So this week, one of the teachers at our school named “Dany” is hosting his cousin. Dany told us his cousin, Reagan, is applying to university in the U.S. So we asked Reagan about it, and discovered that he’s applying to Augsburg, Luther, and St. Olaf. How weird! I don’t know what his chances are of getting in, but we’re going to help him with his application later today.
The only other fun news I have is that Mario is coming soon! Hopefully we’ll see him on Tuesday. He only has a week off for spring break (all the Iringa universities have 3 weeks… figures), so he’ll only be here a few days, but it will still be a welcome change. Emily and I are very excited.
In other news, 3 more Americans are coming this week. They’re supposed to leave today from the US, so they might show up in Magulilwa around the same time as Mario. We don’t really have solid information on who they are, what they’ll be doing, or how long they’ll be staying. Hopefully they won’t disrupt our life balance too much. At least they’re bringing us chocolate.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Friday, March 18, 2011
Game Day
Form IIIA was 2 periods ahead of Form IIIB because of stupid schedule problems, so on Friday last week and Monday this week, Form IIIA had the pleasure of Game Day and an American English class while IIIB was catching up.
Game Day included 3-legged races, Simon Says, and the human knot. 3-legged races kind of failed, but Simon Says was a hit. We used it to practice action verbs and prepositions, and it was great to have the “but Simon didn’t say!” caveat thrown in to make them think. Emily and I acted quite juvenile when people did things wrong, pointing at them and yelling “OHH!!” so that the rest of the class would see them doing whatever it was wrong, and laughing at us and each other helped them get into the game actually. We’d never get away with that in a U.S. classroom, but here it works out.
The human knot went really well too. It has little to do with English, but it works on logic, something that sometimes is lacking from this education system. Groups stand in a circle, and grab the hands of two other people across the circle from them. Then they have to maneuver themselves so that they are untangled. That’s the best I can explain. But they did it really well, infinitely better than my Form I class did the first week of school. The best part was when a normally very quiet girl was totally taking charge of her group and telling them what to do (and rocking it), and then when they had finished she went around to other groups to help them.
Our American English class was completely hilarious. We taught things like “What’s up?” (which, as one of our students pointed out, makes absolutely no sense), and “How’s it going?” We also taught them to pronounce things in a more American way. Instead of saying “good morning,” we say something more like “guhmornin.” But by far the most hilarious part was explaining all the different ways to say “yes,” “no,” and “I don’t know.”
Yes. Yep. Yup. Yeah. Uh-huh. Mhmm.
No. Nope. Nah. Nu-uh. Uh-uh. Mm-mm.
I don’t know. I dunno. Idno. (and then the sound we make similar uh-uh, and the one similar to mm-mm, accompanied by a shoulder shrug).
We had them repeat all of them, and then all of the similar sounds (i.e. all the mm ones) in succession. A lot of them thought it was hilarious, especially “yep” and “yeah,” and now whenever we ask them at the end of class if they have understood, someone always answers with one of those. It’s pretty funny that now we sort of have a bunch of inside jokes with that class. Anyway, that’s all that I have for today.
Game Day included 3-legged races, Simon Says, and the human knot. 3-legged races kind of failed, but Simon Says was a hit. We used it to practice action verbs and prepositions, and it was great to have the “but Simon didn’t say!” caveat thrown in to make them think. Emily and I acted quite juvenile when people did things wrong, pointing at them and yelling “OHH!!” so that the rest of the class would see them doing whatever it was wrong, and laughing at us and each other helped them get into the game actually. We’d never get away with that in a U.S. classroom, but here it works out.
The human knot went really well too. It has little to do with English, but it works on logic, something that sometimes is lacking from this education system. Groups stand in a circle, and grab the hands of two other people across the circle from them. Then they have to maneuver themselves so that they are untangled. That’s the best I can explain. But they did it really well, infinitely better than my Form I class did the first week of school. The best part was when a normally very quiet girl was totally taking charge of her group and telling them what to do (and rocking it), and then when they had finished she went around to other groups to help them.
