More Stories of Teaching at MCF

Monday, March 26th, 2007

My Gr. 6 and Gr. 7 students just got their desk today and, wow, were they ever excited! And I was also very excited. They have patiently being sitting at and working on benches while they waited for the carpenters to build more desks. Now the classroom looks completely different.

The lack of desks was just one of the many things that are different about teaching at MCF. Some differences are hard to adapt to, like the lack of books, while others are entertaining. One such highly amusing thing is the variety of items used as chalk brushes. It Canada if you want to erase the chalk from the board you just use a chalk brush, right? At MCF there are very few chalk brushes and what brushes there are tend to disappear every now and then. The students and teachers get very resourceful at finding things to wipe the broad with. Since I’ve come to MCF Yatta I’ve seen the following items used as chalk brushes or “dusters” as they call them: pieces of foam from mattresses, old rags, old face clothes, toilet paper, notepaper and shoulder pads (no joke!). The shoulder pads make very effective brushes so long as they’re not made from some type of slippery shiny fabric that doesn’t absorb the chalk dust.

Duster or no duster, I still love being at MCF and I love the way the experiences colour my life in a way not possible in Canada.