24 April 2007

Today was my first day teaching. I was originally going to start yesterday, but Anne, the director of the school, had a sick friend so he couldn't stay at school. So anyway, my first day. So the teachers are all actually on strike right now, which pretty much sucks for the students but is also good for me because I got two two-hour blocks to teach in. The kids were amazed, intruiged, curious, distrusting andobsessed with this new crazy white girl teacher. They have never had a female teacher in the school, let alone a "tubaab" female teacher.Woah. So I started off the younger class with 'Hello, my name is...'They are really used to repeating after the teacher so it was achallenge to get them to actually say their own name here instea d of Ms Aine . With the younger kids, basically everything is a challenge because I'm trying to teach them English via French which is neitherof our first languages anyway. A lot of the littlest kids barelyunderstand much French, theyre just repeating after me. The older class went a bit better... though I still probably was too nice whichis what the director kept saying. Its tough because its not really my style to be a total jerk and then I feel like I'm taking myself a bit too seriously, but apparently its the only way to maintain control inthe classroom. I did intros and started numbers with the older kids.They were mixed like 10 to 14 and some of them were pretty bright.