7/1
First day of
classes!!! I was so excited and so ready this morning to be back in a
classroom. The problem is I stayed up a little too late studying
Creole, so I had a rough time waking up this morning. Then I went in
the back to get breakfast and was made fun of for all of my mosquito bites.. I counted 94 just from my knees down and on my arms. We had
hot chocolate with our breakfast.. I might need to say I'm allergic
to get out of it, I don't think not liking chocolate is acceptable.
Since there were only two of us this morning I made myself drink
some. I really don't think I will ever successfully force myself to
like chocolate.
I walked across
the street to the high school at only a few minutes before 9:00am,
anticipating that the majority wouldn't arrive until 9:20. That was
exactly the case, but it gave me some time to talk with the ones that
did show up on time to assess how the morning would go. Fewer people
actually understood French than had been expressed in our previous
meeting. I was a little nervous at first about that, and felt guilty
for not knowing more Creole, but then I got excited for the challenge
to try to communicate in Creole as much as possible to explain
things.
27 students made
up my first class. By the time we really got started we probably
spent a good hour and a half. TESOL baptism by fire. My students
ranged in age from 11 to 30, but they were pretty much all on the
same level in terms of speaking. We're starting with all the basics,
even though most knew many of the words in phrases we went over, only
one or two were actually comfortable saying them aloud.
I spent my first
afternoon between classes putting together more books for the next
class since I really hadn't anticipated that many to show up. I ended
up eating lunch alone, which was really awkward in this meeting room.
I'm going to ask if I can just start eating in the back so I don't
have to walk with this tray of food from the back around to where we
eat, it's just so uncomfortable because I always have to walk past
the women taking care of the babies in the malnutrition ward and I
just can't handle it.
Students were
already in the classroom when I arrived for my afternoon class a
little before 4:00pm, and I could tell right away it would be a more rambunctious crowd. I ended up with 33 students, ranging from age 11
to 40 this time and several had a lot of previous experience with
English. By the time we ended, we decided to split that group in
half. So I now have 3 classes. The beginners from the afternoon class
will now meet 4-5:30, then the advanced from 5:30-7, and then I'll
have a group at the hospital at 7. This all wouldn't be so nutty if I
wasn't getting up at 6:00am. It's pretty much impossible to sleep in
past 6 or 7 because everyone else in the community is up and about by
then.
In any case, I had
a lot of fun teaching today. I only got asked once if I was married
or had any children. This is ten times more challenging than teaching
French. I have no set curriculum, which is so great. My advanced group
at the school is going to be geared towards business English per
their request. Plus, the entire time I'm learning more and more
Creole. After this first day I'm wiped, but it feels great to be busy
again.
 |
| View of the high school I'm teaching at from the hospital across the street. I'm using a classroom on the second floor on the right side of the name. |
I've already had
two experiences teaching here that would have never happened at TJ.
First, I forgot to mention yesterday that there was a huge storm
during my afternoon class. If you look at the picture of the school
where I'm teaching, there are no completely closed walls, so the
rooms are open to all the elements. The wind and the rain was pretty
bad at one point, but there was no sense in ending class early since
no one was going to leave during the heavy rains. My group simply
adapted to the situation and moved all the desks to one side of the
room where they would be away from the rain.
This morning
someone died of cholera at the hospital. The wailing and screaming
commenced around 8:00am until after 11:00am. This was the eerie
soundtrack for breakfast and during my entire class. We continued on,
but it was hard for me to drown out the noise, and it didn't feel
right to do so.
7/3
Today was intense.
My morning class voted democratically that they did not want to
separate, so we will continue to have the 2 hour morning class. I'm
fine with it even though we have over 40 people now in just that
class.
Got asked a
million questions about the White House, including the exact number
of rooms.
7/4
I didn't even
remember that it was 4th of July until I checked Facebook
this morning. It was quite the 4th of July. I spent 5
hours teaching. In between classes I hung out in the back while they
prepared a ton of food for tonight's going away party for the girl
who has been here almost a year since she's leaving on Saturday.
There was a huge tub of meat I could identify and I asked what it
was. I couldn't understand because the words for goat in Creole and
French aren't similar at all. So, since it was evident I didn't
understand what animal they were talking about, one of the women
quickly held up the severed goat head in front of me, and I screamed.
I'm really not usually queasy about that sort of thing, and it didn't
deter me from enjoying some goat later that night, but the
combination of being overwhelmed with a growing group of over 100
students, exhaustion, a little bit of homesickness due to the
holiday, and sheer shock caused me to burst into tears, immediately
followed by laughter at my own ridiculousness. The women thought I
was nuts. They talked about my reaction all day and night.
Happy 4th
of July?
7/5
Conducted 38
individual spoken exams in 1:15 this morning. Throughout the week we
had overarching questions such as “What do you like to do?” that
would guide our vocabulary. By Thursday we had 15 questions, and I
told the students that I would ask them five of those questions. This
worked out well so I was able to give students questions I knew that
they would be able to answer so no student walked away feeling
discouraged. I tried to find a balance of feeling successful because
of having responded correctly while being challenged. We also finally
managed to split the class in two.
After the first
class I spent about half an hour with a small group of students who
have been staying after class to pick my brain about everything
imaginable. (Same kids asking about the white house.) Today they
wanted to know the history of the United States, about Thomas
Jefferson, what happened in the Vietnam War, was some Panamanian
president still alive and in prison, everything about several leaders
in Latin America, what are the most important U.S. Cities and why,
what does the United States produce, and what could I teach them
about computers.
Computers. That's
something that's thrown me for a loop here. Even the poorest of the
poor have access to the Internet in our country. Public libraries. My
students told me there are some computers in the town that you can
pay to use but it's pretty expensive. I'm not being naïve, I'm just
finding it impossible to imagine not being able to easily access
information about the world. And in the case of these students,
information about education. I wish I were staying longer, I would
really like to work more on this issue.
In short, I'd say
it was successful first week of teaching. I've had a total of 125
people show up for two or more days of class this week, about 40 that
have shown up everyday, and four 1.5 hour classes a day going forward
with ages ranging from 11 to 40. I did run out of books, but I'm
hoping to get a better count tomorrow of who is still showing up but
doesn't have a book so I can try to get more copies made at the
hospital.
Questions/Comments/Concerns
are always appreciated!
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