Term One is Done - Woot!! :)

The last few days of the term went by quickly. Thursday, Kayla & I were privileged to have a Christmas Party with my Standard 5 class. They had decided on Wednesday to have the party. Mr. Ntchentche collected money from the students Thursday morning, then went to Shoprite to buy some snacks & drinks for everyone to share. When he returned, some of the students changed into their ‘street clothes’ and out of their uniforms – some girls were in very cute dresses (I’ll have a picture posted to FB). One boy in the class, Leandro, brought some speakers & CDs and he was our ‘DJ’ for the party. I can’t post videos very easily, but it was a hoot to watch these kids sing & dance to the music! J I got some letters from a few of the students and I had one girl give me her stuffed bunny. I was so touched that she wanted me to have the bunny; she asked me to take good care of him & I almost had tears in my eyes. It was so much fun to see the kids, and their teacher, relax and have fun together.

On Friday, the last day of school, there was an assembly for the whole school and the top 3 students in each class were announced. Kayla and I were a little frustrated because we had been told that the parents wouldn’t be there, so we didn’t prepare any songs for the classes to sing; but it turns out that there were a lot of parents there and it would have been so much fun to have the students sing. Reception and some of the upper classes (5-7) did have a few things prepared that they performed for the assembly and they were cute to watch. The only thing I didn’t like about the assembly is that they announced how many students failed in each class. Their grading scale is 80-100 (Excellent), 60-79 (Good), 40-59 (Average) and 0-39 (Need Support). Any students who get below 40% on their total grade is considered to be failing; when they told the number of failures in the assembly, some of the students began to worry and some started to cry because they thought they may have been one of the ones to fail. After all the top students were announced, the children were sent back to their classrooms to hear the rest of the order – which caused more tears to flow. I tried to console one girl who had just barely missed passing that she could work hard and do better next term, but she said she wouldn’t be allowed to come back to school. I don’t know if her parents told her that or if she thinks the Headmaster won’t let her back, but I hope that I see her in the classroom in January and can be sure to help encourage her to continue to do her best.