Last Minute Invite (7/29/2006)

Yesterday I was teaching class and the assembly bell rang. As I was going to the assembly one of the teachers said that I was expected at the meeting someplace else. Fortunately, the meeting was late and I arrived just as the introductions were starting. Apparently this was a big meeting about how the teachers in the district were going to improve the students math performance. The meeting lasted all day but we spent several hours discussing funding issues, which was rather an eye opening experience to hear the discrepancy in school funding. Private schools like Msufini typically have money because they force the kids to pay while many public schools have not recieved funds since January.

Also it was expected that the teachers will make money going to these meetings and conferences. The reason the contribution amount was not specified is due the fact that some teachers get 200000/= for coming and if there was the needed amount specified they would only be given the amount needed. Another interesting result of the meeting is that now I am going to a seminar in two weeks and teaching the teachers probablility.

Other than the meeting teaching seems to be going remarkably smoothly. It seems that must have adjusted to a very disrupted schedule because although I think the week did go pretty much according to plan I nearly forgot to mention that the first days of the week were a bit chaotic since midweek we changed the schedule to acommodate the new teachers and of course the first draft of a schedule never is perfect.
-T.