Parent Visitation

Today is our third day dedicated to hosting families of our students. It is always a mixed day for me. The excitement of so many students anticipating the arrival of their families is wonderful, but there are also students whose families do not visit because of the distance such a visit would entail. It is a rather sad sight to see them moping around.

There are some families who have noticed this and have sought to include these students in their own activities. Seeing this has been edifying.

Today we inaugurate our parent association. I have asked four parents from Dodoma to serve as the first officers of the club. In the future the parents can elect their officers, but for the time being, I thought it would be good for me to choose so that we can get things off to a good start. I chose well! Last week I met with them along with Kizito. They are very keen on supporting the school -- not afraid to share concerns that will help us grow, but genuinely supportive of the school. I am looking forward to the meeting with the parents.

Families are also receiving progress reports. I worked most of last week on them, using Excel and doing a merge in the Word. It all worked well, and I printed the reports on Friday. As I was stuffing envelopes yesterday (which brought me back to my first job, stuffing envelopes at ABC Mailing, my Uncle Joe's bulk mailing business in Toledo, Ohio), I realized there was something wrong with the biology grade, so I had to do some sleuthing, correcting, and reprinting.

I also figured out too late that one of our teachers does not know the meaning of "commendable". Our teachers use coded comments, and this teacher wrote the code for "attitude, effort, and achievement in this course are commendable" for those students doing remarkably poorly. Oh, well. Maybe it will encourage them.