06/27/12-Exams Week

Summer is here, many of the children were studying and taking their year-end exams. Me and some other PC folks were helping some of our siblings and other neighborhood kids prepare. We are already aware of the reality that most of them will not pass. The best we can do here as teachers is be able to teach them basic applicable life skills like simple math and reading comprehension.

I too, have an exams week of sorts. Tomorrow, there is a verbal Krio Proficiency Test, it's not the official one, which isn't until August, but I still get nervous with tests. The big one will be this Friday where we have the Micro Teach at Amadea Junior Secondary School. I will be teaching two 30min periods of Math. My lecture will be on the Perimeter of a Rectangle. I'm nervous as hell, we did a peer teach the other day where I got great feedback but, to be in an actual classroom with real African students has my stomach in knots.

I mean, in reality, this is just another simulation of sorts. All of the kids are finished with their exams, the school just asked students to show up if they wanted to take a class from a Peace Corps teacher. So the ones that show up will be just because they are curious about us outsiders. And this will probably be a significantly smaller class in comparison to the real deal of the standard 100 student classroom.

So I attempted to study Krio after school but was invited to go out to the field and watch a friendly football match between New York (that's where I live) and New London. I don't know too much about soccer but I guess I now have 2yrs to figure it all out. I don't really know who won because somewhere in between there was fight between 2 boys and I was distracted by the hoards of children that found it more interesting to gather around and watch me watch the football game. You get used to the staring children after a while. It's only because they are curious so the best thing to do us say hello and teach them how to do high-fives.

High fives seem to be a very foreign concept here to children but once you teach them, they love it as if it were somekind of secret handshake. So everyday when I see my usual kids they come running up to me and laugh with their huge smiles as I give them their daily high-fives.

I ended my day with a refreshing bucket shower in the latrine as I had my headlamp pointing straight at the giant spider the size of the palm of my hand. Please don't lunge at me, please don't lunge at me......