Sunday, October 25, 2009

Early vacation and free passes for everyone!

By Katie

The latest drama in the Honduran education system is that the school year will be cut short by about three weeks, as decided by the current government. This rule applies to the private school where I work as well as the public schools. Now our last day will be Friday, and we only learned this less than two weeks ago.

Understanding that this would make it difficult for teachers to have time to properly test their students, the current government said that each student in all grades will pass; there will be no one in the country repeating a grade this year! Kids on the edge love the idea while the studious ones are disappointed.

Why end the year early? Answer: The teachers are taking a hard line against the current government (hence the strikes I mentioned in an earlier blog). The elections for a new president will be at the end of November, a few days after school was originally supposed to end. Public schools are used to house the polls. The current government feared that the teachers would take over the schools if let allowed to stay there for too long. Now as soon as school is done, it is said that the military will occupy the schools.

For me this is a lesson in not taking myself or my work too seriously. I admit, I'm upset about this; it's not fair for the students and I had some cool lessons planned for the end of the year. But I also need to work on not letting my ideology or would-be plans stress me out. I need to tackle what I can, let go what I can't.

1 comment:

rubyslipperlady said...

Well, that's a new one. Praying you can enjoy the bonus days off.