Happy April Fool’s Day! Did you trick anyone today? I really wanted to, but I didn’t know how that would go over in Zambia…I wasn’t feeling well this morning and if I was on my toes I would have stayed in bed for awhile and told T that I was sick and she’d have to run everything today….I’m sure she would have loved that!
Well, from 8-2 today, all we did was finish off prepping for the teacher training (man, that took a LOT of our time this week!), except for ESL from 9:30-11. We took them on a field trip today! We all walked to the market together, broke into teams, and each team had a series of tasks to complete. They needed to talk to workers, locate certain items, purchase some food, and write sentences about many things in the store. Each group completed all the tasks and only had three strikes against them each for speaking in Nyanja. It will be difficult to pick a winner on Monday! This was definitely a very fun time because we got to talk to the women walking to and from the store and just kind of relax and have fun with them. Not that ESL class isn’t always fun, but I enjoyed seeing them in another setting, and showing them that even if it is scary to speak in English and your English isn’t perfect, you can still communicate. It showed them that they can use English in their everyday lives, so we accomplished our goal!
On to teacher training….I was a bit nervous for this, as I’ve never trained teachers before. The seminar was supposed to go from 2-4 or 4:30, but being on Zambia time, we started at 2:30 and went to 5 and it seemed like they wanted to stay for more! We just had 4 teachers to begin, but within a half hour we were up to 7 and I think only 8 were supposed to come today anyway. Well, we started off complimenting them for the positive things we’ve seen in their classrooms. Then T and I introduced high expectations for them and broke it into academics and behavioral excellence. From there we did two taxonomies from Lemov’s book “Right is Right” and “100%.” We ran these sessions similar to ones I have been a part of the past few years. I didn’t know how that would work, since teaching is so different here, but they definitely enjoyed it and learned something new, as they indicated on the feedback forms. We had them answering questions, watching and reflecting on videos, and even role playing a bit! And we did a TON of modeling. Since I was leading the behavior modification hierarchy, I picked on T for about 20 minutes and made her be my naughty student as I went through and explained and modeled how to go through each of the steps. To end off the day, the headmasters wanted us to cover educational games in a seminar, so we gave them a listing of different learning activities and touched on a few. This was pretty rushed, so next time we’ll start with that again.
Phew! We survived the first one! And it went well! And hopefully our lives next week won’t have to solely be dedicated to preparing the next one like we did this week! We got back to the house where Mrs. A had dinner waiting (thank you!) before we took quick naps and headed out again. Tonight we went to a play at the American International School where S, an 8th grader was performing. It was a musical including about 20 Elvis songs, all about love and racial segregation in the civil rights period. At first I thought it was a high school play with a few younger kids in it (AIS has all 12 grades) but afterwards when I found out it was a 6th-8th grade play and hearing all the solos that were sung and all the kissing that was done, I was impressed. I don’t know if my 8th graders at home would have been able to do something like that! Great job, S! It was a cute love story, too, so T and I were entertained. J A nice ending with several of the mission people on campus to end a hectic week. J And I thought the week at “home” was supposed to be more relaxing!
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