First Week of School

The first week of school is over – it was a three day week and we are tired but very happy with the way things went. I will describe some of the events of the days. Wednesday was the first day with students. The secondary school had a very abbreviated schedule so I had the students for about ten minutes per class. So I learned very little about them that day. Normal class periods are one hour and twenty or thirty minutes, five times every two weeks. I thought such a long period might drag a bit, but the first two days on the schedule the time flew.

I am teaching four classes: Calculus, Pre-Calculus, Algebra 2 and Physics. The entire secondary school of 7th through 12th has around 35 students – about six per age level. However the school offers many languages (Czech, German, French) and music, art, IT, math, science, social studies, English, worship team, drama and maybe more. Hence the scheduling is very complicated. I teach Algebra 2 on Tues/Thur and every other Friday. The other three classes I teach on Mon/Wed and every other Friday. Right now I am doing 7th & 8TH grade PE and lunch duty for the secondary school. We still have a lot of first-of-the-year tasks that I hope will go away soon. I spent time this afternoon moving furniture. Yesterday I worked on getting keys to locks ready to give out. Other tasks still arise.

My classes are very small. Algebra 2 has 5 students, Pre-Calc has 2 students, Calculus has 1 student and Physics has 3 students, I but I teach an AP and a non-AP class simultaneously as only one Physics students is really math/science oriented. The non-AP class will probably be more of a self-study course with me as a resource, but the details are yet to be worked out. My preparation time is quite long compared to my previous teaching in the US as I have so many different subjects.

My greatest joy in Prague is the children in the school. They are a very dedicated, talented, mature group for the most part – especially the students I have. I left the schedule at school and have not memorized it, but I think we have chapel only on Fridays. It was great today. We had a worship team of two female vocalists, one male guitar and a female bongo player. They were really great. I have the two vocalists in classes and just love them. There are several families that have multiple children at the school, so it really feels like a family.

We also really like all the other staff members. There are four elementary teachers, an ESL teacher, a couple part-time remedial work teachers, and about six to eight full time secondary teachers and a bunch of part-time teachers. We also have a student teacher whom Liz will work with later on.

We don’t know what the future holds, but the past and the present have been very good. I think we will be very tired each Friday and appreciate the weekends more than in the USA. We took a rest time after school today, then walked around for about an hour before deciding on a restaurant. It is difficult for us to know what a restaurant is really like, so we read menus – hoping for some English on the menu – try to look inside and try to avoid places where there is gambling – which is everywhere. We stopped by our little fruit and vegetable shop on the way home from the restaurant and got bananas, plums, nectarines, chocolate and a couple beers. Most of the little shops with good vegetables are run by Vietnamese. I suppose they came during the Communist days and have just stayed. They also run small clothing/variety stores. Liz bought a sweater at a Vietnamese shop. Besides that clothing purchase we have each bought a pair of shoes. Liz got sandals, I got Keen tennis shoes.

Liz got the sandals because it is warmer here than we anticipated. I got the Keens because the Czech tradition is to have “indoor” shoes at school. You wear shoes to school and then put on your indoor shoes. However for Liz, this is a problem as the twelve little kids she has must put on their outdoor shoes for two recesses and for lunch play time. Not everyone can tie his/her shoes, so it takes a while for the comings and the goings. However, today was my first day to wear the indoor shoes – which a couple girls commented they thought were cool. However, I forgot to change shoes after school and wore my indoor shoes home! I will try and do better next time!

Tomorrow we will probably take a small trip outside of Prague to see some sights. Sunday we may try out the English speaking Baptist church here although we like the church we have attended the first two Sundays a lot and most of the staff at the school attends there. We are going to try the Baptist church mostly because we have been told that most of the choir is composed of English speaking Africans in Prague whom we would be interested in talking to. So our home church is up in the air right now. We will get a couple US College football games live Saturday night on TV – the afternoon games in the USA. I think we get an NFL game on Sunday night – the noon game in USA.

All for now, it is very near bedtime for us…