Day SEVEN - School Day

Day SEVEN – June 23, 2010
Still with a lot of back and stomach pain I was able to make it to school today. It sure wasn’t easy but I made it through and I’m glad I did. I decided to work this teacher named Gift and his class. What I didn’t realize was that this class has two teachers Gift and Chipo and Chipo is the teacher Danielle was working with so we both ended up in that class.

The first part of my day was spent sitting in on Chipo’s English reading comprehension lesson. This class was standard 7 so they all had a good amount of knowledge on the English language. Some things I noticed in the class was that children’s names range from very cultural Malawi names to common American names like John, Sophie, Oscar and Renaldo. One little boy also had the unusual name Funny. Students also had to get down on their knees to ask for permission for something or to go somewhere. I also noticed that they had extremely old books that were basically falling apart and they had to share it with 1-3 other students. I really wished there was some way to get this school and schools like it all over the world the funds for materials because it’s extremely sad. I was happy to see that a lot of the students had very neat and pretty hand writing some were even better than mines. During break time I noticed that some students who didn’t go outside with everybody else stood inside and kept working on class work. I asked Gift why they didn’t leave and he said that they stay inside and keep working because they don’t have food to eat like everybody else; which was really sad.

The next part of my day was working with Dr. Barber and her Literacy in Mother Tongue project with the teachers after school ended. This project was basically an after school class for teachers from all 3 primary schools. It wasn’t required so these teachers had to show up on their own free will. We did tell them that we could not pay them but that we did offer school supplies through the activities. Basically this class taught teachers new methods of teaching for students who spoke a different language other than Chichewa. This was important because when you first start school class is taught in Chichewa and as you move up standards you are taught English so when you enter secondary school the whole thing is only taught in English. So students who speak Yao or a different language never understand from day one because they don’t understand Chichewa so they will never be able to understand English.

The first task and homework assignment Dr. Barber gave teachers the first day was to pick out a very extra large big book that told little kid stories and to translate it from English to Chichewa using a color marker. And today’s task was to add a third language in another color marker that is common in their school.

She also taught other activities and strategies they could use in class like matching and making connections or using vocabulary quilts and so on. Today we had more teachers than the first day which was exciting because we now had a full house. We eventually ran out of supplies for each teacher so later in the day Dr. Barber went out and bought some more. She gave them their very own book bag full of supplies like color markers, tape or glue, and scissors. She also gave them color paints with brushes to each standard to share which I think they appreciated a lot.

One teacher that I got to know well was Alinane. He was the only blind teacher in the room. I felt bad for him because I heard the first day he just sat there because no one bothered to help him translate his book since everyone got caught up in their own work. So today I sat down with him and read his book to him and he translated and spelt each word in Chichewa so I could write it out for him. We both learned a lot from this. He learned words he never heard of like “meadow” and I learned some Chichewa and how to spell some of it. We still haven’t finished the book so I’m sure we will get right to work tomorrow. I also plan to sit in one of his classes because I’m very curious on how he teaches.

At the end of the day Gift surprised me by informing me that he wants me to teach a lesson tomorrow on anything. I plan to teach world geography so we’ll see how that goes.

Today was pretty good minus me not feeling good at all and my suitcase still not arriving after a whole week.

I must say that so far this trip has made me so grateful for the things we do have in America like drinking water, shoes, heated homes, and many, many other things. And I miss American food so much and my momma’s cooking especially her Spanish rice. But whenever I start to miss home listening to my iPod seems to help so I recommend to anybody leaving the country to always bring some music!