Teaching

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Second day at school today. I am getting into teaching but I feel quite exhausted after 2 hours of teaching :-). These kids got lot of energy but it is nice to see that they are interested in learning.

So I will teach 2 hours a day in the early morning before working on the project after this. I will teach mainly Math and French. Yesterday, I had the primary school class 2 as I had the first time.

During the class, a teacher comes to me and asked me if I can take care of a pupil who do not speak english. My first reaction was to ask why he brought her to me knowing that I am the only teacher speaking only english and not Twi. He answered that he did not know what to do with her... Well she sitted in the back of the class when I was teaching mathematics.

I was not really sure what to do with her as I was asking the kids to come in turns to do the exercices on the board and trying to give some examples on how to make calculations with big numbers. I asked all kids to do an exercice on their books while I came to this pupil to know what I could do. I then decided to pick up the quickest pupil to complete the exercise successfully and put them together at the end of the class. I asked Stefany (the pupil who sucessfully completed the exercise) to explain the non english speaker pupil what she had learned today and I gave her some simple exercises to do with her. As I was continuing with the other pupils, I kept an eye on what they were doing and I was really surprised that Stefany, before quite bored in class and animated, was fully concentrated in teaching the other pupil on how to do the exercises. She even created some exercises from scratch and gave them to do to the non english speaking pupil, who seem to rapidly pick up what we were doing. I was really pleased with this.

Today I taught french and I reckon I had no clue at which level they were. After asking them some basic questions, I realised that they had to learn some basic questions/answers and vocabulary. I wrote a couple of questions/answers in french with the translation in english and asked them to come by pairs in front of everybody to do really small role plays where they had to imagine they saw each other for the first time and had to introduce themselves and engage the discussion (in french of course). It was really interesting to see that some of the loud kids were feeling much more shy in front of everybody but actually learned quite rapidly the basic of a discussion. We then did some vocabulary and thought I will try to bring some fun in it. So I just ask 3 kids to come to the board and draw something they wanted to learn in French. And then make sure that they know how to say it in french after this. I m not sure that I really do things right but I realise that doing things this way keep the interests from the pupils, who are so easily distracted (There are kids and teachers coming in the class every 5 seconds to ask something), and at least I do not have to use a stick like the other teacher to make them quiet.

Tomorrow I have more grown up kids and I will try to think about something to make them do. But if you have suggestions, fire away!!!

I have also started druming lessons. I am supposed to have my second lesson tonight. Sunday was a nice experience through as I had to go from tro-tro (mini buses/collective taxis) to tro-tro to make my way to the other side of the town where the druming lessons were. It took me nearly 2H30 with a break in a swimming pool to go there... I have enclosed some photos of my journey.

Take care everybody and speak soon
Tom

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