Today was my first day teaching at Mlimani Primary School. I had no idea what to expect, so I just showed up after lunch, and I went into my teacher's office (he shares an office with all the other Standard 6 teachers) and everyone said Hi, and then continued working, so I sat there for a while. One of the teachers asked me what I had planned, and I said uuhhh... I don't know. He said I should have plans, and I didn't know what to say because I can't really explain my whole situation with my college program and everything, so I just half smiled and shrugged my shoulders. My teacher went out and got me a work book, and told me that they were doing unit 10, but that I could teach whatever I wanted. So I chose to teach personal pronouns from unit 10. I sat there looking at the workbook for a while, wondering what the heck I'm doing, and then I asked my teacher if we would go through the exercises in class, or if they would do them as homework. He said we could do them in class, but that I needed to explain what himself/herself/myself etc. meant first, so I now at least knew what the format of the class would be.
About a half hour after I got there, my teacher said that it was time for English, so we went to the class room. Immediately upon our entering, all of the kids stood up and recited in unison "Good foundations. Good afternoon, madam." I reply "Good afternoon, how are you?" "Very fine, thank you, and how are you?" "Very fine. You may sit down." "Thank you, madam." It was disconcerting last week, but this week I knew the program. So then the teacher told them all to be quiet and listen to me, and wrote English on the board. So, then I wrote personal pronouns on the board and listed them. It was more difficult to explain them than it should have been because I would say ok, HIMself, is a boy talking about... himself... It was strange, but I managed to explain ok, saying ourselves includes me and all of you, whereas yourselves excludes me... stuff like that. After I finish my explanations which I hoped desperately made sense, my teacher reviewed with them and reiterated what I had said, and they said they understood.
So then we started to do the exercises. The teacher and I would switch off reading the exercises and calling on students to give the answers. At one point, one girl asked the teacher to come over to her, and then he came over to me and said "she wants to ask you a question." But then she yelled from the back, "No! I want HER to ask the questions!" We both had a good laugh, and he said "Oh, apparently she is tired of hearing my voice, and she wants you to read!" and let me do the last few lines. That was pretty much it. Nothing too earth shattering. Although I really don't feel like I need to be there. He is perfectly capable of teaching, but whatever. Maybe later I'll switch to tutoring instead.
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