09/18/08 - No more school/tutoring until Oct. 6th

At the end of school today we were notified that we can no longer tutor our students and must cease everything until October 6th. On a positive note, it gives us time to catch up with planning and get those things done which you never feel like you have time for. Tomorrow, I will spend my time catching up on some accounting in the office. I haven’t had time to catch up with the one hour I spend in the office each day throughout the week since I am still trying to learn the systems here. I am sure that once I learn everything I will be able to keep up with just an hour of accounting work each day. So, with regards to not being in school, there are some positive sides.

On the other hand, it is frustrating because when we are not in school there will be a lot of Haitians out of work for these two weeks. The Minister of Education mentioned that holding off until October 6th will help people get back on their feet. Since there wasn’t any devastation here, it would have been nice to get a pardon and be allowed to continue. Since we hire many Haitians for a variety of jobs such as French teachers, teacher’s aides, homework graders, and staff to clean the school these people will be out of work for two weeks. So, instead of this helping the community it hurts both their education and income.

Speaking of graders, my grader, Mrs. Guerline, is a graduate from Sonlight. She teaches a French class and grades all my papers for all high school math. She starts around 8 AM and usually is done by the time her class starts (around 10:40). This is incredibly helpful as I wouldn’t have time to grade all of the homework I assign. I have about 70 students in all my high school math classes and give them roughly 30 problems each day. I have them turn their homework in before the pledge each morning so she has the entire morning to grade everything. I also created an Excel spreadsheet to help me track the problems that each student misses so I know what material to review. By having a grader I have time to make sure I can plan for the next day and it allows time to grade my 6th graders’ math homework since I do this myself. It is great to know that when the students graduate we can then hire some of them especially since I have heard that the pay here is much better than most jobs in the area.