Written on 29/09/09
Posted many days after - so our next blog will be about this amazing trip.
Matt killed and defeathered his first chicken. We ate it last night. It was pretty good. It was a little tough but overall I would have to say it is pretty amazing knowing everything about what you are ingesting in a night.
This Tuesday is Botswana independence day. We are headed to the Sowa Salt Pans. We are visiting a PC friend who lives up there. There are like 15 of us going. Definitely too big of a crowd but I am SOOO excited to get out of our village. Jillian, our friend, lives near these salt pans and we are hoping to go out there and camp for a night. They are supposed to be really cool especially since they are waterless now. She also lives within a few kilometers of a Refugee Camp so we are going there for sure.
I guess it is the rainy season. I can never get a straight answer from anyone. However, it is storming every night. Huge, noisy, cuts your electricity out for hours storms. They are awesome. We have a tin roof, so it is literally so loud you can not hear each other. It is amazing last night; it rained for hours and I woke up this morning and I could not even tell. Funny how you know you are in the desert no matter how much rain we get.
Last Friday was a huge event at our school, called Prize Giving. They honor the best students throughout the school. I cut cabbage for three hours. It was terrible. However, while cutting I got to hangout with students. We laughed alot, sang a little Akon and practiced my Setswana. The kids really enjoyed the day; it was really nice to see kids being kids.
A child got really sick during the activities. She fell to the ground and from her waist down she started shaking like she was having a seizure. It was so weird and when I asked her if she had talked to a teacher she said no. So of course, I took over. We tried to calm her down. It was one of the weirdest things I have ever seen while working with kids. She was shaking uncontrollably but only from the waist down. We got transport to the clinic and they immediately put us in an ambulance to the larger clinic with a doctor. The doctor said she thinks it is an emotional response to something that is going on in her life. Who knows. She gave her anxiety pills and sent us away. So many unanswered questions. And this is the second child I have seen that has done this.
Today the girl was back in my office with the shakes again. I treated it as if it was a neurological reaction to a trauma in her life. I had her count her breaths and when ever the shaking started again i told her to focus on the tree we were sitting under. I am going to figure this out. The girl is coming to my house next week and we are going to talk. This culture does not allow children to talk to adults and you are not allowed to air your problems in public. I hope by being at my house she will open up and we can get to the problem. But, shit, who knows if that will even help. I am still not totally convinced that what the doctor said is right. But for now I will listen to the doctor and will try talking to this girl.
It is so weird that I am here to teach children about self- awareness, being assertive, and about gender roles all to help prevent future HIV/AIDS infections. Yet, we are still in a country in which children are not free to express themselves. Their stressful situations manifest themselves through these strange illnesses. I wonder if by teaching these children these things we are creating too big of an imbalance and we are the reason that they are having these 'panic attacks'.
Posted some more pictures from the prize giving
http://picasaweb.google.com/mattandlaurabots
have a great week.
love
laura
05 October 2009
24 September 2009
New Pictures Posted
Hey we have posted more pictures on Picassa. Some explanation- the two girls posing are our sisters that live on our compound. Some are from our our garden. The big rocks are from a village nearby that we went hiking in one day. The kids with their drawings are from last Saturday night. They go over to our friends house on Saturdays and have craft days. The kids walking with Annie Rose are from our English class on Saturday. The girl in the green is our friend Annie Rose. We are taking her to Cape Town with us. She reminds me alot of Emily Caito.
http://picasaweb.google.com/mattandlaurabots
http://picasaweb.google.com/mattandlaurabots
Challenged and Excited
So I taught my first class this week, it was so much fun. I taught a Form 1 (equivalent to grade 7) Guidance and Counseling class. Their spoken English is limited, they can read well but do not comprehend much of what they read. These were problems that I was aware and fairly sure I could apply my knowledge to successfully. I was all prepared to teach a great lesson on what domestic violence was, how to be safe and what you can do to get help. I was armed with role-plays (I can not believe I force kids to do activities that I personally hate doing myself- such a hypocrite) and group work. People who I have taught with will also appreciate how I was ready to tell a story about my personal experience with domestic violence in order to make personal connections- I mean NYC youth think I have a gay brother so they stop saying gay slurs! ( I am from a family of all girls and my dad.)
Anyhow, the lesson started well, I explained all the definitions, and they listened and looked interested. Then when it came time for the interactive part, the whole lesson fell apart. Getting these kids to talk, work in groups and then present to the class was a complete disaster. They are shy and have no experience learning in this manner. Lack of English and especially my American accent can account for some of the problems, but as teacher I knew it was more about the lesson simply falling on it’s face due to this very American teaching method.
This is the second time this happened to me in a week. We were teaching an English class this Saturday and they were great when were sitting and talking about the rules of English but once they had to get up and practice, the shyness over took and the lesson flopped.
Even though we, too, introduced this new style of learning in the South Bronx, it went very well because in the USA we create a space in which children are allowed to freely express themselves and learn through making mistakes. Here, children are so scared of failure and expressing themselves; however, there is a sense of discipline that we lack in States.
So from this past weeks experience, I am challenged and excited to find the delicate balance between what have done so well in the states, create places were children can freely express themselves; and here where they have a level of discipline that I yearned for so often in the States. (I will not get into all the inherent problems with how discipline is achieved here- but it has to be more then a stick that creates this kind of discipline and self control in youth.) I am eager to work more in the classroom and see what I can do to help these children become more expressive and to see what I can learn from the Batswana children to take back to my classroom in NYC. It feels really good to be challenged by teaching again. It has been a while. What would John Dewey say about this Mish?
Anyhow, the lesson started well, I explained all the definitions, and they listened and looked interested. Then when it came time for the interactive part, the whole lesson fell apart. Getting these kids to talk, work in groups and then present to the class was a complete disaster. They are shy and have no experience learning in this manner. Lack of English and especially my American accent can account for some of the problems, but as teacher I knew it was more about the lesson simply falling on it’s face due to this very American teaching method.
This is the second time this happened to me in a week. We were teaching an English class this Saturday and they were great when were sitting and talking about the rules of English but once they had to get up and practice, the shyness over took and the lesson flopped.
Even though we, too, introduced this new style of learning in the South Bronx, it went very well because in the USA we create a space in which children are allowed to freely express themselves and learn through making mistakes. Here, children are so scared of failure and expressing themselves; however, there is a sense of discipline that we lack in States.
So from this past weeks experience, I am challenged and excited to find the delicate balance between what have done so well in the states, create places were children can freely express themselves; and here where they have a level of discipline that I yearned for so often in the States. (I will not get into all the inherent problems with how discipline is achieved here- but it has to be more then a stick that creates this kind of discipline and self control in youth.) I am eager to work more in the classroom and see what I can do to help these children become more expressive and to see what I can learn from the Batswana children to take back to my classroom in NYC. It feels really good to be challenged by teaching again. It has been a while. What would John Dewey say about this Mish?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)