Students here in Tanzania are not allowed to date while still in secondary school, so we don't do much as a school to celebrate a holiday about romance, but the students remember anyhow.
I have been wished a happy Valentine's by many of my students today, and a couple have even brought me flowers they've picked somewhere or other on campus (I hope the idea doesn't spread too much, or the bushes will look quite sad; we don't have that many flowering things about.) :) This only-slightly-squashed pink hibiscus my form 1 (first year) student Shadhili brought me is brightening up the library quite nicely. Shyrose (another first-year student) brought me a little red flower, but I didn't get a photo of it.
Both Shadhili and Shyrose are going to be part of my 'student family'. At our recent teacher in-service, the visiting trainers from Mwenge University suggested that boarding schools have "families" with small groups of students, each assigned to one teacher. The idea is somewhat like Hogwarts houses, if you're familiar with Harry Potter, except we'll have twelve of them with twelve-thirteen students in each. Since there are twelve, Lewis wants to name them after the twelve tribes of Israel (sigh). We just organized the groups this week, and we haven't done any activities yet, so we'll see how it goes. I think we might break up evening devo one night a week into our small groups, but we're still thinking of other ideas. The point is that with the small family groups each teacher will get to know these few students well and pay attention to how they are doing so that no one gets lost in the shuffle either academically or emotionally. Also, each student will theoretically have one teacher they are close to that they can go to when they have any problems. I hope that I can use this to encourage these students and be a positive influence for them!
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