Last week while I was attending my weekly English teacher meeting my colleague who works at a neighboring school asked me if I would like to follow him to work the next day! He teaches at a small private primary school. I teach at a middle school so I was excited to see what they do in primary school.
Thursday at 8 am I arrived at Peace Primary School. It was small and next to a huge Methodist Protestant Church. The kids had blouses and skirts or pants as uniforms. There are 6 grades. Im not sure where it starts but I was with the two oldest classes cm1 and cm2, ages 7-9.
The first thing I noted was how small the class was.
Compared to my middle school class of 71 this was nothing, about 16 kids were in the room, and they were so young and excited. The classroom was maybe 10 feet by 30 feet and very busy. As I introduced myself and started teaching the kids about floods and singing Jingle Bells I was having a lot of fun.
The class was vivid and fun, the lesson was not as high pressure as at my school because learning English in Primary school is only to prepare them for middle school. Many of the students were knowledgeable and participated very well. I finished with the first class which was only one hour long compared to middle school 2 hour periods, which I cannot lie is fatiguing for the younger kids. The primary school has only 4 rooms and two of the rooms are cut in half with a stick wall to break into two.
The second class is the 5th-grader equivalent of primary school.
The class was vivid and they sang jingle bells with me and got it perfect right away. Some kids even spoke so much English! At the end I allowed them to ask me questions about America, they asked me the currency, who the president is, the weather, and then a kid pulled out a map and made me show him where exactly I was from. Their curiosity was cute and energetic.
The pastor Max came to greet me and gave me a very warm welcome and a bottle of water. He was very kind and we took many photos. He appreciated that I was able to come in my downtime to see the kids there but honestly, it was really fun for me I didn't mind. He invited me to come back anytime and visit the students and school.
I ended the two hours with a photoshoot and smiles and thanked everyone for this opportunity. It was Thanksgiving and I was able to meet new kind teachers. I have basically just ignored Thanksgiving the past two years because making a trip somewhere to see others takes a long time and cooking at my village when I have no money is taxing. BUT this day was fun and made me remember I like teaching!
French words of the week
on va voir = We will see, almost in an ominous no we won't way
Pertuber = bother or disturb
Gifler = slap (sometimes the kids say "teacher he slapped me"
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