At 8, I had tutoring with Jeremiah, Stone, and Obey. I was supposed to have Stone’s older brother, Given, again, but when he saw that there were older kids with Rachel, he wanted to go with them. His English is quite poor and Rachel’s kids were pretty advanced, so he really should have been with my group again, but we made it work. I don’t want him to be embarrassed that he’s working with his little brother, but we’ll have to figure out what will be ultimately the most helpful. Obey wasn’t on our list, but I tutored him anyway. He’s at almost the exact same level as Jeremiah, so it worked out really well.
We did more stuff with the Bananagrams tiles and also looked at a PowerPoint I made with the ABCs and pictures. I’m kicking myself for not bringing a basic ABC book with me. This tutoring session was really fun for me and again made me get creative with how to teach Stone, who doesn’t know his letters as well as the other two boys, without separating him from the group. Lots of differentiation! (Dr. Brightsman would be so proud). The boys are naturally competitive, which I think is great because it keeps them focused and interested in what we’re doing.
Then I had English with the ladies. Today’s lesson was the best one I’ve had so far. The women are definitely opening up to me and we’re getting comfortable with each other. I had Regina, the very advanced English speaker, read a short story I found in Abby and Tammy’s box (The Country Mouse and City Mouse) and answer questions about it on her own. Then I reviewed what we did yesterday with the other ladies and then extended it to make it more challenging. I had Thokazani, who is very shy about her speaking skills, do a short activity with the women who missed yesterday’s class. When I told her she was the teacher for a few minutes while I talked with Regina, she laughed and acted all embarrassed, but she did really well with it. I think it gave her some confidence and ownership of the lesson. I had mini-lessons on vowels/consonants, directions (right, left, next to, etc)., and gave them their assignment for Friday. We don’t have classes tomorrow because it’s a holiday – International Women’s Day. This morning was so much fun for me. I love seeing the progress in the students.
We came back for our lunch break to find that the power was out. It rained all day today and was actually kind of chilly. I even needed a coat. I spent part of my lunch break outside under the tent reading on my Kindle and enjoyed the rain pouring down around me. Because of the rain, our students came late for tutoring, so my session with Shain and Miriam was shortened. They’re great kids and I am even getting quiet, timid Miriam to smile and laugh a little, but I am still so shocked by how little they know about letters and their sounds. I’m thinking these two could be my most challenging students just because they are so far behind from where I expect eleven year olds to be.
We had a nice, long afternoon of being isolated in our house. The rainstorms were relentless and our power was still out, which means we had very little we could do. Rachel and I played Bananagrams (she beat me twice, again just barely…I haven’t lost this much since playing with Melanie), read, and talked. About every ten minutes I complained about being unable to microwave my coffee from this morning. Hard life, right?
One of the seminarian students found a baby snake while working outside and came to show it to us. It was a baby Black Mamba and even though it was teeny tiny, it looked vicious. Black Mambas are scary – they shoot venom at your eyes so you’re blinded and then bite you. They’re very dangerous, but he made a funny comment ab9out how “even a woman could kill it with a stick because its skin is so weak.” That’s…comforting. By the way, he's really not a jerk to say that, it's just a Zambian thing. He is really nice to women :)
The power was still out when we went to church, so we worshiped in the dark. Thankfully the power came on while we were walking home, so we can now charge our laptops and wash dishes! We’re planning on going to town tomorrow to buy groceries and see a movie. Our plan is to be really productive and plan ahead tonight so we can do this stuff guilt-free, but we’ll see how that goes.
No comments:
Post a Comment