Teaching!

We have finally gotten into the classroom!

Yesterday we had our first real day of teaching. We arrived at Kabuga High School, (KHS) in the morning, recieved our timetables (Monday-Thursday, a total of about 13-14 hours of teaching total) and were promptly thrown into the classroom and left to teach!
The only class we taught on Monday at KHS was a Senior 2 English class. The class has 13 students, aged 14-17 years old. They are good english speakers, and good writers, but they need some help with their sentance formations and grammar in general.

With no lesson planned (we figured we would just be observing on the first day), we started with introductions. Names, ages, where they are from, favorite color, class etc...
All of the students were excited to have mzungu (white people) as teachers, and students would walk by the windows and peer in in awe! But our students were quite attentive and excited, which jazzed Sophia and I for the two hours.
After trying to learn some names (some are quite unusual, but we are learning quickly) we looked through their notebooks and decided just to review what they had been learning: Grammar! Our best subject! Not! But we got through it and quickly found a grammar book after class.
But we played a game with them, with two teams forming sentances on the board, with certain verbs and tenses, and whomever finished first got a point. The students seemed to really enjoy the game and were full of enegery and competition! It was fun to watch them and help them when they needed.
Through this game we also came to find the variety of levels that the students are at. Some are very sharp, can read and write very well and understand new concepts very easily. Others are not quite as fast, and need much more help. But everyone in the classroom seems to be accepting and always willing to help other students, sometimes even too much where the student doens't get a change to try! But Sophia and I, even though it has only been two days, have gained respect from the students as teachers and they listen to us when we suggest something or ask them to wait before they shout out the answer.

After our first class at KHS we rushed off to make it to our class at the community center, Girimpuwhe at 2pm. The classes there are every Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 2-4pm.
Our class there is about 15 students, with an age range of 9 years old to 68 years old! It is such a fun class with many different personalities and backgrounds. But a common thread runs through them all; they all really want to be there and learn English, which makes our jobs much easier!
It was stressed to us that we use reading and writing as little as possible, so no one is left out if they feel they cannot read/write as well as the others. We have started with greetings, "Hello. How are you? I am fine. My name is...I am...years old. I live in..." as well as colors, and body parts (Everyone gets a kick out of the song 'head shoulders knees and toes').


Today we had another two hour class at KHS with the same Senior 2 english students! It was a blast today as we had our lesson planned out and the students were very receptive to our organization. We introduced two new tenses, Present Perfect Tense, and Past Perfect Tense! They are so quick at catching on and can create sentances using the tenses within minutes after explaining! We tried to incorporate things they were used to (i.e. We write the definition + examples on the blackboard and they copy down in their notebooks) along with our more creative techniques (thanks to our TEFL course) like creating a dialoque using the tenses between two people and acting it out for the class.
It is such a thrill to see when students catch on or have an "Ah-ha!" moment! They are so happy when they can share to the class what they have learned and it is a joy for us too!

Tomorrow we will be starting a new class at KHS, a Senior 1 English class, as well as have our Girimpuwhe Conversational class. We both are happy to have full and busy schedules that leave us tired at night but excited in the morning! We are really settling into things here, even though it has barely been a week. We recieved some treats from home (Reese's Peanut Butter Cups) which were accepted VERY well!

Although at times we miss home, and the snow, we are soaking up the sun here and are very excited about all of our classes, students, and future experiences!

I hope people are reading, please leave us some comments! We love to hear from people from home!