Journal- 2 personal journal entries on school visits
July 11th
…For the most part, I’ve been sleeping as much as possible for the past few days. My medication for malaria makes me extremely sleepy, which really is a blessing when my head hurts so badly. Really, yesterday I was asleep for 16 hours straight. It’s crazy. Back at work now, thank god for progress!
I’ve had one day at the school for the blind, and one at the school for the hearing impaired. There are such drastic differences. The HI school is just so much better equipped, orderly, and under control. They’ve done a fantastic job of securing and sustaining resources for the HI school, to the extent that it is not only successful as a special school but also impeccable in comparison to almost any public school. On the other hand, the visual impairment school has very little. Their classrooms are empty of anything except desks. There is a library, but it’s coated in dust. Some of the Braille has even stuck together in the pages where nobody has touched them for years. You ask the teachers there what resources they want and they go on forever; you ask the same question at St. Joseph’s and they can’t think of anything. The teachers are doing their best, but it’s just a problem of limited resources, I think. The most upsetting thing I saw was that one girl I talked to at the VI school could see. She was a student there, but she was sitting there chatting with me and playing with my phone, looking me in the eye. This girl can see. But they treat her like she’s completely blind. They don’t think it’s worth it to teach the ones who can see how to use their sight, because it’s easier to teach them all like they are completely blind. It was extremely frustrating, but what can you do. These teachers may not have the training to know how to handle such a range of visual impairment in one class. Anyway, I’ll be returning to both places for interviews for the next couple of weeks, until term ends for them both. We’ll see.
On a happier note, there is an adorable little kid that I’m infatuated with at the school for the hearing impaired. He’s in the nursery, not really into class yet. He may be around 4 years old. His parents are both profoundly deaf, so he had absolutely no language skills when he came. Completely mute, and so shy that he’d run out of the room when someone new came in, afraid of everything. But now, he’s the biggest flirt I’ve ever seen. He came around looking for the headmistress in her office today, and found me instead. I told him he must wait until I had finished, which at first he rolled his eyes at, but then he nodded and sat next to me, very serious, studying my typing. He eventually got bored with playing researcher and went off to bug someone else until I came out to play at the end of the school day. So hard to stay focused when I could be playing with these adorable kids!
July 15th
…Went to the visual impairment school today for interviews, and walked up to an empty school. They are not supposed to finish term for at least another week. However, they ran short on money and just ended school early. It was not too surprising to the teachers and staff, but I was quite shocked. It’s hard to imagine sending home a whole school of children who expected to have class, a place to stay, and food to eat for another week. Very sad. I’m supposed to go back tomorrow, the deputy head master is supposed to call all the teachers back for me. I did have a successful visit to the HI school, though. I went to talk to the two men in their audiology department, the only one in all of Sierra Leone. We sat in air conditioning and chatted about the programs they want to do in the future and the technology they are learning, and it was spectacularly promising.
…For the most part, I’ve been sleeping as much as possible for the past few days. My medication for malaria makes me extremely sleepy, which really is a blessing when my head hurts so badly. Really, yesterday I was asleep for 16 hours straight. It’s crazy. Back at work now, thank god for progress!
I’ve had one day at the school for the blind, and one at the school for the hearing impaired. There are such drastic differences. The HI school is just so much better equipped, orderly, and under control. They’ve done a fantastic job of securing and sustaining resources for the HI school, to the extent that it is not only successful as a special school but also impeccable in comparison to almost any public school. On the other hand, the visual impairment school has very little. Their classrooms are empty of anything except desks. There is a library, but it’s coated in dust. Some of the Braille has even stuck together in the pages where nobody has touched them for years. You ask the teachers there what resources they want and they go on forever; you ask the same question at St. Joseph’s and they can’t think of anything. The teachers are doing their best, but it’s just a problem of limited resources, I think. The most upsetting thing I saw was that one girl I talked to at the VI school could see. She was a student there, but she was sitting there chatting with me and playing with my phone, looking me in the eye. This girl can see. But they treat her like she’s completely blind. They don’t think it’s worth it to teach the ones who can see how to use their sight, because it’s easier to teach them all like they are completely blind. It was extremely frustrating, but what can you do. These teachers may not have the training to know how to handle such a range of visual impairment in one class. Anyway, I’ll be returning to both places for interviews for the next couple of weeks, until term ends for them both. We’ll see.
On a happier note, there is an adorable little kid that I’m infatuated with at the school for the hearing impaired. He’s in the nursery, not really into class yet. He may be around 4 years old. His parents are both profoundly deaf, so he had absolutely no language skills when he came. Completely mute, and so shy that he’d run out of the room when someone new came in, afraid of everything. But now, he’s the biggest flirt I’ve ever seen. He came around looking for the headmistress in her office today, and found me instead. I told him he must wait until I had finished, which at first he rolled his eyes at, but then he nodded and sat next to me, very serious, studying my typing. He eventually got bored with playing researcher and went off to bug someone else until I came out to play at the end of the school day. So hard to stay focused when I could be playing with these adorable kids!
July 15th
…Went to the visual impairment school today for interviews, and walked up to an empty school. They are not supposed to finish term for at least another week. However, they ran short on money and just ended school early. It was not too surprising to the teachers and staff, but I was quite shocked. It’s hard to imagine sending home a whole school of children who expected to have class, a place to stay, and food to eat for another week. Very sad. I’m supposed to go back tomorrow, the deputy head master is supposed to call all the teachers back for me. I did have a successful visit to the HI school, though. I went to talk to the two men in their audiology department, the only one in all of Sierra Leone. We sat in air conditioning and chatted about the programs they want to do in the future and the technology they are learning, and it was spectacularly promising.