Model School, etc.

We started model school Friday, so we’ll finally get to start teaching soon. Peace Corps brings in Beninese kids around the age we’ll be teaching, and each stagier (trainee) gets to practice teaching with them. Four people went today, each for an hour, with mixed results: some weren’t confident enough to get the students’ attention or weren’t quite sure how to get the concepts across, and others did really well.


I’m really nervous about the whole thing, mostly because I’ve never taught a class like this before. The classes in real Beninese schools range from 40-70 students, with limited supplies (you’re lucky if you have butcher paper) and a wide range of abilities and ages. In my classes, I’ll have kids ranging from 14 to their mid 20s, some of whom can’t read, some of whom don’t speak even French, and most of whom can’t understand my American accent.

My friend Andrew is doing Teach for America, and when I visited Houston in July, he showed us his teaching voice: he had to be confident and in control, intelligent, and authoritative without being harsh. My voice will be different. I’ll have to be able to control my classes, but my main focus is the accent – I have to pronounce everything clearly and slowly, and I’ll actually have to put on kind of a Beninese-English accent so that they can understand me. It’s kind of hilarious, actually… we sound ridiculous when we talk like we’re supposed to.

So that’s basically it – I’ll start teaching when we get back from model school, and I’m terrified and excited and ready all at once. This is no testing-the-water type experience. In the Peace Corps, we jump right in.

Heather, one of the other TEFLers, totally rocking her lesson.