If you’d like to know more about La Pouponniere or adoption in Senegal, check out the new blog written by one of our high school students at ISD, completed as part of an independent project.
Does a good job summing up international schools
Things I’m glad I packed:
Coffee!
Sunscreen
bug spray (with Deet)
brown sugar
cocoa powder
vanilla
pancake mix
maple syrup-you know the kind kids like, not the real stuff
storage containers for the kitchen
ziploc bags (wish I had packed more in the 2 main sizes)-ditto Press and Seal
contact solution
some basic school supplies for homework
dog food (but wish I had done what some friends did, which was figure out how much their dogs eat in a month and then multiplied that for the year)
Things I wish I had packed:
chocolate chips padded in some type of insulation material-perhaps marshmallows! I packed a giant bag of chocolate chips in my overseas shipment, but they melted into a giant block, as did my candles
Water bottles-several per person, not just one for each child. If I don’t drink at least 2 litres of water a day during the rainy/hot season, it’s going to be a problem. You can drink the water at school-there are filters on the water fountains, but I don’t drink the water out of the sink (unless it’s an accident) unless it’s boiled or just brushing for teeth.
Gatorade powder
baking powder
Other mix type powders (lemonade, fruit punch, ranch dressing)
Starbucks/Trader Joe’s instant coffee packs
dog treats, dog shampoo, dog grooming supplies
wrapping paper, birthday cards, some generic birthday gifts for birthday parties
our Christmas ornaments (at least some of them)
cereal
Things I really didn’t need to pack/ship:
shampoo/conditioner
Groceries are really expensive in Dakar, Senegal. I just went to the grocery for a few items at a ‘reasonably’ priced grocery (Superplus L’Essential), spent 15, 000 cfa ($30 USD) and got 2000 cfa ($4) in change. I bought:
1 litre Sprite 700 cfa
1 litre Fanta 700 cfa
2 litre apple juice 1700 cfa
small box ‘film’ (what we’d call Saran Wrap) 750 cfa
1 can Pringles 1500 cfa
can black beans 850 cfa
can black-eyed peas 775 cfa
can northern beans 775 cfa
15 eggs 1500 cfa
1 litre milk x 2 2400 cfa for both (UHT-can sit on a shelf)
now obviously Sprite, Fanta, and Pringles aren’t necessities, but we don’t have them every day, or week and the kids really wanted some. They are using the soda to try to make homemade popsicles.
Yesterday, I went to City Dia to get some other things.
Cheddar Cheese (1/2 kg)
Bread (small baguette good for sandwiches)
turkey for sandwiches
Other interesting thing-they don’t mess around with small coins. I gave them 15000 cfa, the total was 13050 cfa. The exact change would have been 1950 cfa, but instead they gave me 2000 cfa. If it had been the other way around, and the change had been more than 2000 cfa, but less than 2200, they would have rounded down.
The fridges and stoves are small here compared to the US. That’s my fridge-it’s tall and skinny. Next to it is a big jug of water with a hand pump that allows us to get the water out.
The washing machine is as well. The air conditioning that is available is mounted high on the wall with the compressor immediately outside. A/C is room by room, not central. For instance, in the one “mall”, the stores have a/c, but the corridors connecting them do not.
A lot of people have asked about the how of working at an international school. I personally used Search Associates and loved not only Sally Gordon, my associate, but everyone I have ever interacted with from Search Associates. Talk about a first-rate experience. Everyone was incredibly professional, supportive, and well-informed.
In addition to attending the fair in Cambridge where I received my job offers, I also had spent countless hours submitting letters of interest with a resume, reference letters, and any other requested items. Most had to be scanned into a single PDF which challenged my laptop’s abilities.
I kept lists of where I had applied, who had openings, whether I heard back from the school either through a form letter or a personal reply, who requested additional information, Skype interviews, etc. It was an exercise in persistence and patience. It kept me going.
At that same time I was looking for positions in central Ohio that wouldn’t have a long commute so that I would not turn my family’s life into even more chaos. (“Ha”-I’m sure some of you are probably thinking. I know. I’m in Africa. Hard to get much more of a commute from Granville).
The timelines of hiring for international schools and public schools are drastically different. At international schools it is not unusual for heads of school to ask staff to have made their decision about whether they want to stay another year at the school or whether they are going to be moving on looking for something else by the end of November.
Some staff return to school at the beginning of a new school year already knowing that they are going to begin looking for something else. The reasons teachers decide to leave their current school are as vast as the places that they might move onto. Some teachers love to experience new places. Some are tired of the location of their school, or their administrator, or their housing. Some love the process of moving to a new place and experiencing a new culture all over again. Some pick a school based on its curriculum or programming. Some pick a school because of its location and the travel opportunities that it presents. Some are looking for more money, or a bigger school, or a smaller school. Some schools have contracts that allow their teachers to stay no longer than eight years. You name it, it’s a reason for someone.
