First major breakthrough

I successfully engineered a schedule in which we split form 1 into two classes. This required every teacher to teach more, and I even had to ask a couple teachers to take on an additional subject. Impressively the teachers were willing to take on the extra work, and today I taught Maths to two classes of 30 students instead of one class of 60. These classes will keep growing, but we will cap at 40 students per class. Sadly my Form 2 class still has 54 students, but we don’t have the money to hire more teachers right now. When all is said and done, Gracious hopes to have class sizes around 40. This is certainly large by American standards, but is fairly small for Malawi, while providing enough Kwacha (Malawian $) in school fees to be more sustainable. I was amazed at how small a class of 30 felt today, after teaching 60 the day before.

Also of note on the new schedule, is that I no longer teach Social Studies. Not so much because I’m lazy, but because it doesn’t make sense for an American to be teaching Malawians about their culture!!

I’m glad to be teaching only Math again; and this leaves me more time to do things like make schedules, and help Gracious and MCV in other ways.