Thursday 3 February 2011

The first lesson and making friends with the kids

I survived teaching my first lesson at the college. Not my finest hour as a teacher if I’m honest but I learned more in that hour than I have done all week and its given me an idea of the many challenges there are with teaching in this context. The students are great and I have adapted my plan for when I teach the same lesson again next week. Its a very steep learning curve but I’ll get there. I keep forgetting that I’ve only been here a week!
Slowly but surely it seems that the local kids are beginning to get used to seeing my umuzungu face about. There were still slightly shocked when I came and sat next to them in their lessons today. I was observing the senior 6 (eldest student’s) teaching practice which was very eye opening. Seeing a change here will be the hallmark of whether the work I do has any impact or not. The children here are gorgeous! So lovely and unspoiled. When I went into P1 (about year 1 age in England) I just wanted to get up and teach them something fun like head, shoulders, knees and toes, they were just too cute. Perhaps they will let me in a little bit. When I have the resource centre up and running I would love to take groups out to it and model circle time and learning through play with the students.
Talking of which my resource centre now has glass on the windows! Next week they are supposed to be installing electricity which I’m extremely excited about.  I’m glad I’ve got two years because its going to take time for it to evolve. I’m lucky though that the tutor I’m working with on the project is absolutely lovely and had lots of good ideas himself. I must take some photos to compare at a later date.

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