Hiring for international schools also starts very early compared to public schools. Some new staff members are hired as early as October of the previous year. February was the first big international job fair in the US, but the job fairs had been going on the other side of the world for a couple of months by that time- London, Bangkok, Johannesburg, Dubai, etc. with many positions already filled.
The fair in Cambridge was like nothing I had ever experienced. There were administrators from around 150 schools from around the world and just shy of 500 candidates, also from all over the world, not just the United States. We were housed in one hotel, so you rode the elevators with the recruiters, your ‘competition’, etc. I talked to other candidates and administrators from all over the world. It was actually really enjoyable.
One of the most valuable pieces of advice that Sally and others at Search Associates gave was to try to go into the job fair with an open mind. Don’t go into the event thinking there is one perfect job or one perfect school. Jobs that were posted on the website might have already been filled and there would be new positions that weren’t listed the night before.
Senegal was not on my watch list when I arrived. There was a list of schools attending with their openings that I had printed out and gone through in painstaking detail-looking at the school’s website, job description, etc.
Based on that list, I had made another short list, in order of my priority, of which schools I was going to track down during the interview sign-up sessions. There were two different time slots where candidates approached schools to try to secure an interview. I had a couple of interviews lined up before arriving, as did some other candidates. In those situations, there had already been e-mail correspondence so all I had to do was meet them with my interview/dance card and find a mutually agreeable time for an interview. In other situations, when I went to find the school (they are all lined up alphabetically by country around the perimeter of the room) the list of openings they were looking to fill, indicated the position was already filled.
Once I went through my short list of schools, I made a sweep of the perimeter, looking at each school’s list of positions that they were going to be interviewing for.
Two sessions of dance-card/interview securing and then it was onto the next day where there were interviews all day long, every half hour.
Endurance was the name of the day. In between the interviews, you went back and forth to the candidate waiting room where each of us had a hanging file that the schools used to correspond with us.
Second round interviews began the next day.
In between the interviewing and the file checking, there was nonstop researching of schools on the internet, conferring with family members, and writing of thank you notes-like the old-fashioned kind on real paper. It made for several very long days and nights with little sleep.
I tried to keep detailed notes of each school that I had interviewed with so I didn’t confuse any of the positions in my head. I tried to imprint the names of the people doing the interviewing into my head so when I saw them in the elevator or in the hallways, I could greet them.
The condensed time frame of a job fair is also not similar to the interview process from the states. It doesn’t drag out over weeks. Much of it was completed within the weekend with a little being done over the following week before the next job fair began. Search and CIS both have fairs that back up to each other and then are followed closely by San Francisco. Things are not left up in the air.
According to TIE, the job hunter’s year should begin in September with an updated resume, a basic letter of application and a statement of education philosophy. It is quickly followed in October by sending out applications to posted vacancies. They recommend registering with placement agencies in October, but I recommend you do that in September if possible. Winter recommendations include follow-up letters, researching countries of schools you are interested in. February should be interviews and a job fair. This schedule is accelerated for people already working in international schools, as it is possible to do Skype interviews and not have to attend a job fair if you secure a position prior to the fair. That obviously saves the candidate a great deal of money.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 6,500 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 11 years to get that many views.
and didn’t know it until Guy told me.
How exactly does that happen you might be asking? Well if you’ve driven in downtown Dakar, you probably have no problem imagining how this might happen.
We were returning from south of Dakar (Nianing) and I missed getting off the ‘highway’ to head towards the airport. That’s the way we headed out-of-town. I stayed on the ‘highway’ and ended up somewhere in what I thought was downtown Dakar. Since there are NEVER road signs anywhere, your guess was probably as close as mine. Roundabouts, speed bumps, police, horse-drawn carts, and those dang motorcycle drivers! In Dakar, a motorcycle seems to give the driver permission to not follow any kind of sensical traffic rules–they drive on the wrong side of the road (sometimes cars do that too), they weave through traffic, both moving and traffic jams with little regard for anything but getting where they are going. It is a death wish on two wheels.
We had made it through several roundabouts and were on what should have been a two lane road.
There were four lanes of traffic, two going in each direction. There were also parked cars, those crazy tata mini-buses, men pushing hand trolleys laden with goods, vendors going car to car to try to sell you things-nuts, phone cards, oranges. Motorcycles were going both directions-trying to stick as close to the ‘center’ of the road as possible. The road was not evenly divided though as the ‘lanes’ flexed left and right depending on how big whatever was that had pulled off the road. Pedestrians were also in the streets as the sidewalks were taken up by little stalls of items for sale.
