Sick of the ABCs

This morning the ladies didn’t have Bible study with Pastor Phiri, so our English class was the first thing on the docket at 8am. We started as a whole group today and played a little game using the kitchen vocab words from yesterday. Everyone had a little piece of paper with a word on it. So for example, Erika had the word “sink” but she couldn’t look at what her word was. She held the piece of paper with the word on it up to her forehead (kind of like when you play Up and Down the River and you have one card left). We had to go around the circle and each say a descriptive sentence that would help her guess what her vocab word was. So I went first so I could be an example for the other ladies. I said “you put dishes in me”. Next was Kalua’s turn and she just had no idea what was going on. So we let someone else try, and had the same problem: they didn’t get it. So I gave them more example sentences like “I have a tap (faucet); you put water in me; I clean things” etc. Finally we realized it just wasn’t going to work the way we planned so we changed it so everybody could look at the slip of paper with their word on it. Then we went around the circle and they just had to use that word in a sentence. That went a lot better!

Erika’s group had expressed an interest to learn hymns in English, so we thought while were still in a whole group it would be nice to do something a little different and study a hymn. We picked the Lenten hymn number 118 from CW, because it was fairly short and repetitive. We sang it to them a couple times. Unfortunately, the hymnals they have at Bethel are the old Lutheran hymnals, so when one of the ladies brought those out to try to find the hymn, we couldn’t find it. We had printed out the words for them, so they could still follow along and try to sing with us. Some of them gave it a good effort. We then decided that breaking up into our groups would be more beneficial for the hymn study part of the lesson. My group really struggled with this and I’m debating if I should do it again. We just went through the words to verse one and I tried explaining the hard words and what the overall meaning of the verse was. One, possibly two ladies might have slightly understood but from the blank looks on the rest of their faces, I knew it just went way over their heads. The idea to learn some English hymns is a good one, but I think my group just might not be ready for it yet. Maybe by their 3^rd year here they might be ready. I asked them if they want to keep doing the hymn study or not and they said yes, just not tomorrow J So we might try one more time on Friday and if it’s still like pulling teeth I might just drop it.

After the hymn study we went into a review of yesterday’s lesson. I gave them a quiz on the kitchen spelling words and that went pretty well. We also reviewed the kitchen verbs like boil, cook, stir, bake etc. and they had to read the word and do an action to show what it meant. We then finished drawing and labeling the diagrams of our kitchens and I had them get with a partner to speak in English about their homework assignment. They had to find a kitchen item that was not on our list, write it down, and write a sentence describing it or saying what they do with it. After talking with a partner they then took turns writing their sentences on the white board. I was really impressed with how they did with their homework. I thought it would be hard for them to come up with a noun we hadn’t previously talked about but they all did a great job. We had a water glass, cooking spoon, grater, flask, warming plate and a couple other unique things. I wanted to take a little diversion here that would help tie in with our kitchen diagrams. I taught them directions: left, right, up, down, front, back, in the middle, next to, and corner. We labeled parts of a piece of paper to show where all those directions are. I also taught them the hand trick for figuring out which way is left. Once I had quizzed and drilled those (they caught on very quickly to that and it was a nice little change of pace), we used the new words with the kitchen diagrams. The stove is next to the fridge. The table is in the middle of the room. There is a door on the right. And so on. We didn’t go into a whole lot of depth on the practicing of that, because we’ll do that tomorrow; this was just the introductory lesson on that.

We had been sitting for quite a while at that point, so I gave them a 10 minute break to go outside for some air and guavas. J A couple ladies left because they had to pick up their children at school. After break we headed back in for the last 10 minutes or so where I wrote some more sentences using some of our new words: My family eats at the table. My children wash the dishes. They read the sentences and went through all the words just to make sure they understood and then I touched on identifying nouns and verbs. They also did surprisingly well on that as well. So we’ll delve more into that tomorrow.

After English finished at 10, we headed back home and there were already 3 boys waiting for us for tutoring: Raphel, Samuel and Jeremiah. (Anne told us later that they had been waiting for us since 8am! Yikes…hope they read their schedules next time.) Erika and I got the stuff we needed and then just started out with the ‘getting to know you stuff’ as a whole group. When the other two boys showed up, Stone and Given, we split up. Erika took the upper level Jeremiah, Stone and Given and I had Raphel and Samuel. I pretty much did the same thing with these boys that I did with my tutoring groups yesterday. We practiced writing the letters of the alphabet and their names, and then worked with the flashcards. By that point I was sick of the ABCs so we moved onto the math flashcards. They enjoyed those a lot. Then we did some drawing: draw 5 flowers, 3 butterflies etc. and then we added them together. I also let them color their drawings and they LOVED using the crayons!! But time ran out and it was time to go home.

At the end of the tutoring session I was feeling slightly discouraged because I just feel frustrated with the letter-drilling. I think part of the problem is that so far, all of the kids have been really struggling with just the basic alphabet and so I haven’t had much variety. I’ve been drilling the alphabet over and over and over. I am really going to sit down this weekend and think up something we can do that is not just writing the alphabet over and over.

After the late morning tutoring we had a nice break for lunch, although not as long as yesterday because the morning tutoring session cuts ½ an hour into our lunch break on Tuesdays. That was OK though…we still had enough time to relax a bit and gear up for preschool in the afternoon. We broke down the preschool schedule like this.

