First Week of Classes!

The First Week of Classes

Written on 10/24/2014

Three weeks ago, I went to the Director's office and asked if my schedule was ready. He laughed and commented on how "misoto" (a word that doesn't really have a English translation, but means being disciplined) I was, and said that the schedule would be ready by Wednesday because of the electricity problems my community has been having making everything take a little bit longer than usual. Even though class was suppose to start the Monday, October 6th.

Long story short, After many visits to my directors office, the schedules were finally posted last Friday! Which meant classes would officially begin this past Monday, October 20th.

I will be teaching four classes of beginner English, what is similar to the 6th grade level, each class being 50-60 students. I don't know my students ages, but my guess is my students range from 10-18 - most of them being about 12. There are a few students in every class that I'm assuming, from there extremely bored appearence and the fact that they already know everything I'm teaching - that are repeating the 6th grade, which has already proven to be difficult.

My first official day of class I only had one class in the last time slot of the day. I made my way over to my classroom and started to get things ready to go. Class was going smoothly until clouds rolled over the sunlight and made the room extremely dark, so it was impossible to see the board. Then, it started pouring so it was impossible for the students to hear me. Luckily, the rain didn't last long and I was able to at least introduce how to say greetings and introduce yourself, but unfortunately they weren't able to write anything down. But still, first class = success.

The next day, I went to a class, taught it wonderfully. I made my way to the teachers lounge and when I walked in they all started laughing...I had spent the past two hours teaching the wrong class. Luckily, it was the right level and they were suppose to be learning English at that time. Unfortunately, both classes were confused there following class when they had a new teacher.

A big struggle of the week was still not being great at Malagasy. Not so much for my students, they understood what I was trying to say most of the time with hand gestures and such, but for me. Most students were really nice and understanding of the fact that I'm not great at English, while others continually mimicked my Malagasy or said thinA gs like "She doesn't know Malagasy!" While watching my class.

Which brings me to my other struggle, the continual and very talkative audience for each of my classes. At the beginning of every class, students enter my classroom and as soon as I begin to speak, a crowd of students starts building outside my windows. It's not always a bother, but it's really hard to focus on teaching with a constant audience of students just staring but not learning. Its different for me, and I am different fort them. I'm sure once they get used to me it will decrease, or I'll get used to them.

My favorite part of this week was teaching the verb "to be." I taught pronouns (I, You, He/She/It/We/They) and then the conjugation (am, are, is, are, are). And then lastly, a few fun adjectives (Happy, Sad, Good, Bad, Okay, Fine). While teaching the adjectives, I made silly faces with hand gestures to help them remember. Then I had students come up and we said what pronoun and conjugation, and then I tried to get students to make the different faces. They thought it was so funny. It usually ended up being me making incredibly silly faces (aka the classic grumpy cat face for "sad") while the students I brought up to help laughed and then attempted to make the funny faces...or just laughed at stared at me until I let them sit down.

I still have a bit to work on with my teaching - most notably my timing and board management. But even from the first class to the second class I can tell students are getting used to my style of teaching quickly and I am excited to see their English skills increase slowly but surely!