I lied, that last post wasn't my last. This week was so frustrating. My kids are still wonderful and were so excited to see me back so soon, and a bunch of them gave me bracelets and earrings just because they love me :) But I had this brilliant idea of taking each of my kids individually to the library that we're working on and having them read to me because I had the feeling that when they read out loud as a group in class, some of them just listen to the passage the first time through and then memorize it so it looks like they're reading when really they aren't even looking at the words. Good idea, right? And my teacher was all for it. But the other volunteers and I took the first kids we all found that they had no idea what they were doing. None. As in these class 2 kids don't even know the letters of the alphabet when it's out of order, never mind the sounds each letter makes. I took out the simplest books we have in the library and I would ask my kids to tell me the letters in each word and they couldn't. So I went back to my teacher and told her how behind they are and you know what she said to me? She said "Oh no, the kids can read when I write on the blackboard, it must be the books that are the problem. They just can't read from books." Right, that makes total sense. So then we went to talk to the head teacher to tell her what we saw and that we think it's important to take the kids every day and do this and she said it'd be fine once they start getting lunch again (the school ran out of water and maize so the kids haven't had lunch in over a week) to take them for the whole afternoon and teach them to read. So that's cool, I got pretty excited because this'll be really good for them. Then yesterday I went to class in the morning and my teacher called me over to tell me head teacher wants to talk to me about how she doesn't think it's a good idea to take the kids to the library anymore. I was furious. So I went to head teacher, who told me exactly the same thing as she said the day before, that we can take them after lunch. My teacher just doesn't like that we figured out how bad she is at teaching. She's so awful. I despise this woman. She refuses to beheld accountable for the state of her class and clearly doesn't care at all about the kids or her job because she hardly ever shows up! I'm done working with her. I love my kids but I'm only going to go in to teach them to read in the afternoons and then work with my older girls and fix up the library during the day.