Gwangwa CDSS

I've been able to spend a few hours here and there looking through the materials and resources at my school. As I said before, my school's been completely renovated over the last two years with money from the African Development Fund. There are two new classroom buildings (two classrooms per building), two old classroom buildings, a library, a laboratory, and staffroom, and bathrooms (still pit latrines, I'm not that lucky) all enclosed by a very large brick fence.

The school grounds are fairly expansive; there are trees, shrubs, and some grasses dispersed throughout.

Each of the new classrooms have about 50 desks and chairs as well as two chalkboards in the front of the room. However, there are over twice as many students as desks in Forms One and Two, so I'll see how that works out come January when school is in session.

Attached to the the staff room, where I'll have my own spot and table, there is an office for the head teacher which also has a Dell computer and printer/copier machine.

The entire school has solar panels atop each building providing power for the computer and fortunately for me, to be able to charge my own phone, laptop, etc. There are a few water taps throughout the grounds so students can drink, wash their hands, etc. The water is pumped from a large storage tank also enclosed by the brick fence.

The area of my school which I've been spending the most time in so far is the building which holds the library and lab. I've been sorting through the books in the library; they're mostly assorted donated books and texts of all kinds. There are a ton of good resources to be found here for both students and teachers. I'm hoping that by organizing the space I'll be able to make it more accessible and encourage it's use. There's a study/reading room attached to it as well and I've been told that occasionally this space is used by students after school. I'm hoping to encourage much more of this when I begin teaching.

It's interesting the sorts of book that are housed within my library; some are great, some are very random. There's a decent set of texts (25 or so) for each of the major subjects but there are also sets of French books, books for using computers, for using Microsoft 2000, a set of teacher's edition Junior High algebra books, technical drawing, telescopes and astronomy, an entire set of the Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, and a few old but really great old novels like those by Steinbeck, Tolstoy, etc.

I feel similarly about my school's lab in that there's a ton of potential for it use. For now, it's not used at all and many of the chemicals and materials that came with it are still in their boxes, some opened, some not. There's a ton to sort through; chemicals, glassware, an autoclave, skeletons, batteries, models, all kinds of good resources for teaching and learning.

For now, I'll continue sorting through these two areas and soon after Christmas will start planning for the upcoming school year. I suppose I should say a bit about the school schedule.

In Malawi both primary and secondary school years are divided into three terms each lasting somewhere between 13 and 15 weeks depending on the year. This year the tentative schedule is as follows:

Term 1: January5th - April 3rd
Term 2: April 27th - July 24th
Term 3: August 17th - November 20th

So I'll have three sizable breaks throughout the year to relax, work on other projects and hopefully do some traveling throughout the country and continent.