Saturday, August 18, 2012

My first week of school

This blog does not reflect the views of WorldTeach. 

My first week of school has been chaotic, to say the least.  I arrived on Manu'a on Monday afternoon and straight away began setting up my classroom to teach on Tuesday.  This entire week I have been trying to organize my classroom, my house and make lesson plans for the children.  It was a crazy one but it finally settled down. 
I came here thinking that I was teaching 5th grade, but on Monday they told me that I would instead be teaching first grade.  I love my first grade class! They are all so sweet and only 6 kids! How great! The only little problem is that they don't speak any English...Three of the kids speak enough that I can give some direction, but two of the kids speak 0 English.  Teaching English won't be a problem, but trying to teach the kids about the three different types of rock (our first science unit) may be a little challanging when the kids don't even know the word rock.   It will definitely be an adventure!
The hardest part is the classroom management, even with only six kids.  It is hard to set a management plan when I can't explain it to the children.  I began doing smiley faces if they do something well and sad faces if they do something I don't like, but they have not begun to connect the faces to the behavior yet.  Also, pedagogy is different here than in The States.  The students typically learn while sitting in desks, they are not used to doing a lot of interactive learning.  This makes it difficult for me because when I try to do interactive activities, the kids don't see it as school time.  They think that when they are up and out of their desk it is play time.  Because of this, most of my teaching must be done while they are sitting at desks until I can teach them otherwise. 
I am also trying to teach them to raise their hand.  They are struggling with this one.  They are constantly yelling out.  I finally got them to raise their hand, but now they raise their hand and yell out at the same time.  I guess it's a start.  All day I hear, "Teacher finish!" and "Teacher me!" (They call us "teacher" here.  It is not disrespectful like it is in the states that's just what they call us.)  This is going to be a tough one to teach them.
Finally, they are always talking.  The problem is I have no idea what they are saying.  I don't know if they are trying to ask me a question (they don't really understand that I don't speak Samoan), or if they are talking about the assignment, or if they are just talking to their friends.
The kids are wonderful though.  They get so excited when they see me outside walking.  They are as sweet as can be...atleast I think they are, for all I know they could be talking behind my back all day....But, I am very excited to be working with them. 
Basically, for the next year I'm going to be playing one giant game of charades.  Elaboratly modeling everything that needs to be done.  It's going to be an interesting year. 

1 comment:

  1. hahaha Jacque...this blog is making me laugh so hard because not one thing about it (other than the not speaking english) is different than with my juniors and seniors in high school. Literally I could quote you word for word on the talking all the time, thinking when we do interactive activities it is time to mess around and play, and they have NO FREAKIN CLUE how to raise their hand. So I wish you good luck, because telling from the fact that they still haven't learned these things by the time they're ready to graduate high school, I don't know how successful past teachers have been!!!! If anyone can do it, you can!

    ReplyDelete