Is there class today?

It's clove season here! Time to dry the fresh cloves

Sometimes life here on Clove Island is unpredictable. And sometimes the only prediction is that it will be unpredictable. An example of that would the the school system.

Although I'm not teaching for a public school, I have many friends whose kids are in the public school or they themselves teach there. So I get in on the drama a little too.

A little extra spice for your spices?

See, it's September. September is the month when school should start. And it's quite possible that school will start this month, but when? The governor sometimes sets a day for returning to school, but maybe the teachers still haven't been paid for the end of the last school year. And they often refuse to submit grades for their students until they're paid. If the students don't have grades, they don't know if they passed to the next grade or not. And so school doesn't start.

How long will that go on? We don't really know. Often the government compromises with teachers, paying them for a month or two of their back pay. Sometimes the school year starts with a strike. Sometimes they teach for a week and then go on strike. We'll see how it goes down this time.

Fortunately, for me, I teach independently from the public school system, so I teach as usual and watch the drama unfold from a distance.