Ready for training to be don don

Not too much is new now. Still teaching two classes in summer school. This week wasn't as good as last week as far as my students doing well on their exams.

All of us are trying to figure out the thought process of the students that come out of the primary school system here. Most seem to just regurgitate random pieces of information they learned by rote and hope that some of the words stick in the right places. There isn't a whole lot of conceptualization going on I don't think just because their entire system of education is based on the rote method and they are never taught to think critically about solving problems. Like I said, the information goes into their heads in pieces, and it seems to only stick in memory. The information I guess is never really thought about once it's there, and so connections and parallels are never really seen to produce the sort of higher thinking problem solving skills that the American system tries to promote. Of course some students here seem brilliant and capable of thinking at a higher level past memorizing and regurgitating facts. Some seem to have original thoughts and can write intelligible proper english. Some writing from the bad students is absolute gibberish that they can't even read back to me when I ask them what it says.

It just sucks that the system is so strangling. This is all just my own opinion, and I'm sure it's not just the rote system that is the problem.. I'll be teaching at the upper levels, so suffice to say, I'll probably be sticking to helping the smart kids and mostly leave the hopeless ones on the wayside.. Hopefully if they have stuck in the system this long, they are hard working and smart. We'll see once school gets going in the next month.

I'm really tired of training. Everyone is. Today (Saturday, Aug 18th) we had a cooking demo we had to go to at 8. It took 4+ hours to cook everything, and I couldn't help but feel like I was wasting an extremely valuable weekend standing around. The chop was swit, at least. I'm completely exhausted of talking with people. Even people that I want to talk to, like this cool guy I met today at his pharmacy, Dr. Muhammed Fofana. I'm just exhausted, and the work is never ending. So yeah, bad day; can't wait to get to my house and have a small breather.