Our American English class was completely hilarious. We taught things like “What’s up?” (which, as one of our students pointed out, makes absolutely no sense), and “How’s it going?” We also taught them to pronounce things in a more American way. Instead of saying “good morning,” we say something more like “guhmornin.” But by far the most hilarious part was explaining all the different ways to say “yes,” “no,” and “I don’t know.”
Yes. Yep. Yup. Yeah. Uh-huh. Mhmm.
No. Nope. Nah. Nu-uh. Uh-uh. Mm-mm.
I don’t know. I dunno. Idno. (and then the sound we make similar uh-uh, and the one similar to mm-mm, accompanied by a shoulder shrug).
We had them repeat all of them, and then all of the similar sounds (i.e. all the mm ones) in succession. A lot of them thought it was hilarious, especially “yep” and “yeah,” and now whenever we ask them at the end of class if they have understood, someone always answers with one of those. It’s pretty funny that now we sort of have a bunch of inside jokes with that class. Anyway, that’s all that I have for today.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Ok, elaborating...
I’m loving teaching Form I because it’s a perfect storm of me knowing what I’m doing this time around with their syllabus, and them just being awesome. They’re just totally willing to humor me in my seeming craziness, and will ask clarifying questions instead of giving me blank stares (ahem… Form IIIB). Just the fact that they will actually say “no” loud enough that I can hear it when I ask if they understand, is huge.
But in an interesting turn of events, half of Form III has turned out to be fun as well! We had an excellent period with Form IIIA this week.
We were teaching past tense “if” clauses, which are for “unlikely situations. First we had to teach the meaning of unlikely, so me being who I am, I had to give them some sassy examples like “if all the dodgers of Form IIIA came to class, that would be an unlikely event.” It was hilarious then to see the light bulbs going on because they would get this smirk like they were thinking “oh, wouldn’t it be funny if I said this?” When we asked for examples, then, some of the students threw some sass back at us, which I loved. One said “If boys at MASS wore skirts,” a delightful throwback to our essay lessons.
In the middle of the lesson, we taught the grammar of these “if” clauses by making chains, starting “If we all CAME to class, we WOULD LEARN more. If we LEARNED more, we WOULD PASS our exams,” etc. Changing those tenses was pretty tricky, but they understood the idea. To end the class, we did chains like that starting with “If I had a billion shillings” (the rough equivalent of a million dollars), and had a good time with their answers. My part of the chain ended up being “If I moved to Dar-es-Salaam, I would wear trousers every day.” Hehe.
But in an interesting turn of events, half of Form III has turned out to be fun as well! We had an excellent period with Form IIIA this week.
We were teaching past tense “if” clauses, which are for “unlikely situations. First we had to teach the meaning of unlikely, so me being who I am, I had to give them some sassy examples like “if all the dodgers of Form IIIA came to class, that would be an unlikely event.” It was hilarious then to see the light bulbs going on because they would get this smirk like they were thinking “oh, wouldn’t it be funny if I said this?” When we asked for examples, then, some of the students threw some sass back at us, which I loved. One said “If boys at MASS wore skirts,” a delightful throwback to our essay lessons.
In the middle of the lesson, we taught the grammar of these “if” clauses by making chains, starting “If we all CAME to class, we WOULD LEARN more. If we LEARNED more, we WOULD PASS our exams,” etc. Changing those tenses was pretty tricky, but they understood the idea. To end the class, we did chains like that starting with “If I had a billion shillings” (the rough equivalent of a million dollars), and had a good time with their answers. My part of the chain ended up being “If I moved to Dar-es-Salaam, I would wear trousers every day.” Hehe.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Form I
I love Form I!!
This is a chorus that Emily gets to hear 4 days a week when i come back from teaching that class. I teach this class, as I said before, using a lot of Swahili (I'm a bilingual teacher! how cool is that?), and because the class is very elementary English, it's stuff that we can do fun activities with.
