Madame Jackie

     This week I was given the opportunity to teach. The idea of teaching made me both nervous and excited all at the same time. I had never really taught anyone before and my first time would be with a class of 60 students. Ahh! I was supposed to be teaching English to the children. I nervously prepared my lesson the night before (since I was given the topic right before I left work). While preparing I planned something evil, I planned to bribe the children with candy! I figured that everyone loves candy, and what would be a better motivator? So I went to the class prepared!
     African classrooms are nothing like North American classrooms, let me tell you that! First of all, the children all repeat things instead of writing them down. They do not have that many supplies so everything is said verbally. There are also an average of 60 children per class but it can go up to 80 children if the class is large. Trying to keep that many students engaged can be difficult. I started off the lesson about adjectives. I was not sure if my lesson was too difficult or not since I was given no pretext for what the children know and what they don't. This made planning for the lesson very interesting. In the end I think it went well though. I quizzed the students and the majority of them seemed to understand my lesson. The fact that they received a candy for correct answers probably helped my lesson. I am teaching that grade again on Monday. I hope that everything goes well. I will write more about teaching next week.