On February 5th,
term one officially began, my second year living in my beautiful village, my
second year teaching my beautiful pupils, and my second year on my way to my
dream of having my very own classroom in America all comes with term one beginning.
The first week of school in most village schools not all the students are in attendance,
there are many reasons for this. One, the students don’t come to school because
they don’t have their school fees or required supplies. Two, the students don’t
come because they are still at home digging or helping around the house. And three,
the students don’t come because they just want extra holiday, honestly this is
very unlikely. By the second week your classes are filled with all the students
you’ll have for the year. You may have some other stragglers that come the
third and fourth week but not very many. With all that to say I didn’t begin
teaching until week two because I didn’t want to have to re-teach once the rest
of the students showed up. Especially most of the classes were still missing
about fifty kids.
I began
teaching this last Monday, and boy was it one hell of a week, amazing but of
course stressful. Now let’s talk about what we encountered. I encountered some
beautiful monsters of the Primary 1 verity. They just moved up from Top class
so they are squirmy and talkative. Now, if you teach kindergarten take your
class times it by about 3 and a half and then you’ll have my Primary 1 class. Now
if your kids are squirmy and talkative, well then lucky you. Now, don’t get me
wrong these beauties are intelligent and eager to learn they are just young and
new to this type of class, and they are trying. So every morning at 9am I practice
my patience to the best of my ability and I try to teach these monsters how to
read. Then we have my sweet Primary 2 class, these kiddos are picking these new
phonics lessons better than I could have imagined. They began reading new words
on their own at the end of this first week back. Something that is common in
schools in Uganda is the memorization of words instead of sounding them out. I
am doing my best to teach them how to sound and read and they have officially
begun doing this and as they learn more sounds they will be able to read more
and more words. Primary 3, 4, and 5 have just been reviewing set 1 and set 2 of
their letter sounds that they learned with me last term. They have retained the
knowledge very well and I am extremely proud of each and every one of them. I
also read with Primary 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 once a week and ask them questions so
they can begin reading comprehension. Reading with these sweet kids are problem
my favorite, I love watching their faces light up as they are diving into the
story one page at a time.
This is
going to be one hell of a year and I am so excited that it is in full swing. I
won’t lie it’s a bit bitter sweet also because I only have one year left so it’s
going to be a year of endings mixed in with some new beginnings. I am going to
try to not focus on the beginning of the end and focus on taking things one day
at a time. Now, let’s be honest I am not so good at that.
Next up
on the blog will be an update on my resolutions. A little insider tip, I am not
doing so well with my resolutions, especially the resolution of working out. Hopefully
this week will change that and I will do better.
Comments
Post a Comment