This week, I was teaching adjectives describing character, and I gave working definitions in swahili and then just had the kids act like a rude person, or a generous person, etc. and they ate it up. And all of them come to class EVERY DAY. It's amazing. Sorry time's running out, but hopefully I'll be able to elaborate next week.
This is a chorus that Emily gets to hear 4 days a week when i come back from teaching that class. I teach this class, as I said before, using a lot of Swahili (I'm a bilingual teacher! how cool is that?), and because the class is very elementary English, it's stuff that we can do fun activities with.
This week, I was teaching adjectives describing character, and I gave working definitions in swahili and then just had the kids act like a rude person, or a generous person, etc. and they ate it up. And all of them come to class EVERY DAY. It's amazing. Sorry time's running out, but hopefully I'll be able to elaborate next week.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Groupwork and boys wearing skirts
At the very end of last week, I gave my Form Is a test, which most did fairly well on, but some of the stuff everyone really needed to know 100%. So, I decided to spend all of Monday having the students work in groups of three going over their tests. I divided all of the kids up based on their score, and I had the person who scored the best be the "teacher." The teachers' responsibility was to ensure their two students could get 100% on a certain part of the exam (an impossible task in some cases, but they had to try).
I don't know why exactly, but when I've done groupwork before I've usually gotten mixed results. Some groups are very active and discussing, and others just sit there silently, staring at their assignment. But this time, (maybe because I chose the leaders) all groups but one had a very clear teacher and all were making progress. Only two of the leaders had gotten 100% on this particular part of the exam (and one got 100% on the whole thing. I love him.), but when I gave the class a quiz on the same material, all the leaders but one (so six) did. And most of the rest of the students improved significantly. A good teacher day.
With the Form IIIs, Emily and I are teaching persuasive essay writing. We started with introductions on Friday, and had to come up with some examples. While essay structure is a pretty boring subject (required by the syllabus), we were pretty desperate to get these lumps-on-the-long to pay attention. So, we decided to make our example essay about why boys should wear skirts for the school uniform. That woke them up, for sure.
Our points were pretty straight forward. 1.) The point of uniforms is for everyone to look the same, so the bottoms should also look the same. 2.) Skirts are cheaper to make. And 3.) Skirts stay cleaner longer because they don't touch the ground.
Needless to say, the students were pretty amused, but had to admit we'd made a good argument. The dynamic we have with them is so odd. They seemingly hate answering our questions, so I end up doing ridiculous things like this in class just to get a reaction out of them. And I know one of my professors would hope that us arguing for boys wearing skirts might encourage them to think about why boys don't wear skirts. I highly doubt this will happen, but you never know I guess.
I don't know why exactly, but when I've done groupwork before I've usually gotten mixed results. Some groups are very active and discussing, and others just sit there silently, staring at their assignment. But this time, (maybe because I chose the leaders) all groups but one had a very clear teacher and all were making progress. Only two of the leaders had gotten 100% on this particular part of the exam (and one got 100% on the whole thing. I love him.), but when I gave the class a quiz on the same material, all the leaders but one (so six) did. And most of the rest of the students improved significantly. A good teacher day.
With the Form IIIs, Emily and I are teaching persuasive essay writing. We started with introductions on Friday, and had to come up with some examples. While essay structure is a pretty boring subject (required by the syllabus), we were pretty desperate to get these lumps-on-the-long to pay attention. So, we decided to make our example essay about why boys should wear skirts for the school uniform. That woke them up, for sure.
Our points were pretty straight forward. 1.) The point of uniforms is for everyone to look the same, so the bottoms should also look the same. 2.) Skirts are cheaper to make. And 3.) Skirts stay cleaner longer because they don't touch the ground.
