That's not actually true

Ok, I know I still need to write up last week and over the weekend
(bunch of things happened), but that won't be up until next week or
so. Same goes for Books 9.0.

One of my jobs at the school is deciding the school timetable. I've
tried to consider the requests of the teachers and I've also tried to
keep it logical (previously, students would start each day with a
different lesson and might have the same subject three times in the
same day or two classes trying to use the lab at the same time).
Students have been happy with the regularity that comes with my
timetables and the other teachers are mostly happy with how it works
for them. However, every now and then, one teacher will make a request
and I have to restrain myself from just turning to them and saying
"What a load of crap!" Some of them include: we can't have math
lessons after lunch, since the ministry says that students learn math
best in the morning; I can't teach English in the afternoon since
students won't pay attention after lunch; you should move one of my
biology lessons so that I don't have to be at school at 8 every day.
The schoolboard has asked me to make sure that someone is trained to
do this after I leave. I just told them that there is no trick, it
just takes some patience to ensure that everything is balanced for
both students and teachers.

Today I had to do one of the most difficult things in the Kenyan
classroom. I had to explain to my students that their textbook is
wrong. For most students, they have to take everything that the book
says as absolute truth, since they don't have any secondary source
material. Besides, since it is written by the government, that
increases their faith (don't get me started on this point). However,
when the book says things like "Sodium hydrogen carbonate is an
example of an acidic salt, since it has an extra hydrogen ion," I felt
I had to take a stand. When I told the students that this wasn't
actually true, they were pretty skeptical. Then, I took some baking
powder (cue that music for The More You Know) and tested it with some
red litmus paper. It turned blue (meaning the compound is a base, not
an acid) and I think I saw some students shaken to their very
foundations by the treachery of their books. Fortunately, they
recovered with laughter when they saw me shaking calcium carbonate
vigorously in water for some time to show them that it won't dissolve.

Then, there comes those lies we tell ourselves. I like to pretend that
I know how to manage a lab. After feeling a tad under the weather
yesterday, I decided to ask my friend Pete (good thing I hung out with
the chemical engineering majors in college) if the chemical fumes that
I have been inhaling are as harmless as I like to pretend they are.
They are not. I definitely need to fashion some kind of mask so that I
don't keep doing this (I take precautions to minimize risk, but they
seem to be inadequate). Also, I need to figure out how people will
manage the lab once I'm gone.