In these crazy traffic situations, the name of the game for me is 1-don’t try to go very fast, 2-stick to the same lane, 3-try not to get hit, 4-just keep moving until you see anything that looks familiar.
I was very focused on following my first three rules. The kids were in the back with instructions to be on the lookout for anything that looked familiar. Guy was watching for hidden obstacles.
Unfortunately he assumed I saw the taxi driver with the broken down cab who stuck his head out into the road to assess the situation.
Nope. Never saw him. Didn’t know I hit his head with the side mirror (which fortunately folds in). Big. Giant. Oops!
I was busy trying not to hit the three motorcycles coming at us down the middle/our side of the road who were swerving around each other.
I would have apologized. I would have stopped to make sure he was okay. But by the time Guy got the words out, we were a block away with more than 100 people/vehicles between us and there was no going back.
Sorry taxi guy. I really didn’t mean to hit you, especially in the head. Good thing I was only going 2 miles an hour.
So we are celebrating our first Christmas abroad as a family. It is currently 73 degrees at 8:00 p.m. in Dakar, Senegal and we have just returned from a dinner of brochette poisson avec frites (fish kabobs and fries) at the Cabanne de Surfeur with a couple from school that are our friends. We enjoyed a leisurely meal about 15 feet from the sea wall where the waves were breaking and shooting foam into the air. There were a few surfers in the distance, endlessly riding the waves in.
Not our typical Christmas Eve.
We toasted our time together and joked about not being in church acting out the manger scene, complete with donkey ears or tinsel wings.
It was a beautiful scene, slightly hazy, so the sunset was not vibrant. The temperature was what I would consider perfect, with a slight chill coming in on the mist from the crashing waves. I had the perfect seat to be able to watch the ten foot waves crash onto the stones and curl up over the top of the cement sea wall. Less than two miles away, the western-most tip of Africa can be found.
We have struggled a little with the fact that it doesn’t “feel” like Christmas (from a temperature standpoint, snow and cold “make” it feel like Christmas for us), although we are fortunate to be in an accepting Muslim country that not only ‘tolerates’ Christian neighbors, but also celebrates along with their Christian friends and neighbors. We miss the holiday walking tour that kicks off Christmas in our hometown and the lit Christmas trees that line the main street.
Here in Dakar, every grocery store has Christmas decorations, gifts, and holiday foods for sale. Last week at one of the grocery stores we frequent, Simon and I bought a 5-foot artificial tree, tinsel, lights and ornaments for about $45. It’s not a huge Martha Stewart-esque artificial tree that doesn’t even look fake, but it’s cheerful and has made the kids and I happy.
I was able to buy Santa chocolates for the kids’ Christmas stockings. Today I bought a traditional Buche de Noel (cake in the form of a Yule Log) at the bakery down the street that looks pretty delicious.
There were more holiday decorations and themes of Christmas tree decorations than I could even really fathom at the Orca store. If I had so desired, I could have decked out a tree or house with more holiday colors and lights than even in the states for not that much money.
We’ve seen children’s parties at restaurants with Papa Noel, complete with wrapped gifts, holiday outfits and a fake Santa. I was able to find holiday wrapping paper.
Firecrackers have been going off in the neighborhood, driving the dogs insane. The four of us are curled up in the living room, reading books, surfing Facebook, enjoying some needed family time.
It might not be typical, but the important thing is that we are together. We are soaking in the new learning experiences every day and enjoying what might be a once in a lifetime family holiday.
Merry Christmas to all our friends and family!
From my friend Gaucher, explaining Tamkharit (Achoura), a Senegalese religious and traditional holiday that is being celbrated this Saturday.
IT’S JUST ABOUT TAMKHARIT (ACHOURA)
IN SENEGAL
Originally, Achoura celebrates the release of the children of Israel by Moses from Pharaoh’s oppression. This day celebrates the repentance of Adam expelled from Paradise, the salvation of Noah, Abraham and Moses. Achoura is a religious day of joy and sorrows in the Islamic community.
In the Sunnite community, it’s a day of rejoicement whereas in the Shiite community it represents a day of mourning (that’s why they hit their chests and heads to show their grief).
Achoura is the 10th day of Mouharram (the first month of the Muslim year) and a day of fast, which is recommended to Muslim communities around the world by the prophet Mohamed but is not a requirement.
In Senegal, we call it “TAMKHARIT”, the celebration of the New Year and it usually comes one month after Tabaski. Tamkharit is going to be celebrated Saturday, November 24 in Senegal.
