This term has been pretty positive! The school is getting its feet underneath it, and we're starting to walk forward. It's pretty awesome. My only major issue with things has been how discipline is handled here. I am very lucky, in that no teachers at my school hit learners, and the principal is serious about consequences being directly linked to the problem behaviour. But teachers here are so negative in their approach to effecting changes in learners' behaviour. In my experience, this is a major waste of energy, time and soul. I've been super lucky with positive reinforcements and creating more intrinsic desire to be good. So as explained, one of the troubled classes has been writing down three positive things they could have done instead of a negative behaviour. It's been working really well, the class teachers are totally on board with the idea, and the class's behaviour has improved 10 fold! The class teacher was reading through the notes today and found this one. I almost cried it made me so happy. My heart melted. It reads:
"Keep it positive as our lovely teacher said. (Miss Mayer Rachel) We congratulate you, our leader, May God bless you for changing our class, if you were not there we could have suffered. We thank you miss! Thank you thank you. Our favourite teacher! YOU ARE THE BEST OF THE BEST! We salute you comrade! Keep it growing! Best wishes for you!"
The power of positivity and a calm, purposeful but loving tone.
