BLOG 8-Just Breathe, Pearl Jam
October 13, 2012
I finished my first full week of school. My largest class this past week had 140 students. No joke. While kids were copying the blackboard I counted and some of them chuckled as I counted aloud in English and my eyes widened as I reached a hundred and there was still a whole group of full desks to count. Some kids were four to a desk. It was ridiculous.
My first day with that particular class was chaos. I was so frustrated with the amount of talking and interruptions that I wanted to throw my backpack across the room. A couple times I just had to take a deep breath to keep from losing my cool. I tried standing in front of students and waiting for silence, but that doesn’t really work here….and of course the desks are so close that I can’t walk down the aisle, so physically approaching students was not an option.
The second day with them I just started sending kids outside for ten minutes at a time. Some tried to come in before their ten minutes was up and sit back at their desks but I stopped teaching and called them out for not waiting at the door for me. I hated sending kids out, but it was the only thing working for me.
However, as soon as I started teaching the alphabet they turned into a completely different group of students. They were attentive, they didn’t talk out of turn (as much) and they were actively participating. I used something that I did when I was learning the alphabet in French. I wrote a word in English that mimicked the sound you make when you say an individual letter. For example, for the letter A I wrote “day” and underlined the letters “ay” in a different color of chalk. After the English word I wrote the French translation in parentheses. There were some that didn’t really work like that…like H and W. I wrote an asterisk by those letters and created my own word. For H I wrote “aych” and explained to the class that this is not a real English word.
I’m excited to finally have my own classes so that I can plan what I want and not be tied down by the schedule like we had during practice school. Basically we were team teaching and you had consult the people who taught before you so you didn’t overlap them with your lesson. On the other hand, I miss having ten to fifteen students and only teaching two hours at a time. With my schedule now I have mostly blocks of four hours. I’m keeping a journal to track each class’s progress. It’s a heck of a lot more to keep track of and I haven’t started giving homework yet. I still need to figure out the grade books. I need a list of my students so I can create a grade book in the first place.
I’m also really excited to see the progress my students are capable of. With practice school it didn’t feel quite realistic because the groups were so small and it was evident that for a lot of folks they had already learned a little English. For a lot of my current students they have never taken an English class and it’s nice to really test my skills with teaching multilevel classes. At least it’s not terminal grade where there could very well be a huge spectrum of language proficiencies.
So outside of class…
Some things I’ve experienced thus far…time for some “Oh Guinea!” moments.
-“Hey white lady! Can I help you?”…a neighbor yelled at me in english while I was at the water pump.
-The first day of school a student wrote “let me love you” on the board when I told him to write a sentence about himself. The previous example from a fellow student said “my name is…” I managed to keep from laughing with the class.
-Minced garlic…for the first time ever.
-Danced with my host niece to some Bette Midler in my living room. She’s three years old. Precious.
-Called a fellow volunteer and bragged about how I found a green apple that day in the market. Apples are slim pickin, yo!
-Watched a goat pass the door of my classroom this past week. Lucky it didn’t come in!
-Sighted a rat with a fellow volunteer next to my house…probably the thing directing the nightly circus in my ceiling! Biiiiiiiiiig!
-A neighbor boy commented on my sandals that we’re drying outside my front door. Said that I hadn’t cleaned them well enough and proceeded to wash them for me. Ha!
-Watched my host brother play the drums. Ah I miss live music!
-Just a side note….haven’t seen a cockroach since Dubreka! I have loads of spiders, but I prefer them over cockroaches and constant mosquitoes.
-An English professor played nicki minaj’s “starships”, “call me maybe” and maroon 5’s “pay phone” on his cell phone as we were walking down the street. Couldn’t help but laugh when he sang along to “call me maybe.”
dearafricalovelaura 