Bobo! Hi! I hope you are all doing well. It has been another eventful and good week here in Malawi. As always, there is so much to talk about. This week I will share with you a little of what it has been like for me to be a high school teacher in Malawi and a bit about the education system as a whole.
As you may remember, in addition to working at the hospital/medical centers a few days each week, I am also an English and chemistry teacher at Kamuzu Palace Community Day Secondary School (CDSS). Instead of having elementary school, middle school, and high school, in Malawi they have primary school and secondary school. Primary school is for grades 1-8 and secondary school for grades 9-12. However, here, instead of calling them "grades," they call them “Standards” for primary school and “Forms” for secondary school. In addition, you restart the counting when you reach secondary school. So instead of saying Forms 9-12, they say Forms 1-4. Now it should make more sense when I say I teach Form 1 Chemistry and Form 3 English. It is also important to note that even though English is not their first language, school is taught entirely in English. This can be a real challenge.
