A Whole New Class of Crazy

Wednesday arrived before we knew it and as we were seated waiting for our breakfast at the Orock's house Barclay arrived to inform us that already there were many students waiting outside the hall for the program, which was scheduled to start at 9. It was just after 8. In a place where we were accustomed to most things beginning hours even after they were supposed to this was a strong sign that we would be in for quite a turnout, and so it was with much anticipation that we quickly ate our breakfast and made our way to the hall, which was about a 5 minute walk towards the main road. We could here the commotion from quite a distance as we approached and as we arrived we observed many many students waiting outside the hall, some lined up in front of the door while others chased each other around the yard of the compound or sat on the steps chatting. We obviously had way more students that could easily fit into the small hall we had set up the previous night, and though we were already planning ot split the group up and use the greater space of the new Jamadianle campus a few miles away, we had to make do with what we had the first few days and so preceded to pack more tables and chairs into the room, as well as set some up outside the door as it was not raining for once that morning. once we had all the students assembled in some seat or another, we preceded to pass out the laptops with instructions that they should leave them alone until we had given one to everyone, which they surprisingly followed, perhaps as a result of their respect for adults and experience with discipline, or maybe just that they had no idea how to open the laptop and turn it on. That was fine by us, we had prepared the lesson for the day to cover the most fundamental basics, so that we were starting from a level where every child could participate and make progress, even if they had never seen a computer before. We began by asking if anyone knew how to open the XO and 1 or 2 hands raised up, allowing us to have these students do their best to demonstrate to the class the process of flipping up the ears (antenna) and separating the screen from the keyboard to where it resembled a computer of a sorts at least, though one that looked more at home on Neptune than planet earth. We preceded to call on volunteers or demonstrate ourselves how to maneuver the mouse, how to click on activities, to open them and to close them properly, all of which took some time, but time well spent in the hope that once these basic skills were mastered the lessons to come would flow much smoother. I also introduced a few key catchphrases that I hoped would help the students remember some important things about using the XO and creating a good classroom environment. The first one was "you have the power" meaning that each student was in charge of monitoring their own battery life and raising their hand to call for a charger when the light turned red and it needed to be plugged in, this way we were not required to grow the 8 eyes and arms of a spider in order to be constantly looking at battery life and hooking up chargers so that the classroom didn't devolve into a massacre of powerless computers. The second phrase was "the best pupil is a helper" which was meant to emphasize that they should rely on and look to each other first for help in understanding things, by showing each other how to do things they would learn better themselves and tale some of the burden off us for explaining everything multiple times. The third and certainly most cliche was "sharing is caring" and this was just to make the point that we wanted them to do good work that they would be proud of and anything that they had done well they should always be ready to share with the class to appreciate what they had done. By the end of the lesson each child was plugging away playing the maze activity and navigating to the homescreen and beyond, and by the time we dismissed them at 12 we had come to several major realizations. First off was that 3 hours each morning was much too long, especially with teacher trainings and Summer Holiday Caravan in the afternoons, so we resolved to have class from 9 to 11 each morning. Second thing was that despite any doubts we had had about our recruitment efforts, we certainly had no issue getting 100 students and as soon as possible we would need to finalize the list of those that were registered and take many of them to the other campus before out small hall exploded. Above all we realized that we were going to have an awesome summer and that working with all the students who were so excited it almost provided enough electricity to power the room would be an incredible experience. All said we were pretty darn tired though, and an after lunch nap before hitting the villages with the caravan was highly in order.