I've been doing a lot of correcting lately. A LOT. It takes an average of 2 hours to do one test for one class. And I have 8 classes, but I've been doing them all in time. And going to all of my classes, teaching full lessons. But that is often quite a challenge as the students want to get going early every day and aren't used to my 45-minute lessons.
It's funny how smells, even the briefest of whiffs, can send you off into another world. It feels like the past all comes rushing back when I smell something familiar or hear an American voice.
English classes are stalled at the moment and I'm trying to get a request to the District director written up.
I lent the chess set to Diamentino so he could practice and hopefully beat me on a regular basis.
The Canadians received 900 books in English, French and Portuguese from donors back home. I borrowed a few of the interesting ones (to me) including a history of Western philosophy, a couple poetry books, the beginning of the Dune series, a book on the American Revolution, and a couple language books. There will be no complaining about a lack of reading material.
Hopefully, Zach and I will take a road trip (bikes) into the matu (country) of our province, on the next full moon.
I should see the "Bike Maintenance" video this weekend that I helped make. It's funny by all accounts.
A student of mine didn't believe me that I could cook. But since I don't have a lot of time TO cook, I stole some traditional dish that Albertina made and offered up a sample as my own. Really, my student has no reason to believe me. But then she asked for what we ended up having for dinner tonight, as well, so I may end up lying twice (I did PARTICIPATE in making it this time, at least). Anything to bust up a stereotype.
Nimi and I will hopefully road trip (cars) out to Monica's site and party with her to break her house in.
I watched another professor's lesson today. She talked at the class for about 20 minutes, asking a couple questions, then dictated the notes for 10 minutes. This is a standard lesson here - and though our system is more developed and useful for the material we teach, it seems to me that there's something in this style I don't yet grasp. Because communication is largely oral, the power of information is huge. To insinuate that knowledge is anything but information, is to strike at the heart of tradition here. But it's not the fault of the teaching that these methods don't work. It's the material. Western knowledge is transmitted multi-dimensionally, because of tradition and resources. Knowledge here is traditionally spread uni-dimensionally, which makes for quite a stir when you try to teach on multiple levels. Just like the other way round. There's something romantically appealing about focusing on someone's train of thought and trying to emulate it. And so this is how learning is taught, by example. In the West, we teach learning by certain methods. When you introduce methods to example-based students, they look at the methods as examples and emulate the methods. It's not that kids don't learn here, they don't learn our way. So I think the goal of education here should be to broaden and deepen the educational system as it currently philosophically exists, and not blindly push our thoughts on education into the system. This is 100% harder than what we're currently doing, as it involves changing how you think.
Peace
John
