(explanation to follow), and by about Day 0.5 I was bored out of my
mind. Luckily, the end of the week rebounded. (I just finished
writing this and realized it's years long, so I'm going to split it
up… hope that works for everyone. It's like a chapter book!)
-Six-Day Weekend. I may have written this already, but I still think
it's ridiculous, so I'm going to say it again. After two weeks of
Christmas break, some genius thought it was a great idea to schedule
teacher training for the Thursday/Friday of the week we got back.
Saturday and Sunday passed normally, and then Monday came and
surprise! No school. Voodoo party that none of my friends would take
me to. Tuesday is my normal other day off. Thus, a six-day weekend,
and an American volunteer ready to count her eyelashes just for
something to do.
-Voodoo Fete. I am still angry about this. Not actually, but a
little disappointed. I'd been hearing about this voodoo fete for
months – it's the one official day of the year that people get
together all over the country to really celebrate traditional
religions here. They eat and dance, and then big, colorful
haystack-looking things come out and dance and intimidate people.
It's awesome… or so I have seen on TV. This is because somehow I made
friends with all Catholic people, and no one would get within a mile
of voodoo… That's the funny thing about religion here. All of the
imported religions – Islam, Catholicism, Protestant(ism?) – have
instilled such a hatred of voodoo that they won't go near the parties
or traditional medicine center. They will, however, tell you that an
injury or a death was caused by gri-gri (black magic), and that the
only way to get rid of it is to wait it out or send gri-gri back.
They believe in voodoo on some scale, they just refuse to admit it
publically.
-Sorry. That last one should have been its own post… I may expand on
that idea later. It's a big one.
-6eme Classes. I taught three surprisingly fun lessons this week. The
first two were with 6eme, and I did a review of stuff we learned last
week. Why? Because last week I taught telling time, and while
looking over their homework, I realized that over half of them didn't
know how to read a clock – I was getting clocks with 26 hour lines and
three hands. After the review, which was surprisingly fun, I feel a
lot better about comprehension, and the kiddos seemed more comfortable
answering my questions.
-Fun Way to Distract A Class. I took a minute in my 6eme class to
redo my hair – the kids were copying from the board, and my braid was
falling out. I shook it out and twisted it up in a bun really
quickly, and when I looked up, every single person in the class was
staring at me in amazement. I'm not sure why… but it was hilarious.
Me and my magical Tresses of Distraction.
-5eme Class. I usually hate my 5eme class… well, okay, not hate, but
dread. They're loud and rambunctious and tough to control. Thursday,
though, I somehow had a really kickass class – I'm learning slowly
that if I talk to them like adults and then bribe them like
three-year-olds, I get better results. I taught Can/Can't, and after
doing all of the boring stuff (how to use can/can't in sentences and
questions), we did a gender sensitivity activity that the PC handbook
suggests. It. Was. Awesome. We took a bunch of verbs, like "drive a
car," "cook," and "be a doctor," and in groups sorted them into a Venn
diagram labeled "Boy" and "Girl." Then, as a class, we made a master
diagram on the board.
It got loud and argumentative (in a happy kind of way), and it was
fantastic to ask the boys why they thought that girls couldn't do this
or that, then argue logically until they didn't really have anything
but tradition to stand on. Surprisingly, the most difficult to
convince them of was "playing the drums" – some of the boys really
thought that girl hands were biologically incapable of tapping out a
steady rhythm. Also surprisingly, a lot of the boys are wildly proud
of their abilities to cook and clean the house. One of the most
popular boys in class stood up and said proudly, "When I wash dishes,
I can make them so clean they're the cleanest in Africa."
I loved watching the girls get into the arguments, and loved even more
when some of the boys were arguing louder for girls' abilities to be
doctors and drive cars than they were – I'm raising baby feminists,
yall! I left that activity on an absolute high, and then gave them
the bribe: a song. We sang/shouted "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do
Better" in teams, and they loved it. Some days I hate teaching, and
then there are days like these…
-English Club Is A Go. I finally got some movement towards my English
club with the director (lots of nagging is the key, apparently), so I
presented a formal proposal to my English department meeting. Once I
made it clear that I had a solid plan and wasn't asking them to sign
their lives away, the other 5 teachers were really supportive: they
asked lots of questions, thought about what they could do to help, and
even volunteered to advertise in their classes. We're going to start
by doing a spelling be in English for 6eme-4eme kids in early March,
and then see what we want to do after that. Exciting, stay tuned!
-Girls Club is Confusing. As excited as admin seems about my English
club (several non-English teachers have come up to me and said, "This
is really great!"), they seem generally confused about the girls'
club. I get a lot of "Well isn't that nice? (pat on the head)"-type
remarks… which is actually fine with me. I don't really care if they
get why I'm doing it, as long as they let me have my club.
No comments:
Post a Comment