Laura's First Two Weeks

Laura is at school right now, and has nearly finished her second week of teaching. She's enjoying teaching more than she expected to, which is great. The workload is pretty heavy, so between the new demands of teaching and having to navigate a new culture, she's pretty tired by the end of each day.

(We've now been living out of our suitcases in other people's homes for 7 weeks, which has been taking a bit of a toll. We'll be glad when, in two weeks from now, we get our own apartment and can finally unpack and relax.)

Ideally, "Mrs Kuhn" would write her own blog entry about teaching, but that will have to come later, when she has more time. Writing is a relaxing diversion for me, but just more work for her.

Laura is having fun coming up with assignments for students and figuring out ways to get them excited about math and science. Yesterday, she created an assignment that requires her students to research a space mission -- they can choose any shuttle or probe -- and find out about the scientific research that was conducted on the mission. Personally, I think Laura will enjoy reading the students' reports at least as much as the kids enjoy doing it. They groaned about having to write an essay in science class!

Laura has to be at school by 7:00am each day, with her last class ending at 1:45pm. She usually stays at school to work for another couple of hours to prepare lessons for the following days.

On the way to school yesterday, she carried a jar with her to pick up some sand on the side of the road (Maputo is very dry -- there's an abundance of sand everywhere) for a science experiment that day. The students had to measure the temperature of sand and water to see which one heated up more quickly and, once hot, which one was best at retaining its heat. I stopped into the school at the end of her classes and helped her to make some potion for today's science experiments.

Whatever the potion was required her to wear a lab coat and goggles. I wanted to get a picture of her in full lab gear to share, but she politely refused. I guess she'll be able to empathize when her class of junior scientists objects to wearing those goggles -- what high school kid wants to walk into her next class with a "goggle face" imprint across her forehead?

Well, time to go study my algebra in case Mrs. Kuhn springs a surprise quiz on me!