Sister Pauline has gone to Naivasha to collect our new volunteer. Yes! New volunteer: we’re getting a Peace Corps volunteer who — apparently — will have been trained in the CISCO Network Academy Programme. She’s here in Kenya now and doing the massive 8 week training (cut from 3 months! because of funding cuts to Peace Corps, compare with 1 week for VSO) and as part of that she comes to stay at her placement for one week next week and then goes back for further training.
Or something.
Anyway, Sister was away and sent a phone message to the Deputy Principal asking him to sit with me and another colleague and draft an agreement that must be signed by all those students who have been sent home as a result of our recent strike. The day after the strike stage II and III students refused to come to lessons (Stage III seem to be the trouble makers here), and just sat in the hostel in their civilian clothes waiting for their “demands” to be met. Sister sent them **all** home to bring their parents to review the lists of demands. So yesterday I was working with the Deputy on the readmission agreement where they decide whether to come back as boarding students, day schollars or to leave all together.
I was running back and forth between the lab (where the printer is) and the secretary’s office that in the end my big lever arch file got locked in the office. My big lever arch file has my teaching notes in it. So I decided to let it be a sign that I should not spend the night worrying about todays Network Design and Setup class but, rather, I could indulge myself.
I downloaded Python and installed it on my Linux PC.
Oh man! Why don’t we teach **this** as a first language? It is a scripting language that is the antithesis of Perl: Its object-oriented, has some lovely functional constructs, no magic (e.g. strange things that work because Larry said they should), and comes wtih batteries included — which means the source files are over 7MB and took over an hour to compile and install including the documentation. Not only that, but references to Monty Python’s Flying Circus (from which it gets its name) in the documentation are not only allowed but encouraged.
Now this morning I have a couple of hours to prepare a Network Design and Setup lesson but my head is full of object-oriented scripting.