Needless to say, the students were pretty amused, but had to admit we'd made a good argument. The dynamic we have with them is so odd. They seemingly hate answering our questions, so I end up doing ridiculous things like this in class just to get a reaction out of them. And I know one of my professors would hope that us arguing for boys wearing skirts might encourage them to think about why boys don't wear skirts. I highly doubt this will happen, but you never know I guess.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Weekend Splurge
Last weekend Emily and I were living it up in town. We decided to splurge and stay at a place called the Lutheran Center, so we paid like $15 (instead of like $2) each and got hot western showers, western toilets, and omelets for breakfast! It was amazing. The shower was by far the best part. Definitely not a necessity, but nice once and a while for sure.
Now Emily and I just took on another class because another teacher left. So we’re team teaching Form III together, our old Form IIs. We were not super excited about this initially because we had so many behavioral problems with them last term, but we’re going to do our best. Now that we know how everything works, we might have a chance.
Netball news is that we found a staff person that loves to play the game, so she can coordinate the girls, and we just bought a ball. The court has yet to be made because last week, the universe decided Magulilwa did, in fact, need rain, so it rained almost every day. But only ever for like an hour each day, so the conditions are still pleasant.
We are certainly looking forward to being a bit busier with the additional classes, and we will hopefully be able to harness our creative juices for this class as well.
Now Emily and I just took on another class because another teacher left. So we’re team teaching Form III together, our old Form IIs. We were not super excited about this initially because we had so many behavioral problems with them last term, but we’re going to do our best. Now that we know how everything works, we might have a chance.
Netball news is that we found a staff person that loves to play the game, so she can coordinate the girls, and we just bought a ball. The court has yet to be made because last week, the universe decided Magulilwa did, in fact, need rain, so it rained almost every day. But only ever for like an hour each day, so the conditions are still pleasant.
We are certainly looking forward to being a bit busier with the additional classes, and we will hopefully be able to harness our creative juices for this class as well.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Miscellaneous
Man, I cannot believe we've only been back in Magulilwa for a week and a half! It feels like a month already.
I'm having a lot of fun with my Form Is, and Emily and I both feel much better prepared for everything this time around. We are being much more imaginative with our lessons, and it's fun being unorthodox. I had another teacher come into my classroom twice last week because he thought there was no teacher and the kids were just being loud. We were playing a game in which they would have to run up to the board and translate something I said.
I also got to play frisbee three times last week with some students, mostly because the soccer ball was broken. But it was really great because then a bunch of girls told me they were interested in sports, they were just intimidated by the boys. So, hopefully we'll get that netball court soon just so they can have their own space to play. Having the frisbee around is also really great because it can't be used for soccer, so the boys can't co-opt it for soccer like they do with netballs. We'll be pestering the person in charge a lot this week to see what needs to be done to get started on that court.
This "rainy season" has so far been really mild. Everything is green, so we know it must've rained a decent amount in December, but it's been dry all week this week. The villagers are worried about their crops because the rains came late this year, and January wasn't very wet. I guess January and March are supposed to be the rainiest, so now it might be a while before it starts to rain regularly again. We hope it won't be too dry.
Anyway, that's the miscellaneous update I have for this week.
I'm having a lot of fun with my Form Is, and Emily and I both feel much better prepared for everything this time around. We are being much more imaginative with our lessons, and it's fun being unorthodox. I had another teacher come into my classroom twice last week because he thought there was no teacher and the kids were just being loud. We were playing a game in which they would have to run up to the board and translate something I said.
I also got to play frisbee three times last week with some students, mostly because the soccer ball was broken. But it was really great because then a bunch of girls told me they were interested in sports, they were just intimidated by the boys. So, hopefully we'll get that netball court soon just so they can have their own space to play. Having the frisbee around is also really great because it can't be used for soccer, so the boys can't co-opt it for soccer like they do with netballs. We'll be pestering the person in charge a lot this week to see what needs to be done to get started on that court.
This "rainy season" has so far been really mild. Everything is green, so we know it must've rained a decent amount in December, but it's been dry all week this week. The villagers are worried about their crops because the rains came late this year, and January wasn't very wet. I guess January and March are supposed to be the rainiest, so now it might be a while before it starts to rain regularly again. We hope it won't be too dry.
Anyway, that's the miscellaneous update I have for this week.
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