The School

We are blessed with a beautiful school campus here, and this post will take you on a tour of the various buildings and areas. 

The day students enter through the gate and are greeted by our friendly giraffes.

Yes, we have our own roundabout with friendly giraffes.
My school buildings are on the left and the college is on the right.

 As students come around the roundabout to head toward the dining hall for breakfast, they can catch a good view of the mountain on a clear day.

This is standing at the roundabout looking north.  You can see
the construction of the science labs and the corner of the
Junior Secondary School building.

As the students walk down the drive, the first building they come to on the left is the Junior Secondary School building.  This building has 4 classrooms, a science lab, a library, the art room, and teacher prep room, and two offices.  My office is one of those offices, so this is where I come to work every day.

As they continue down the drive a little further, they pass the Primary School building on the left.  The Primary School has 6 classrooms, a library, an office, and a teacher prep room.

 Behind the Primary School is our sports court/PE/recess area.  The tennis net is usually set up on the court, but there is also a basketball goal and a volleyball net could be set up instead of the tennis net.  There is an open field area where you can almost always find students playing soccer for recess.  And then there is also some playground equipment like monkey bars, swings, seesaws, and tires to climb on.

Can you believe that view?

Continuing on down the drive, the next building is the dining hall.  All students (residents and day) are served breakfast and lunch here.  The resident students also eat dinner here and use it as an area for playing board games and card games when it's not a meal time.

And the last building that students come to is the Pre-Primary School building.  This school building has 5 classrooms, a library/teacher prep room, and two offices (currently being used as the clinic and a space for extra academic support).

Inside the PP3 classroom, which would be the equivalent of
a kindergarten class

Pre-Primary students have their own play area so that they don't
get run over by the big kids :)

 That gives you a bit of an idea of the layout of the campus.  Now what does the school day entail?

After students eat breakfast in the dining hall, the school day always begins with an all-school assembly.  We all meet on the tennis court for the singing of a national song, prayer, reciting of the week's Bible verse, and any announcements that might be needed.

Students are lining up to march into the morning assembly

Pre-primary students are in purple uniforms
Primary students are in dark blue and khaki uniforms

The marching and singing are led by our excellent drummers.
Different student are assigned to this desired duty each day.

After morning assembly, all students go to their classrooms for Bible study with their classroom teacher.  Everyone across the village - teachers, students, mothers, and all other village staff - studies the same book of the Bible at the same time.  There are daily lessons written for every level and role: Pre-primary students, Primary students, Secondary students, Mothers, and staff.  Right now we are all studying 1 Thessalonians.  There is also a hymn for each week, so I enjoy walking past the classrooms during this time to hear the students in the various classrooms singing away.

Once Bible study is completed, the remaining periods commence.  Pre-primary students (ages 3-5) attend school for a half day, going home after they eat lunch.  The primary students (grade levels 1-7) attend for a full day of twelve 40-minute class periods.  We are blessed with many useful resources for teaching and learning and have a very good Christian classical education curriculum for all grade levels and content areas.  I have seen already how much the students are benefiting from such a quality education.  They are opening up many doors of opportunity for their futures.

And just for the sake of providing some perspective, this is a government school that I happened to get to see on Hash #2.  The classrooms had desks that likely have at least two, if not three, students sitting at each one.  There was simply a chalkboard and chalk in each classroom. 

Seeing this made me all the more thankful for the learning environment and the resources that God has given us here in the village so that these precious students are able to grow and flourish.