Teaching

We have finished our first couple of weeks of teaching and although there have been some challenging moments, it has mostly been really fun and rewarding. I have been teaching English, French and Music to children aged from 3 to 15. We are teaching from 8:30-3:30 on Monday to Friday and from 8:30-12:30 on Saturday.

Some of my favourite parts of teaching in the past 2 weeks have been:

• ·         Teaching 2^nd standard how to introduce themselves in French and them remembering it all when I tested them on it the next lesson. They even said they’d taught it to their parents!
• ·         Reading ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ to kindergarten- they loved the pictures!
• ·         Teaching the ‘Hokey Cokey’ to 1st standard and seeing how much they loved running into the middle of the circle.
• ·         Being taught Hindi and Telegu by 7^th standard.
• ·         The kids shouting “bonjour madam” and “merci” whenever they see me and Izzy.
• ·         Playing a very confusing game with 3^rd standard which they taught us, we still didn’t understand it by the end, but that made it more fun!
• ·         Telling 1^st standard to carry on with the work we were doing on animals while I went to get a cup of tea, and coming back to find one of the boys writing a relevant sentence on the board and everyone else copying it down.
• ·         Seeing 7^th standard creating ‘A Foreigners Guide to India’ and putting so much time and effort into it.
• ·         One of the boys in 1^st standard called John Michael doing a really good picture of a lion and being so proud when I put it up on the wall.
• ·         Teaching ‘Twinkle twinkle’ to a group of students and teachers on the piano!
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

There have also been some challenges:

• ·         Trying to control 1^st and 2^nd standard when I was teaching them music together in the hall and they kept running off and chasing each other!
• ·         Thinking of lessons on the spot when someone tells you to go and teach a class that you don’t know and aren't on your timetable.
• ·         Seeing other teachers hitting children, which is really upsetting.
• ·         The flexibility of the timetable and time keeping, which makes it hard to know what’s going on!
• ·         Lack of resources in the school, like it’s really hard to even get any plain white paper to do drawing on.
• ·         Teaching Sunday school with no preparation at all and a massive class full of kids of different ages!

However, I think the good things definitely outweigh the challenges, and some of the challenges are cultural norms that we need to get used to, or things that will improve over time. So overall I am very positive about our teaching, and we have some really cool ideas for lessons and projects which I'm really looking forward to doing!

We’re going away for a few days tomorrow to help at a travelling medical clinic. It goes to remote villages where there isn't much adequate medical care and sets up clinics. We’re really excited about it, and I’ll write about what we see there when we get back!