning a lot more than the students this semester.
~Richard

The school scheduled us so that Richard and I could be teaching a cless at the same time. In fact we teach in classrooms right next door to each other. Our classes run from 5:00-8:00 each Wednesday and then I have another on Friday evenings at that same time. We bring the girls with us and they spend some time just outside our rooms in the courtyard that all the rooms open to enjoying green space. There is no green space around our apartment, but the campus is really lovely, nestled in the mountains. Then, when it starts to get dark around 6:30, they spend the remainder of the evening in the library. They brought a DVD last night with the laptop.
The class I taught last night was Social Work Theory and Practice 2. The hardest thing about teaching it is that it is the second class in a series of 3. It is hard to get clear information about how far they went in the first section. So I spent last night getting to know my students and doing some assessment about what they had learned so far. My students are from Trinidad, Barbados and Guyana. I had 7 students. It was a good class. Everyone was very participatory in the discussion, which I loved. It is fun to dip my feet in the social work world again.
~Barb

Today was the first day of school for me. The school actually started on Tuesday, but there were other people coming in today. They said everyone should be there by Monday, so I don't think starting today really puts me behind. I think there are mainly 4 people in my form, at least today there were. More will probably come later. I got put into the business type classes mainly, which I'm not exactly sure why, but the business teacher is good, so I don't really mind. So, there were 2 boys and 2 girls including me. There were a few other people who were only in one of my classes, but those 4 people were in all of my classes. I'm still a little bit confused about what classes I'm suppposed to be taking. The classes the principal gave me don't completely match up with the classes that my form teacher gave me, so I mostly followed the other people in my class. I think in Trinidad, people tend to have a particular group of students they stay with, but different teachers instead of different students in each class, although there was a little of that too. Oh well. I'll figure it out after a while. But, I think it should be a good school if it's not too boring. It's very small, too.
~Olivia

Today I also started school at the same high school Olivia did. The name of it is PAWI (for Pentacostal Assemblies of the West Indies), and it is on the campus of a university that is called WIST-for West Indies School of Theology. (I think they pronounce PAWI sort of like pow-ee, but I can't be sure, because they seem to pronounce everything a little different than we do anyways!) I am in what they call form one here, and my class is me and 4 other boys. The boys are all 14, though. We had heard that there were going to be 10 people in my class, though, and we had also heard that school doesn't really start until Monday, so there may be more kids in my class by then! I was extremely confused all day, because they gave me no schedule, and in the afternoon none of my teachers showed up! So in the morning I had two long classes, but in the afternoon I just had one extremely long and fairly boring free time! It was interesting in math (which they call "mats"), because they seem to learn things in a different order than I did! There are some things that they were doing that didn't seem brand-new, but still stuff that they might have learned at the end of last year, but that I had done for much longer! But there were other things that seemed fairly new to them that were fairly new to me, too! It will be interesting to see how things are similar and how they're different! I hope that all my teachers are there tomorrow, though!
~Roxy