Day-to-day: Teaching

My experience teaching children through WHH has been a wonderful experience so far. I have talked a lot about my experience in general but not specifically what I am doing day to day - which is teaching English and experiencing village life.

The girls (except for two boys) that I teach are from 7-15 years old. We have them divided into 4 different classes based roughly on age and level (and their friend groups). The style of teaching and the set up is all very informal - i.e. there is no curriculum or classroom with desks, though we do have a schedule that we stick to. The students are kids who live around WHH, some right next door, and a few about a 10-15 minute walk away. The kids come voluntarily so most are quite dedicated, which is great for me as the teacher! Having to discipline kids is not really in my job description...so other than a stern look and saying someones name in an unhappy way, i've been pretty lucky!

The previous interns started the english instruction, so aside from a few of the young ones, they all have learned some english already. I decide what to teach based on looking at the topics previously covered (like fruit, time, numbers, places, jobs, etc.) and add new topics and reinforce some of the important ones. Beyond vocabularly I am trying to introduce more useful bits of lanuage to help in conversation - pronouns, prepositions, verbs, adjectives...and all those fun linking words. I do disguise this grammar within a fun topic like family or maps so it doesn't feel like a boring grammar lesson! Last week with my favourite class (they are around 11-12, so sweet and clever and fun! what a great age!) we learned about parts of a map - places, buildings, and objects around the house, and made some maps and then did scavenger hunts around the neighbourhood. I also try and play a lot of games like charades, pictionary, and clapping games and songs to help reinforce the vocab/concepts in a fun way. A favourite among the kids has been 'head and shoulders...that was a big hit! Its also neat to bring in past lesson topics into the current one and see how much they have learned...i.e. we learned about over/under/beside/between, etc. and brought that into our scavenger hunt.

I want to start incorporating some environmental topics to jive with the fact that WHH is an environmental NGO, and also because i think its important from a young age to have these values instilled. If anyone has any great ideas, float them my way...I'm still trying to brainstorm the best approach.

Teaching English in Indonesia is easy for the fact that the alphabet is the same and most of the letter pronounciation, but it is difficult that i am not fluent in Indonesian to be able to explain things. I am trying to learn as fast as i can, and some great books and 2-way dictionaries have helped...and there is usually a clever kid in the class who gets what i am explaining after a few examples and lots of gesturing and they can explain it to the rest of the class.

I think the most important learning happens outside the classroom when I hang out with the kids and we get to try and communicate and remember the words we learned in class....but also just the 'experiental learning' of pointing to something or doing something and then learning the word is really effective!

Here are some pictures...not the most exciting stuff pictures, but just to give you an idea of things and how beautiful the kids are!

This is from the first day! I was teaching the kids vowel sounds and reviewing the alphabet!
By my face, u can see I am on the long e
This is the typical setup, but I am trying to switch it up a bit and get us moving around to the garden and the neighbourhood!
This is the afternoon class, playing charades to reinforce prepositions!

I am really enjoying teaching these kids and am learning a lot from them too! Hanging out with kids and walking around the neighbourhood with them is a really great way to experience and understand the village.

I think it is very empowering to be able to speak english here, and i hope in addition to that i can also serve as a positive role model and friend to these great kids. furthermore, i hope that by doing these classes they gain some skills in teamwork and self-confidence and esteem!

Lastly, since Janet has arrived we have a chance to learn from eachother, and since we split the amount of classes we each have in half, we each have more time to plan for our lessons - which enabled me to do the time consuming yet super fun scavenger hunt, etc. but also frees up my time so i can start to think about other ways i can contribute to WHH while i am here - I have only a month, but I have a whole month!

Stay tuned for some of the day-to-day downtime excitement!