The first day

It might not be my first week in Paraguay, but the first week of classes seems like a much bigger step. All in all I have to say that my week went great, and I think I made a good choice coming here. I have just a few thoughts to share about the start to the school year. I am always interested in how the first day of school plays out in a new place. Ranking my four schools I have to say that this was the second most productive. In Guinea the first day was all about getting someone to scale the flagpole to run a string up it and having the students clean the classrooms. In Turkey we pretty much had an assembly and a picnic lunch before sending the kids home. In Paraguay the only difference from a normal school day came from the opening part. Apparently it is tradition in Paraguay, or at least at my school, for the seniors to party with the freshmen and stay up all night the night before school starts. In order to combat the problem of drunken students on campus the administration this year chose to send home all of the seniors after the opening assembly. An assembly which seemed to celebrate the installation of the class of 2010 as seniors. The theme this year was jailers and prisoners, with all of the seniors dressed up as the jailers and the freshmen dressed up as prisoners in black scrubs with 2013 on the back. I had to take attendance (without a roster) before anything began but as soon as my students heard some fireworks going off they started running out of the door and towards the gym. They didn’t want to miss the seniors coming. The entrance was…interesting. The 60 or so seniors piled in the back of a large truck (think more like a dump truck then a pickup truck), waving flags, blowing whistles and all in all making a ruckus. Parents line the sidewalk snapping pictures. The freshmen congregate on the sidewalk waiting for the seniors to disembark and chase them inside – a noisy and chaotic affair. I slowly made my way into the gym only to be surprised by the amount of noise 120 students can make (the sophomores and juniors are fairly quiet in this whole tradition). The seniors were making laps around the gym blowing on their whistles and popping balloons (activities which continued through most of the assembly) while the freshmen bounced in the stands screaming. Things calmed down a bit and the requisite speeches went on – the director, the principal, the senior class president, and a guest (a former teacher who had returned briefly) – then the seniors handed out a t-shirt to each of the teachers and we were off back to class. Time for me to get introduced to most of my students and give them an idea of my expectations. Now I need to get serious about learning the names of my 90 new students, never mind learning how to pronounce them correctly.