No Teaching Hours

After three months of teacher training and two weeks of waiting to hold our start of the year staff meeting I was informed that I will not actually be teaching anything at my school, until February, maybe. Wihangane (be patient). The whole thing is a complicated web of beauracracies and half truths and hierarchy all complicated by the fact that I was born with male reproductive organs thus command less respect in this society.

            First, my school is switching from teaching S1, 2, 3 to S2, 3, 4. The system is different here but S4-6 are basically high school and high schools here are all vocational schools were you are assigned based on your national exam scores from S3. For example the to “options” as they are called that my school will offer are MEG (Math Economics and Geography) and CEM (Computer science, Economics, and Math). S4 starts later than the other grade levels in February because it takes time to get the tests graded and the students to new schools. So if the school gets S4 (that decision needs to be made my the ministry and hasn’t been yet) I will get to teach S4, but we will not know until February.

            Also, for reasons that are unclear my school already had one too many teachers and thus not enough hours to go around. To receive their full benefits from the government teachers must have 30hours a week, but they are all getting only 24-27 and in danger of losing out on money. My best understanding of how this happened is that the headmasters nephew was hired over the winter break for obvious reasons. Since I don’t get benefits from the government it didn’t make sense for me to take hours away from paid teachers who do and further compromise their position with the ministry. So on the face of it, it makes sense that I would have no hours, but really what should have happened was for the HM to make the logical decision in advance not to hire the extra teacher – but logic never prevails in Rwanda. And thus I have to wait until February to see if I get teaching hours and until then I will just be integrating in my community and sitting in on classes. If I don’t get teaching hours at that time I will be moved to a new school that does need me. 

**The Schedule was adjusted after this and I do in fact have teaching hours now