I love the weekends. I can spend my time however I please, marking assignments, cleaning my house, listening to my ipod, reading, cooking, being at the school with my students, walking to the market with my neighbors, anything I want. Lately, I've been spending my Sundays visiting the homes of some of my favorite students.
A few weekends ago I made the two hour walk to the home of one of my Form Two's. Her name is Holiness Banda and when she invited me to meet her grandmother and sister, I was delighted to come. We spent the morning walking and chatting, arriving at her home around 10 am. I was warmly welcomed, there are so many nice things I can say about the hospitality of Malawians, especially Malawian women, they are so good to their guests. I met everyone in Holiness's family, all of her neighbors and friends and had a great day enjoying good food and conversation. We were caught in the rain on the way back, but all in all had a wonderful day. I've posted a few pictures of my visit!
The following weekend I was invited to the home of one of two of my Form Three's, Rosemary and Samuel Nkhoma. They're both incredibly bright students and I was glad to be able to praise them in front of their parents. They live very close to the school, as both of their parents are primary school teachers in our village, so there wasn't much of a walk to get there. After a very warm welcome and lunch, Rosemary and her father took me to see their garden. We walked through the maize, beans, fruit trees and other growing vegetables and had a wonderful afternoon. I ended up leaving with armfuls of fresh corn, sugarcane and yummy lemons and guavas, like I said above, nothing beats the hospitality and warmness of Malawian families !
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Term One is Coming to an End?!?
I cannot believe that we are already in our 10th week of school! I've been teaching in Malawi for 10 weeks!
Unbelievable!
The 13th and 14th weeks of school are generally reserved for final exams, so really we've only got a a few more periods left to go. I thought it may be interesting to fill you in on some of the things we've been working on this term.
Things may have started out slow, but as my students and I became more familiar with each other it seems that all in all we've accomplished quite a bit!
PHYSICAL SCIENCE FORM ONE: My most challenging course. It's not the material that's the problem, but as I've mentioned before the language barrier between me and these very new students has been quite the obstacle for all of us over the past ten weeks. I'm happy to say that my students are now understanding me much better than they were before. I make sure to teach them the material as slowly and simply as possible and am starting to see the results in their assignments. We've gotten through a few units in this course mostly dealing with the process of formulating scientific investigations including lots of work with hypotheses, variables, taking measurements with various instruments and performing simple calculations and conversions using scientific notation. It was all very new material to my students, but I do think they're getting it. We'll be ending the term by continuing with a unit on forces.
BIOLOGY FORM TWO: My Form Twos, there are sooooo many of them! And they all want extra assignments all the time! Extra assignments? I know, I couldn't believe it either. We've gotten through quite a bit of material this term as it's been extremely necessary to catch up on things they failed to cover in Form One. Form 2s and 4s will be writing their exams at the end of the year, so its essential that I cover everything on their course syllabi. We began the year talking about nutrition and deficiency diseases which I personally found to be a very interesting topic to teach, especially as it hits so close to home for nearly all of my students. We continued with digestion and although I'm still answering questions in the library about the process of absorption in the small intestine, we're now working on ecosystems and the environment. Last week we all pretended to be ecologists and went out surveying the environment surrounding Gwangwa. In groups, my students took count of different animals and plants and made note of other observations about their environment. We'll be using this information over the next week to finish up this unit and discuss environmental problems and potential solutions.
ENGLISH FORM THREE: I'm not a trained teacher, especially when it comes to English, but I love teaching English to my Form 3s. They're way behind and often quiet in class, but they're so willing to work to improve their skills. I've spent a lot of time working on simple grammatical concepts, reading comprehension and essay writing. Last week, upon finishing a short story and comprehension questions, my students wrote their own short stories to read in front of the class. Some of my students are so creative! Each story was a joy to read! I'm slowly but surely beginning to see their writing progress.
BIOLOGY FORM THREE: We haven't covered too much in this course, but I'm happy to say that the time we've spent has been worth it as many of my students are really getting the material. Mostly we've learned about food making in green plants, photosynthesis, translocation, transpiration, etc. We've found some time to use the lab as well in order for me to demonstrate simple experiments dealing with photosynthesis as well as osmosis and diffusion. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to use my lab and its resources with my students, it's been difficult as materials are sometimes scarce and my students have never been exposed to a lab before.
LIFE SKILLS FORMS ONE-FOUR: I really enjoy my Life Skills courses. In the past weeks I've discussed a wide range of topics with each of my classes including the importance of self-esteem, positive and negative values, interpersonal relationships, teenage pregnancies, sex, abortion and many others. Basically I'm teaching my kids how to problem solve, how to think about their own lives and the choices they can make. Last week in Forms Three and Four we had some great debates on teenage pregnancy and abortion. It's so interesting for me to hear my students discuss these kind of issues with one another.
PHYSICAL SCIENCE FORM FOUR: Can't say I've covered much at all in this course as I just picked it up last week. The Form Fours have never had physical science before but it's such an important subject that my site mate, Mike and I have decided to work together to cover all of the Form 3 and Form 4 material with them this year. I'll be teaching the chemistry portion of the course as he works with them on the physics. It's a lot of physical science, very often throughout the week but my students are eager and excited to learn the material.
Unbelievable!
The 13th and 14th weeks of school are generally reserved for final exams, so really we've only got a a few more periods left to go. I thought it may be interesting to fill you in on some of the things we've been working on this term.
Things may have started out slow, but as my students and I became more familiar with each other it seems that all in all we've accomplished quite a bit!
