Monday 29th July- First day

We woke up at 7 o clock and went straight to breakfast for dough balls, WOO! For school, boys have to wear long trousers and a collared shirt while girls have to wear skirts down to their ankles. The 4 of us going to Kindergatten piled into a van with the group going to Kyeijanga School which Dec, Emily, Lotty and Lucy. Kindergatten is a reasonably nearby school, so we were dropped off first after 10/15 minutes in the van.

We had never seen Kindergatten school before, so we were quite confused and nervous as we got out the van. When we got out there was a group of kids all crowded around something by one of the classrooms, so we headed over to them. It turned out that they had caught some mudfish on their way to school and were killing and skinning them outside the class. I asked them what year group they were and was slightly off put when the biggest kid holding the biggest knife said P4.

After that worrying encounter, we headed over to what looked like the main building and introduced ourselves to the teachers and the head teacher. The teachers all seemed very friendly and smiley, but I found the head teacher a bit creepy. He seemed overly friendly and slightly intimidating as a result, he would lean in very close and very unblinking when speaking to us, or waiting for our reply. But Katie, who had been teaching at the school for a few weeks already as she was one of the 12 weekers, assured us that he’s a decent guy.

After the brief introductions we were all taken to our classes, beginning with Kya’s P6 class. All 4 of us were taken to each class to be introduced to every student, at which point Gideon (our Kindergatten mentor) would announce to the class which of us would be their teacher, before we all headed onto the next class. Once all the student introductions were done we went to our respective classes. My classroom was a very small room with 4 students per bench, there was a doorway but no door, and a window gap with no window. Kya had the classroom on the other side of mine, the walls were not sound proof at all, and we can easily hear each other’s lessons. There were also some holes in the wall between our two classrooms.

When I walked in all the students in the class instantly stood up and in unison said ‘WELCOME TO P4 CLASS, PLEASE FEEL AT HOME! HOW ARE YOU SEBO (man/sir)’ to which I nervously responded ‘Good, cheers. How are you?’ Instantly the class responded with ‘WE ARE SUPER DUPER THANK YOU FOR ASKING!’ I told my class to sit down and then proceeded to dump my stuff on the floor. Instantly 2 of my class sprinted out of the room, making me think my class were already bunking off already within a minute of me turning up.  But a couple of minutes later one of them came back carrying chalk and loo roll which turned out to be the board rubber. The other child came back carrying a desk on her head which she placed down for me to put my stuff on.

I then began my lesson plan, beginning with handing out books to all the kids and asking which students needed a pen. Roughly a dozen of my 19 students needed one. Once the equipment was handed out I began by introducing myself to the class and getting them to fill in the front of the books. We then sorted out the class rules and began playing some games. I used a small sponge ball which I would throw to a child and they would stand, say their name and something about themselves such as favourite subject before throwing it back to me. I also got the class to write something about themselves as well as a picture of themselves on their first page of their books. We played some hangman and other board games, and at the end of the lesson they stood and sang a song, before I left so that their next teacher could come in.

During my free period and break I kind of dreaded going back in to the class, as I had felt quite awkward and nervous by it all, I felt as though the ice breaker lesson was very boring and not all that successful, but I was reassured by the fact that the rest of my group (bar Katie who had been with her class for a few weeks) had felt exactly the same. At break all the teachers came in and we sat and chatted a bit while eating bananas that were thrust upon us in bowls.

English was next so I headed back to the class, again they all stood and welcomed me to the class and declared that they were ‘READY TO LEARN’, when I said ‘Shtamma (sit down)’ to them they sat down while stating that ‘WE WILL WASTE NO TIME!’ I explained to the class that we would be looking at the ‘Expression of the Future’, I got the class to write down the objectives of the topic, and then began by seeing what they knew of the past tense, as it would be difficult to teach the future if they don’t understand the past tense. It turns out that they didn’t know much of the past tense despite it supposedly already been taught as the topic before me, so I decided I would try and teach the past tense for the next few days before going to the future. I felt as though the English lesson went quite well and I was beginning to feel quite confident about everything.

After the lesson I had a free period with Kya where I marked the books. At the end of the free period, Siobhan and Katie arrived from their lessons and we discussed how the day was going so far. After 20 minutes food was brought out; Posho, Mitoki and Beans, with a drink of porridge, which is basically liquid Posho.

Straight after lunch I headed back to my class for my first science lesson. This was easily the best lesson of the day and I was already beginning to realise which kids in my class were the very eager ones and smart ones, and which ones would need help. The lesson was about ‘Vectors and Diseases’, the vector we looked at was cockroaches. I was very surprised by how much the students already knew about cockroaches, vectors and how diseases spread. But this is probably because it is an important thing for these children to know, unlike in the UK where children don’t need to worry about getting malaria, typhoid, dysentery and other diseases. At the end of the lesson, I had another free with Kya while Katie and Siobhan had their lessons. One thing that I noticed about my class and the whole School was that the vast majority of children are bare foot; roughly 4 kids in my class of 19 had any kind of footwear, which includes flip flops.

We got picked up by the VU van at about 4:15 and taken back to the lodge where everyone discussed their first day, planned their lessons for tomorrow and had dinner. I felt as though my first day began OK, and got progressively better, and I’m feeling confident and looking forward to tomorrow.