Back in Action…

It was such a blessing to be back to school this week. Going back to work on Monday seemed a little bit like the first day of school after summer break. It had actually been 5 weeks since I had been in the classroom and teaching my kids, which is about as long as summer break ends up being after you finish up from one year and then prepare for the next. Thankfully it wasn’t exactly like summer break as we already knew our students and had already established routines; they just had to be reminded a little bit as to what those were.

It was a blessing on Wednesday to have one of our current team members into the classroom to present for our weekly assembly time with the grades 1 and 2 class. Jen, a Cedarville, student, did a wonderful job of keeping the students engaged in the story of Naman and how he was cleansed from his leprosy. We actually told her that she could come back every Wednesday while she’s here and do assembly if she wanted.
One exciting thing from this week was, over the holiday, Heather purchased some drums to add to our classroom worship time in the morning. The children were very excited to have a chance to play the drums on Thursday and Friday! It was a blessing to hear them singing and playing for the Lord in the mornings. Heather and I were also encouraged because rather than choosing American praise songs from a cd, the children chose ALL African songs for worship on those days and they actually sang rather than just standing and listening to whoever decided to sing.
We had a few funny things that happened this week in school this week, as you always do when you are working with children.
It has turned the corner in the last few weeks here in South Africa and managed to get QUITE chilly. This means that each day our classroom has also be quite chilly. On Tuesday after Heather mentioned to Michele how cold it was in our classroom, Michele brought us a propane heater to put in our classroom. It has been quite a blessing. As you can imagine, any time you mix a propane heater and children, there are bound to be some mishaps…well we had one. On Tuesday afternoon, I took the grades 4 and 5 students to a blanket on the floor close to the heater to have our technology and economics lessons. While we were sitting on the floor, one of my students decided that we were getting too cold and pulled the heater closer to the blanket…I know what you are thinking….he set the blanket on fire…nope…that’s not it. He pulled the heater closer to the blanket and we went on about our lesson. A few seconds later, one of the children looked up and the same boy that had brought the heater over, now had smoke coming from his nylon jacket. He had pulled the heater so close to himself that he was melting his jacket. No harm was done, but it did provide a teachable moment about what materials are safe to sit right next to the heater and which ones are better if kept at a distance.
Another random thing that happened this week was that we had a bird fly into the classroom. This has happened before and it can get quite entertaining as I REALLY do not like birds, especially in close proximity to me! The bird flew in through the door that one of the children had left open when going to Tswana class. We had to open up several windows in the room in hopes that the poor bird would find one of the open ones before knocking itself out flying in to all of the closed ones. After we got the bird out of the room, and things started to settle down a little bit, our oldest boy came back from Tswana class and the children told him about the bird, he very emphatically asked the teachers, “why did you shew it? It came to see me!” We all had a good laugh and went back to our work.
Overall week 1 was a great week! I am looking forward to a weekend of rest to hopefully prepare me for the next round that begins bright and early on Monday morning.