Otherwise, my day was relatively quiet, after quiet a busy starter getting the kids ordering themselves by height to do measures of dispersion and such, I ended up talking to them about myself and answering their questions. They want to know everything from where exactly I'm from, to what football team I support (awkward, Man U being the closest thing to team I support since Grandpa likes them), we had: what is teenage pregnancy like in the UK? Substance abuse (massive problem even within the school), Is your hair real? Can we touch it? Your legs are really white, Miss (did you expect me to turn darker half way?) Are you looking for an African husband? Why not? We hope you marry your boyfriend soon! You have the body of a black woman, Miss (hoping this was a compliment).
And finally, why are you so nervous? You don't have to be scared of us. It was somehow heart breakingly sweet, I thought I'd been doing a better job of covering up my general worry about screwing up as a teacher, but obviously they saw straight through that. It just highlighted the difference between here and home. The kind of "Are you scared of me, Miss?" that was asked at Westwood Academy was threatening to say the least, here the kids are actually concerned about us being happy during our stay. I talked to them about how I was really new to teaching - You're 22, ma'am! You look like you're at least 27! - and how it was really important for me to help them as much as I can while I'm here and that I want them to talk to me and work with me to get as much learning done as we can. They were thrilled by this idea.
In general the kids here never cease to surprise me, Mr R who was absent yesterday decided to make an appearance at school (not in my classroom or anything), but had lost the key to his classroom. Losing keys seems to be quite the fashionable thing at Namedi. So I sent one of the boys off to find me a room (which he did long before the staff sorted it out) he then proceeded to go on a hunt for chalk for me to write with, while someone else carried the armful of whiteboards I was lugging around to the classroom for me; when I insisted I was fine, I was told that "This is not how we do things in South Africa."Later, the kids who were on a free period next door was being so noisy it sounded like they were in my own room, someone else went over to get them quiet. And succeeded. It's amazing how much they care, how hard they work, not to mention the look of horror when told that children in England don't want to learn.
I also had my first extra lesson with Mbali (my struggling Grade 10 girl), we're slowly getting to grips with graphs but it's difficult. Turns out Mbali speaks 10 of the 11 official languages here. And she understands the 11th one. It makes me really sad how she's being pushed into doing things that she will most probably fail at when she's obviously a really gifted student.
In general the kids here never cease to surprise me, Mr R who was absent yesterday decided to make an appearance at school (not in my classroom or anything), but had lost the key to his classroom. Losing keys seems to be quite the fashionable thing at Namedi. So I sent one of the boys off to find me a room (which he did long before the staff sorted it out) he then proceeded to go on a hunt for chalk for me to write with, while someone else carried the armful of whiteboards I was lugging around to the classroom for me; when I insisted I was fine, I was told that "This is not how we do things in South Africa."Later, the kids who were on a free period next door was being so noisy it sounded like they were in my own room, someone else went over to get them quiet. And succeeded. It's amazing how much they care, how hard they work, not to mention the look of horror when told that children in England don't want to learn.
I also had my first extra lesson with Mbali (my struggling Grade 10 girl), we're slowly getting to grips with graphs but it's difficult. Turns out Mbali speaks 10 of the 11 official languages here. And she understands the 11th one. It makes me really sad how she's being pushed into doing things that she will most probably fail at when she's obviously a really gifted student.
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