I now pronounce you….
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| Bad Table Manners... |
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| Chapel |
This week has been eventful in Kasese and Rwentutu. So let
me chat to you about my teaching first and then the other cultural experiences
I have had. As my frustrations came out in my last blog about how to really
diversify my teaching, I have come up with one way that the students have been
receptive to. I have been having them act and write dialogues to present during
class. The students are actually pretty funny and were quite creative. On
Tuesday, I had the students create a restaurant in the room and I choose
waiters and waitress to take orders from the other students at their tables.
The tables were each given a certain amount of money that they had to take in
consideration during their ordering. I felt like this help apply mathematics to
their English curriculum. The students even reminded each other the table
manners we learned Monday while they were ‘eating.’ This was also the day that
my supervisor Enoch cam to observe me. He stayed for both the English and
Mathematics sections I taught on Tuesday. The feedback was quite good. He did
say I need to relax more during teaching math, that day was the day I started
the geometry… so I actually was quite nervous… but on the opposite the subject
I am least confident in (English) he said I taught very naturally! Back to my
first point, I had them also act out the table manners! Many of them choose to
reenact bad table manners to show the opposite. Here is a picture of the
students reenacting the table manner of “sitting properly while they eat”…. The
kids were all laughing while the two students fought over the plate and moved
throughout the room pretending to eat. I am really glad I choose to add some
drama into the classroom; I have found it allows more multi- intelligences to
be reached with little resources. Although this is all good, I have found a I
feel like I am lacking a major part of my teaching, which is allowing for
students to really explore and research. Because the library is not organized
by subjects and there are no computers it is hard to ask the students to go and
look into various topics and share out what they have learned. I would love to
do more student centered teaching, but with words like napkin or sauna, where
the students have little to no prior knowledge and no way to research… I become
the main resource of information in the classroom. I have found a book of local
hotel at our home and think I will use this to create a writing assessment for
the unit. I will be having the students read and look at pictures from hotels
and use this as a resource for writing a narrative.
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| Sorry forgot to flip it upside right! |
With continuing to educate on these topics solo, I have
began to see the strengths of my students. I can see what students will answer
questions, which will do the homework once it is assigned, the ones who need
more motivation or one on one time. I look forward to using my thoughts on the
various students to apply their strengths in ways that will become a teaching
tool. Those are my educational thoughts for now…
At Rwentutu, I have little time to spend with other classes,
but at lunch we always get visitors from other classes who would like to spend
time with us. You can see in this pictures a few students and me! Once I
brought my camera out they all wanted to be in a picture together, so I could
not resist joining them… for some of you are asking of more pictures of me and
not just everything else! I also gave one girl some papaya hand sanitizer, she
was obsessed with the smell and I caught her smelling her hands 5 to 10 minutes
after I gave it to her! She was adorable. I also decided to go to chapel today…
here is many students singing while they are waiting for the sermon. My student
actually led the sermon today! He did absolutely fantastic. I am
Other non-school related things we did this week was visit
the Equator. If you didn’t know almost every day of the year here are 12 hours
of light and 12 hours of day. So at the 7 o’clock times, it switches within 15
minutes. I find this quite interesting because it has been told to me to not go
out alone as Buzungu when it is dark and there is such a short range of time to
actually go out and do things on our own. We love the people who we live with and
work with each day, but we have been also wanting to prove to ourselves that we
can be independent with our time here in Uganda. We have been conscious about
trying to have a native with us while it is dark.
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| Tradition to give the Bride a necklace |
Finally we went to a wedding today! Well it was the giving
away of the bride, the ceremony is on Saturday (which is also my friend Julia’s
wedding! Sorry I am missing the day!). It was so interesting to see all the
colors and people who came out to celebrate the day. Here are a few pictures
with further descriptions. The most surprising aspect I noticed during the celebration
was the limited amount of involvement of the groom. Of the two hours we were
there, he was opening in the celebration for about 15-20 minutes.
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| Cutting the cake with her brother |
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| Bridesmaids |
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