School-house Rock

Alright so I am now in week two of “school-based” training, where we get to finally practice our teaching methods. Let me first set the scene for you. I am staying at a somewhat affluent PTC, Primary Teacher’s College, about 40 minutes out of the capital. A PTC is school for 17-20 year olds who want to become primary school teachers. They spend two years here, living in the dorms and taking classes…teaching at a college is a potential role for any of us volunteers. The dorms, which we stay in, are sort of like military barracks. But, we get electricity, running water, and pit latrine trainers (a pit that has some porcelain and a flush). Food is still great but there are no animals to play with. However, it rests on a hill so we can see for miles and the sunsets are jaw-dropping. It also rains every other day for about 20 minutes, but we get an occasional lightning storm to sit and watch.  We spent week one learning all sorts of teaching methods. Let me say, I feel so grateful for having a background in education and getting so much useful experience working at Epiphany…we are even working with the same book “Teach like a champion.” It is really reassuring to have that base to work from and there are so many people here with so much knowledge that bouncing ideas off of them has been so much fun.

Now for the meaty stuff, working with the kids!! We travel every day to a small rural primary school to practice co-teaching. We are technically here to be literacy trainers and teaching coaches, so most of us won’t have our own class but will co-teach with a Ugandan teacher to bring some new, more child-centered and critical thinking methods. Ugandan teachers are great and their curriculum has so much to work from, what they don’t do is a lot of in-depth teaching or putting the learning on the student, it is mostly lecturing, memorizing, and repeating; and the occasional physical punishment (yea that freaked me out). But, our amazing trainer has given us tons of strategies to bring positive reinforcement and child learning into the classroom. So this past week we made all our teaching materials from scratch (they don’t have any resources or materials at school) and I got the chance to teach a math lesson to P2 (5-6 yo), Social Studies to P7 and a science lesson to P6. It did not go exactly as I would have hoped, but I learned a ton from it and actually had a really successful co-teaching class with a Ugandan named Ghad. A couple days later though, I had a FANTASTIC lesson about birds and all the kids were super engaged.  And let me just lay it out there, the kids are freakin awesome. I also do small workstations with P2 and they all run up to me and pounce on me, begging for high-fives. I am smiling all day!

So yea, I am learning non-stop and ideas are generating like wild-fire in my head about what I can do when I get to my school. I found out there will be two of us per site so we get to collaborate and work together to make super successful schools haha, that is how I am looking at it. I have managed to stay positive and peppy while here (who doubted that would happen?) and I am adjusting really well. I think all things considered I have already fallen in love with Uganda and can’t wait to make a life here for a while. Pictures will hopefully come soon. =)