1-1:30 outside games and songs while we wait for everyone to arrive

1:30-2 inside doing the alphabet chant and focusing on one letter; today was letter A

2-2:30 in the carpeted room doing more songs, finger plays and a story

2:30-3 outside organized play and then free play

3 go home

I will say that today went a lot better than the first time we did preschool. We came up with a more concrete schedule and came armed with more things to do. I whipped out all my old student teaching songs like “Johnny Works with One Hammer”, “Sticky, Sticky, Sticky, Sticky Bubble Gum”, and “A Ram Sam Sam”. We also marched around singing “The Ants Go Marching” and did the Apple Tree and 5 Little Monkeys finger plays along with a couple stories. I’m so thankful to have a bank of songs and finger plays to pull from or it would make this a lot more difficult. It’s just amazing to see that the same songs are fun to kids no matter what culture they are. It was kind of a surreal moment when I was singing “A Ram Sam Sam” with these little Zambian children, when just months ago I was singing it with white Midwestern kids in Minnesota. Erika and I are still struggling with the management, although today it was a lot better than last week. I still use the sign language “stop” sign, although Paul is really the only one who has caught on to that. He tells all the other children to stop when they are misbehaving. He’s my little buddy! I have also resorted to just saying quite firmly “eeyi” (I know I butchered that spelling) which means “no” in chewa. That didn’t do much either. So we’re going to have to brainstorm some management things. Any ideas would be welcome. J

Some fun things about today: they all get up and leave for “water” and to “wee-wee” whenever they want. And they “wee-wee” right outside the classroom door in the grass. So that little habit might have to be stopped, although we’re not sure what Charity’s policy on this is. When we were playing outside some of the kids wanted to go on the slide, which of course is metal and had been baking in the sun for several hours. What was their solution? “Wee-wee” on the slide of course! So there were about 3 boys that stood at the bottom of the slide and peed on it to cool it off. Were the other kids bothered by this? Of course not! Peace proceeded to just slide right down through the pee.

After an exhausting and hot preschool day, we got to relax for a few minutes before the next tutoring group came by. This is when Mr. Zulu stopped by to get a picture with us. I’m not sure what he wanted it for, but it’s rare that a Zambian wanted to take a picture of the Americans instead of the other way around. Before we knew it, the next kids were here for tutoring. I had two girls this time: Chipo and Mwandida. Mwandida is 9 and Chipo is12 although they were really on the same level as far as what they knew. In fact, Mwandida actually knew a bit more of her alphabet. I started out by showing them pictures of my family first on my laptop before we got into the tutoring. They loved that! So I’ll have to do that with my other groups too.

Day two of teaching is over and I’m super exhausted. Tuesdays and Thursdays are our much longer days. Everything went well today. I know I said before that we are most excited about tutoring, but now that I’ve got two days under my belt I actually enjoy working with the ladies more. I’m teaching them simple things, but I can still challenge them and every day they surprise me with how much they know and how hard they try. Plus, teaching these women is the main priority of why we’re here, and I pray I will be giving them a good foundation in basic English.

The perfectionist side of me is coming out with the tutoring groups. I don’t feel like I am teaching them the best way that I can and it’s frustrating me because I’m not sure yet how to fix it or what to do differently. I know that just talking with me in English and going over letters, shapes, colors, numbers etc. will help them if we keep drilling them, but I just don’t believe that’s the best and most effective way to do it—through mind-numbing drilling. Since Thursday is a public holiday and we have a day off, that’s what my project will be: thinking of alternatives to the drilling and ABCs.

On a completely different tangent, I have been quite clumsy/oblivious lately. It’s uncharacteristic of me and I don’t know why it’s happening. It started with the whole ant biting incident. I walked right into that swarm of ants without even realizing it and suffered those terrible, itchy bites. Then the other day I stuck my hand right into a huge spider web. I was trying to put my hand close to it to show the relative size and didn’t think that duh, there’d be a web right there. So the spider freaked out, which also freaked us out. Then the other day we were making scrambled eggs for supper and we wanted the ketchup out of the fridge, so I opened the door to the fridge and the little shelf thing that was holding the ketchup in place fell out and the whole glass bottle of ketchup fell on the concrete floor. Needless to say, ketchup was splattered everywhere and we couldn’t salvage any of it because there were glass shards in all of it. And it was a full bottle as well. I felt really badly about that one. The next day I was putting lotion on and I went to grab the lotion bottle and it slipped out of hands. Of course the top was open so lotion splattered all over the carpet and wall in my room. Yesterday when we were carrying our supper over to our guest house from the kitchen, I had to make room on the table in our “dining room” so I moved the jar of strawberry jam and it almost slipped out of my hands—and the lid was not on securely so that would have gone splattering everywhere as well. What is going on?? This kind of stuff never usually happens to me. Oh well, they make for good little stories.

I feel like I always rave about Anne’s cooking but tonight was just so, so good. We had pumpkin that was mashed up and baked with some onions; potatoes, beans, cooked cabbage, pasta and chicken. So much food! It was like a feast! We did our usual: eat while watching Friends, and then go wash dishes and close up all the windows in our house and then get more planning done. After planning I did a workout video to relieve some stress and then some more planning. I know I will sleep like a baby tonight and am so looking forward to it!