14/01/11

Finally back in Inharrime, last night I spent the first night alone in a room since December 7th. And don’t get me wrong, I love people, but it was such a relief.
This post and the following will be out of sequence which I apologize for, but I have news I felt couldn’t wait. I went back to work today, it was great to see all of my colleagues again and they all wanted to know how my holidays with my mom and brother had been. I got to work at 8am like I was supposed to and hung and around and did some reading. Our pedagogical director addressed the entire faculty and explained that the schedules weren’t finished yet, so everybody was still waiting to find out when they would teach and when. I helped a math colleague write some semester plans and then, having nothing else to do and knowing my presence had been felt, I went back to my room because a month of being on the go had taken its toll and I needed to clean. At 12 my director knocked on my door and said, “I thought the pedagogical director had told you, you are teaching 11th grade English this year like you had wanted.”
I had spoken to my pedagogical director last year and had intended to tell him that I was fine teaching whatever discipline, but would like to teach English if the opportunity arose. I think he may have understood it that I didn’t want to teach math anymore and only wanted to teach English, which is slightly frustrating. But I think I did them a favor anyway because second cycle (11th and 12th grades) teachers must have extra qualifications that first cycle (8th, 9th, and 10th grade) don’t. Last year our school only had one teacher qualified to teach second cycle, but it worked out because our school only had through 11th grade. But this year we expanded to 12th grade as well, without hiring any new faculty, so I think they would have needed me to teach English regardless. My English colleagues happily welcomed me to the “English team” which was nice. And as of now, I am no longer teaching math which is a little sad. We’ll see what happens though because I am the only person named to be teaching 11th grade English, but there are eleven classes of 11th grade and 11th grade English meets five times weekly. So that’s 55 hours per week, twice the Peace Corps limit.