Molweni! On our first day at Vulumzi Senoir Secondary School, we were greeted by a very friendly principal, who introduced us to the school staff. The staff all seemed very excited to have us there, as they\u2019d never had any foreigners teach at their school before. Each of us was assigned a mentor teacher based on our subject combinations. Each of our mentor teachers took us on a tour around the school. The building is quite big, with three floors. The school area also includes a rugby field, a soccer field and a vegetable garden! After the tour, we were each taken to our mentor teachers\u2019 classrooms, where we were met by about 40-50 wonderful students in each class. We had previously been told that the school was in a less safe area, and that we needed to be careful with our belongings. So, we entered the classrooms with various, unclear expectations. However, the idea that these students would have bad behavior quickly turned out to be untrue! The students seemed very happy to see us and gave us a warm welcome. They gave welcome speeches and showed great enthusiasm for our presence.<\/p>\n
Throughout the week, we have been able to observe many lessons, and some of us have even had the opportunity to teach ourselves. We have shown pictures and told the students about Norway and our culture. On Wednesday, we also brought Norwegian chocolate for the teachers, which they greatly appreciated. The teachers at Vulumzi are truly wonderful people and are taking great care of us! They make sure we have everything we need at all times.<\/p>\n
The week ended with a delightful “Career Day,” where the students dressed up as the profession they aspire to pursue. The students also presented beautiful singing and dancing performances, including some inspiring speeches. Additionally, 8 other schools visited Vulumzi to play rugby, as the school was hosting a rugby tournament. It was very exciting to watch, and the Vulumzi team won all their matches!<\/p>\n
Our first week has been quite busy and eventful and we are left with so many impressions! Firstly, we feel lucky to have been so well received at this wonderful school, by both learners and educators. We truly feel like we are wanted and are an asset, and it is exciting that the learners are so curious about us. Secondly, it has been quite an adjustment to become familiar with how this school operates. Our biggest challenge was getting to know the timetable, as they don\u2019t use the \u201cnormal\u201d weekly schedule we are used to from Norway. Here, they have a ten-day timetable. It was also quite a surprise how busy the teacher\u2019s timetables were, some of our mentor teachers had to teach six lessons each day!! There are no breaks between the lessons, except the one-hour break at the middle of the day. Thirdly, we found it interesting that the teachers had their own classroom, and that the students had to switch classrooms based on which subject they had. However, this made it a little simpler for us, as we always knew which classroom to be in. Most of us will be teaching up to nine different classes (!), so we have been a bit confused at times.<\/p>\n
Now we are looking forward to an exciting weekend, where we will first go to a football match (South Africa vs. Congo) with most of the teachers from Vulumzi, which we are very excited about. On Saturday, we will go on a safari with the students from Machiu. We couldn\u2019t have asked for a better first week, and now we are just excited to get to know the educators and learners at Vulumzi even better!<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.27.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.27.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_gallery posts_number=”5″ _builder_version=”4.27.0″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″ gallery_ids=”532,531,530,528,529″ show_title_and_caption=”off”][\/et_pb_gallery][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.22.2″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”0px||0px|||” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.22.2″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”60px|||||” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.22.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_post_nav _builder_version=”4.24.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_post_nav][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Molweni! On our first day at Vulumzi Senoir Secondary School, we were greeted by a very friendly principal, who introduced us to the school staff. The staff all seemed very excited to have us there, as they\u2019d never had any foreigners teach at their school before. Each of us was assigned a mentor teacher based […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":123462,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"1080","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sa-2024"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/itensa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/itensa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/itensa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/itensa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/123462"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/itensa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/itensa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":537,"href":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/itensa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525\/revisions\/537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/itensa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/itensa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.uit.no\/itensa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}