The timetable strikes again!

Last term I was plagued with what seemed like the ham-burglar constantly sneaking into the teacher’s lounge and switching my classes around just to mess with me. This term he’s really stepped up his game. Two of the teachers at my school decided to accept different jobs and apparently that means they are also leaving immediately, with only four weeks of teaching left. So now I’m the lucky native English speaker who is going to double his workload (albeit from 8 to 16hrs/wk), increase my number of students by 150ish, teach said students without knowing diddly squat about their level or what they’ve learned, and on top of all of that give them a final exam which I am responsible for.

It’s kind of a win-lose situation. On the one hand I get to interact with that many more students at my school and (theoretically) help improve their language skills and teach them about American culture (the third goal of PC). However, from my understanding of the situation, I am only subbing in for the rest of this term until a new teacher is brought in for the last term, which is only like 8 weeks long. So these students are going to have had three different English teachers in one year. English is still really new to Rwanda and the Ministry of Education has set lofty goals and objectives for a newly adopted school language that if I were to teach I have no doubt in my mind that not one student would pass my class, so being taught from three different people with three varied English language abilities is going to confuse and hinder their learning. In five years or so things will hopefully be drastically improved but right now, after only three years of being an Anglophone country, students are falling short of the ambitions of the government which hasn’t adequately prepared them for. Rwanda is doing great things and making wonderful strides to the general welfare of the country but inevitably it’s not a perfect system and with the shortcomings of government bureaucracy there will be those who fall through the cracks.