PHYSICAL SCIENCE FORM ONE: My most challenging course. It's not the material that's the problem, but as I've mentioned before the language barrier between me and these very new students has been quite the obstacle for all of us over the past ten weeks. I'm happy to say that my students are now understanding me much better than they were before. I make sure to teach them the material as slowly and simply as possible and am starting to see the results in their assignments. We've gotten through a few units in this course mostly dealing with the process of formulating scientific investigations including lots of work with hypotheses, variables, taking measurements with various instruments and performing simple calculations and conversions using scientific notation. It was all very new material to my students, but I do think they're getting it. We'll be ending the term by continuing with a unit on forces.
BIOLOGY FORM TWO: My Form Twos, there are sooooo many of them! And they all want extra assignments all the time! Extra assignments? I know, I couldn't believe it either. We've gotten through quite a bit of material this term as it's been extremely necessary to catch up on things they failed to cover in Form One. Form 2s and 4s will be writing their exams at the end of the year, so its essential that I cover everything on their course syllabi. We began the year talking about nutrition and deficiency diseases which I personally found to be a very interesting topic to teach, especially as it hits so close to home for nearly all of my students. We continued with digestion and although I'm still answering questions in the library about the process of absorption in the small intestine, we're now working on ecosystems and the environment. Last week we all pretended to be ecologists and went out surveying the environment surrounding Gwangwa. In groups, my students took count of different animals and plants and made note of other observations about their environment. We'll be using this information over the next week to finish up this unit and discuss environmental problems and potential solutions.
ENGLISH FORM THREE: I'm not a trained teacher, especially when it comes to English, but I love teaching English to my Form 3s. They're way behind and often quiet in class, but they're so willing to work to improve their skills. I've spent a lot of time working on simple grammatical concepts, reading comprehension and essay writing. Last week, upon finishing a short story and comprehension questions, my students wrote their own short stories to read in front of the class. Some of my students are so creative! Each story was a joy to read! I'm slowly but surely beginning to see their writing progress.
BIOLOGY FORM THREE: We haven't covered too much in this course, but I'm happy to say that the time we've spent has been worth it as many of my students are really getting the material. Mostly we've learned about food making in green plants, photosynthesis, translocation, transpiration, etc. We've found some time to use the lab as well in order for me to demonstrate simple experiments dealing with photosynthesis as well as osmosis and diffusion. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to use my lab and its resources with my students, it's been difficult as materials are sometimes scarce and my students have never been exposed to a lab before.
LIFE SKILLS FORMS ONE-FOUR: I really enjoy my Life Skills courses. In the past weeks I've discussed a wide range of topics with each of my classes including the importance of self-esteem, positive and negative values, interpersonal relationships, teenage pregnancies, sex, abortion and many others. Basically I'm teaching my kids how to problem solve, how to think about their own lives and the choices they can make. Last week in Forms Three and Four we had some great debates on teenage pregnancy and abortion. It's so interesting for me to hear my students discuss these kind of issues with one another.
PHYSICAL SCIENCE FORM FOUR: Can't say I've covered much at all in this course as I just picked it up last week. The Form Fours have never had physical science before but it's such an important subject that my site mate, Mike and I have decided to work together to cover all of the Form 3 and Form 4 material with them this year. I'll be teaching the chemistry portion of the course as he works with them on the physics. It's a lot of physical science, very often throughout the week but my students are eager and excited to learn the material.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Last Weekend at Gwangwa
My students had the absolute best time last weekend! I was so happy for them. Our Saturday couldn’t possibly have been any better.
We started out the afternoon with football (soccer) and netball matches against Ntchisi Secondary School, a government boarding school at the Boma. They should probably have better teams than we do, but my students played so well, we ended up winning both games! Well, actually the netball game ended in a draw, but according to my girls this means that both teams won... they were so happy, how could I argue? The boys played great too and ended up winning their match two to one.
I wish I would have taken pictures Saturday at the game, so you could see how excited they all were. Many dressed up to show their supports and some cheered the ENTIRE time, running in circles around the fields. It was so much fun. Next time, I'll be sure to take pictures.
After the games, my students celebrated with a school dance!
Yes, high school dances are just as awkward and fun in Malawi as they are in America. There are those who sit along the wall as well as those who dance the entire time no matter what song is playing. We had a great time dancing and talking and listening to music. It was such good experience for my students to have, but exhausting! The dance lasted until 3am!! I couldn't handle this and left around 2am as they were still going strong!
I've included a few photos from the dance! Sorry if they're a bit dusty and hard to see, hopefully you'll still be able to get a sense of the great time my kids had!
We started out the afternoon with football (soccer) and netball matches against Ntchisi Secondary School, a government boarding school at the Boma. They should probably have better teams than we do, but my students played so well, we ended up winning both games! Well, actually the netball game ended in a draw, but according to my girls this means that both teams won... they were so happy, how could I argue? The boys played great too and ended up winning their match two to one.
I wish I would have taken pictures Saturday at the game, so you could see how excited they all were. Many dressed up to show their supports and some cheered the ENTIRE time, running in circles around the fields. It was so much fun. Next time, I'll be sure to take pictures.
After the games, my students celebrated with a school dance!
Yes, high school dances are just as awkward and fun in Malawi as they are in America. There are those who sit along the wall as well as those who dance the entire time no matter what song is playing. We had a great time dancing and talking and listening to music. It was such good experience for my students to have, but exhausting! The dance lasted until 3am!! I couldn't handle this and left around 2am as they were still going strong!
I've included a few photos from the dance! Sorry if they're a bit dusty and hard to see, hopefully you'll still be able to get a sense of the great time my kids had!
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