"Teacher Rachael"

Staff Polo :)

Teaching has been a challenge for me at times because I may be able to speak fluent English but I'm not qualified or trained to TEACH.

However it's been such a good learning curve, I have gained so much confidence in teaching children and adults in the past two months and found myself enjoying seeing progress in the students.
When I say learning curve, I am also learning stuff about my own language too, for example since when was the number 40 spelt "forty" !?!?!?! I have written "fourty" all of my life... haha
(Also feel very privileged to have been given a staff polo for Jinja Christian Primary School - now officially "Teacher Rachael" yay)

Sometime's I've struggled with my busy program and not been able to plan lessons the night before. Also It's hard to plan lessons when I am not familiar with the Ugandan curriculum. I have had to read through some syllabuses and exam papers to work out what they should know. I've woken up some mornings before teaching, especially the women's class, and literally had a blank mind about what to teach.
On these occasions I've prayed about it and suddenly all these ideas come to mind and I start scribbling them all down, so God's helping me every day to get through small challenges that I face to make sure I'm of use during each part of my program.

Women's Tailoring Class - English Sessions
I'm really enjoying seeing the tailoring ladies improving, as they are older (18-25) and really want to learn. I've got to know them well now and we have covered loads of topics including telling the time - for some reason Ugandans call 12 o'clock "six o'clock" 1=7 2=8 and so on. Basically the time is the number directly opposite to the one the little hand is pointing to... I basically re taught them time reading and then explained that our way is actually much easier as we just say what the hand is pointing to... haha.

End of lesson summary to copy down haha

Jinja Christian Primary School P7
Sometimes teaching the school kids is harder because they have real exams to take and I have to make sure what I teach them is relevant. Also, sometimes what I know to be correct, isn't always what is the right answer here:

For example, in my first p7 (top year of primary school) lesson, I was helping the students with persuasive letter writing. In my experience of English at school, good techniques in persuasive writing to get top marks were using emotive language and rhetorical questions...

Therefore when the kids were writing to a parent/guardian to "attend a sports day" I encouraged them to use rhetorical questions and gave them a few ideas.
They showed the teacher their work which included questions such as "How could you not come and support my sports day?!" "If you don't come I will cry. DO YOU WANT ME TO CRY?" "If you love me you would come, do you love me??" among all the other persuasive points they used. Personally I think they would have got great marks in a UK exam.

Unfortunately Teacher Sarah was not as impressed. "Why are you questioning your parent? Is this showing respect to them? You need to respectfully invite them to the even using good reasons why, not telling them what to do and asking "Do you love me" now please write your work again properly.

I sat there in utter disbelief and feeling guilty about ruining the children's education and futures... haha although the teacher found it funny in the end when I explained how we use those techniques in exams in the UK. I suppose her disagreement could also be due to cultural differences as respecting elders is enforced a lot more here.

Apart from that small hurdle, I have been teaching the class by myself since then and have seen some good improvements in their work. You would NOT believe the exams that these kids take at primary school level, they are probably equally as hard if not maybe harder than most GCSE exams! Especially the science or social studies questions, I literally would fail the entire paper even at my age. Luckily I teach English only.

I suppose this is all good practice for doing an English degree at uni next year - I'm very excited because I just got my fifth offer (Newcastle) so now I have some choosing to do :) 



Here's a few videos of the kids after the lessons... I promise they work hard and focus during teaching time hahaha