Professional School Week

A few weeks ago, Mozambique celebrated “Professional School Week” – although I’m pretty sure 95% of the country was unaware. I, a teacher at a professional school, was not even made aware of it until Monday. As in, “Happy Monday! Its professional school week!” Ok. Cool. Sounds fun.

Monday, the direction of the school cancelled the last 4 classes of the day to clean.  Luckily, I have some friends in the workshops and I convinced them that giving class was more important than having my kids sweep the dirt outside their room. Plus, their morning “moral development” class wasn’t happening. Why? Oh just because the Padre that gives that class had something more important to do. Ya know, like buy cookies. Typical. (Side note: one of the most frustrating things I’ve encountered in the school system here is the general lack of forethought and planning. Like. If you’re going to cancel 4 afternoon classes, why don’t you at least effectively occupy the first four periods. And if this Padre neverrrrr shows up to give class – which he doesn’t – why not schedule something else for that hour and a half those kids are just sitting in an empty room?!) Moral of the story. I had my kids clean during their ‘empty’ class time and kept my afternoon English class.  And since everyone else was cleaning, no one reprimanded us for being superrrr loud playing a review game.

Tuesday was the big day – a visit from the government. Wahooo! Ha! Basically, we started the day by picking out the kids who didn’t look up to par and sending them home. Seriously. One by one, we went threw the students to make sure everyone was in perfect uniform. Gotta impress the visitor. Then, we all crammed in the big multi-purpose room where the fashion girls were being showcased as our chosen professional.  Two kids DJ’ed – which is always a hit. Then, a group of kids did the entire MJ thriller dance – which was AWESOME! They had costumes and make-up and everything. Then, the girls put on an awesome fashion show with all the clothes they’ve made this year. They were rock stars! There are so few girls at our school, so it was really awesome that they got to do this.  It was a HUGE confidence boost and overall, very impressive. Finally, our visitors got toured through all of the workshops where students explained different machines and projects they’re working on. Somehow, I ended up being the school photographer for the day… aka I just followed around the group of “chefes” and snapped photos (eventually, someone in the group of like 8 men was like ‘who is this white girl following us around?!’ … ‘no worries, she’s our English teacher’ HA)