This religious holiday happens once a year depending on the lunar calendar that changes the dates and is the time when Muslims make their annual wishes for themselves, their families, their friends and their countries. A great opportunity to rejoice for the wonderful things God provided, to ask for all sort of favors but also a time to pray and again ask for forgiveness to fellow Muslims.
In Senegal, it starts almost one week before the event in the mosques where people are required to make financial contributions to buy one, two or more cows (depending on the numbers of people who contributed) to share in the community. These cows will be divided into several parts and the amount of meat one receives will depend on the amount of money one gave.
“Tamkharit” is celebrated starting in the evening with a delicious “Tiere”, a couscous served with tomato sauce, lots of vegetables and meat (mostly chicken) but not the same as the one in North Africa and in the Middle East.
In the early morning, the day of the event, men distribute the meat to houses while women are busy preparing the ingredients that go into the cooking. Usually, most ingredients are purchased at the market 2 to 3 days prior the big event.
For most people, Tamkharit is about eating until you are really full. The concept of eating until you’re full is encouraged. The reason: one doesn’t really know if he or she is going to be in this life during this time next year. So, people are invited to fully enjoy the moment.
After having enjoyed the delicious couscous, family members gather around the bowl and start the wishes ritual.
Traditionally, the head of the family begins by holding the bowl of couscous upside down into his two hands and starts by making his wishes for the whole family, for himself and then, the rest of the family takes their turn making their own wishes as well. This traditional ritual goes down to the youngest in the family.
It is believed this is the time of the year when God is making a new plan for the coming year and allowing people to ask for favors and other benefits from him.
Most Senegalese families have abandoned this traditional wish ritual.
Beside the religious aspect of it, “Tamkharit” also has this tradition called “Tadjabone” where boys dress as girls and girls as boys. It’s kind of like carnival for children perpetuated from generation to generation. This carnival happens once everyone finishes eating and wishing with children and women of different ages outside in the streets in groups, singing and dancing, each group having a treasurer.
People they meet in the streets and visit in houses give them coins, sugar or rice if they enjoy the performance. The money and the food collected during the night are used to buy candy or to prepare food cooked by the group members themselves or by their sisters few days later.
The next day is usually a holiday devoted to prayers in mosques and houses. The imams (heads of mosques) read verses followed in chorus by fellow Muslims.
Tamkharit is also another opportunity to get together with family and friends.
Here is a sample elementary teacher’s schedule for the week. They are on a six day rotation:
Monday:
| 8:30-8:50 Morning Meeting |
| 8:50-9:30 Reader’s Workshop |
| 9:30-10:25 Writer’s Workshop |
| 10:25-10:45 MORNING RECESS (teacher’s aide does duty) |
| 10:45-11:40 Math |
| 11:35-12:20 PE (currently swimming) (2 PEs, 2 musics, 2 arts rotate through the six day rotation) |
| 12:20-1:00 LUNCH/RECESS (rotate duty with other teachers-one duty out of 6 days) |
| 1:05-1:50 Science |
| 1:55-2:40 French (2 grade levels of students are spread among 4 teachers by ability level-beginner through native French speaker) Simon’s class has 5, Maggie’s class has 7 students |
| 2:45-3:30 Social Studies (trade with partner teacher) 4 times during a 6 day rotation. Other days students have Media Studies (computer) and Library. |
Dismissal at 3:30
The teachers have two 45 minute prep periods a day-one during French and the other during the daily special. In addition, they get two additional preps during Media Class (computers) and Library. During a six day rotation, the teachers get 14 forty-five minute preps, in addition to lunch. At my former school teachers get 7 forty-five minute preps during the same type of six day rotation. Please message me if I am wrong.
In addition, there is also a gentleman here who makes the copies for you, as well as one teacher’s aide per classroom from PreK through 1st. There is one aide per two teachers 2nd grade through 5th grade. In addition, for the PreK-12th grade, there are two assistants in the library, 3 technology specialists (one per division-ES, MS, HS), 4 PE teachers, and some other aides as well.
There is time for a weekly vertical team meeting to talk about curriculum and do some professional learning with the principal, in addition to their weekly team meeting. The Kgn-2nd grade teachers meet weekly. The 3rd grade-5th grade teachers meet on a different day. The PreK teachers also have a team meeting
When talking with new(er) teacher, I asked them how their days compare to their former school. They replied that it was very nice to have the time they needed to do the planning and assessing that needs to be done, as well as having all the materials they need to run his classroom.
The time to set up beginning of the school year routines
The time to carefully plan lessons and reflect on how they went.
The materials to run your classroom according to what the research has shown are best practices.
The assessments done by the classroom teacher to help them form their instructional plans. Not an annual assessment where you get the results back the following year.
I wish every elementary teacher would get to experience this every day. The learning the students do as a result is really impressive.
ABroad in Senegal 