First Week Updates!

Today has been a very exciting day! But before, I shall get you up to speed with my week. So as you know I spent Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday surveying classrooms to choose for my time at Rwentutu Christian School. Each day some of the teachers had not yet arrived or the class had private revision time (almost like a study hall), yet little work to complete…. Therefore I was left alone with each P4, P5, and P6 for more than an hour. With each class I did similar things with, I taught them games and tried to learn names… as well during their actual classes I surveyed the material I would possibly be teaching. The games I taught the children were London Bridge is Falling Down, Ninja, Link Tag, and Down by the Riverside, each went over fairly well. The kids continually wanted to learn and play new games. I believe that Link Tag went over the best (see a picture below with P6); we played for over 20 minutes in the P6 class. Not only did I teach them my games, but they also taught me theirs. They have a game where they pass a stone around and sing the following tune

 “There is a rumble in my hand,

It will travel throughout the land,

Is it here? Is it there?

It will travel everywhere”

My first day visiting classrooms. P4. 

During the tune, the group sits in a circle and passes the stone. When the tune is over the stone stops and everyone cups their hands, one individual hides the stone in their hand.  One person is outside of the circle looking away. When the song is over the left out person returns and tries to guess who the stone is with. They love they this game! It has been an interesting time trying to remember games that require very little number of props. Luckily my time as an ALPs facilitator and camp counselor has paid off. Although this does show the limited resources the children have and I will be forced to experiment with the natural environment while teaching! I am excited for this challenge because it will be a skill that I shall use for the rest of my life, I shall never know the instructional materials I will be provided with when I go into my own classroom.

A chicken decided to visit my P6 room and
climb in the closet. 

Link Tag with P6! 

Me with the students in Baby Class. 

Speaking of classrooms…. Drum roll please! ... I have chosen….. P6! Each classroom was so unique and caring. While choosing the room I really wanted to have strong cooperating Math and English teachers and rigorous curriculum. I paid special attention to the math portion of their curriculum, I felt like that is possibly were I am most likely to end up in a school. Although their math curriculum is more rigorous than I had in my primary school years, they are going to learn about constructing angles and polygons using only a compass and ruler. This skill I did not learn until I was in College Geometry, level 400 something in college! I am excited for this level of rigor, because my previous math semester I was in a 2^nd grade classroom teaching measuring and shapes. Not only will this material challenge my students but also keep my math skills up to par. I am nervous to see how they do with this material, when in a primary 6 classroom in America we do not focus on such high level geometry. With the P6 class, I have also found are not as astonished to have a Muzungu teach them, I draw less attention to myself in their classroom than I did in the others. I foresee the biggest challenge for me is to talk slowly and enunciate my words while trying best to decipher their accents. See my class schedule for the weeks below!  You may notice they have a good amount of play time, but their school day is from about 7am to 5pm.

Daily Schedule

This week the four of us also attended the schools chapel time. I was glad to see the gathering once, my student Louis was a main leader in leading the singing, I was very impressed. They then went into a short sermon about the Salt and Light within people. It was also interesting to observe that the preacher preached that if the students spoke only English at school it would make the Lord happy. This tie between education and religion is very foreign to me, I never attended a Christian school or have studied much faith, and to have it said to be tied directly is quite unique.  I was unsure about attending this portion. I am not a place in my life where I have decided on my faith and Christianity is very strong here. I will decide soon, but I am not sure if I want to use their chapel time as a way to dissect their culture instead of for my own faith. I will keep you posted.

Other things we did this week was walk to a local video store, named Bryans… we have gotten into watching the series The OC… it is a teenage drama and super addicting. It is good to have a taste of home when we do not have much internet data to use. Today we also went to the border of the Congo and Uganda. I was quite interesting to be there because just a few weeks ago, rebels from the Congo attacked Kasese looking for refugees. They also have very strict rules about going to the border. We had to give up our passports to the police, we could not step off of the bridge that was the boundary, and we could not take pictures of the Congo side. I am not sure what would have happened if we broke these rules, but I was not about to find out today. I also meant a police man whose mother’s name was “Masika Angela” or the same as mine! She apparently died awhile ago and the man, Peter, has now claimed me as his mother… who knew I would go back home to America with a 40 year son.

Well time to lesson plan and relax because it’s the weekend! Oh yes… 50 days until I return home!