First Mentoring Day of Ramadan

As I recall from last year, the energy level is low, the attendance is poor, and the attention span short.  For the next month I am going to have to be creative in how I do my job.  I was in the extremely rural schools last year during Ramadan, so maybe things will be different here. Maybe not.

What is working for me this year is there are a Chinese and Tamil school each in my cluster, so they will not be affected, and some of my public schools have Indian and Chinese teachers. They should be 'as usual' which means I can work 'as usual' with them.  I have to hide my water bottle - not nice to take a swig in front of those who are fasting.  The best part of the month is I will not be constantly asked 'have you taken your breakfast?' I will not have to beg off of going to the canteen to face what they serve there - always saying I am not hungry.  I have already put together the professional development session I have today. I have not been able to convince them that writing a good lesson plan means that their work is actually much easier to perform, these lesson plans can be filed to be used again and again, and anyone can take over a lesson if they themselves are absent on the day it was planned for delivery. In all the mentees I visit there are only two who actually develop a proper lesson plan.  Those two are exactly what I expect to see - some written log of what they will teach that day, how they will teach it, what resources they will need, what expectations and outcomes will be anticipated, and how to manipulate it for those who are low level, and those who are high achievers.  One of those star mentees has left for a maternity leave.  My goal is to have a good majority of the others achieve this level of skill during the next month, by watching me model a lesson, they as students learning it, and then after the lesson completion, they write the lesson plan as it unfolded before they eyes.  I have even developed a template that they only need to fill in the slots of the various components of the lesson plan.  I have already tried this on them in the past, and each lesson plan template gets lost, forgotten, and ignored.  It is my hope that I will have their complete attention during the next month and actually have an outcome  produced that demonstrates they have learned how to use one and realize how it actually is easier than what they have been doing thus far.