When the summer ended, we discovered two days before school was due to start that the school here at CFA still had not been able to hire a science teacher, whilst the English teacher was no longer available due to personal reasons. What we also discovered, was that we were to step in to take on these lessons whilst they look for replacement teachers.
Within the next 48 hours Rob and I ploughed through the textbooks given to us for secondary school levels 1-3, only to conclude that the content was way too fact-based (and boring!) for children who may not be the most motivated bunch in learning. Most of these kids come from very difficult backgrounds – they either used to be on the street, or lived with abusive or otherwise dysfunctional families. The fact that the textbooks are in the English language (not their first language) doesn’t help either.
So the new challenge was to think of ways of teaching the subjects (General Science, Biology and Chemistry for me; English and Social Studies for Rob) in as interestingly a way as possible – to inspire the children to learn in the first place, but without compromising on having too little content / actual things that they could learn.
I couldn’t really remember how photosynthesis works anymore, or much about Newton’s laws, and was semi dreading my first lesson. I tried to think of why I had studied so hard in school, what motivated me, and why it didn’t seem to bother me that there were loads of facts to memorize, half of which I didn’t quite grasp until years later. The exercise forced me to rethink from first principles – about what is the whole point of learning about science, and its relevance in the lives of the children.
1.5 weeks later, I feel like I’ve been teaching for a whole month! The kids are absolutely amazing – they do want to learn, they are mostly attentive (with good classroom control techniques, which we term Tough Love), and they are actually very bright. But it’s also been very challenging to convey complex ideas to them as they don’t seem to have much of a strong foundation. I also found it slightly amusing to see how, initially, they seemed to be at their best when they were not listening to anything but instead were copying things from the board – I wondered if I was just the same, having been educated in hugely rote learning environments.
Today I just took over a class which my friend had very kindly taught last week when she was visiting the CFA project. It wasn’t the easiest class, as one-third of the kids seemed perpetually distracted. Despite remembering not liking being picked on by teachers in my school days, I found that paying attention directly on the kids who were not “with me” - working through the task with them whilst still standing at the front of the class and really encouraging them when they got anything right – actually worked, and it was fun!
Today we talked about F = m x a.
Perhaps I could reinterpret the formulae this way:
Fun in teaching = massive preparation x attending to the areas where kids have difficulties i.e. don’t move on until they understand what you’re talking about
Within the next 48 hours Rob and I ploughed through the textbooks given to us for secondary school levels 1-3, only to conclude that the content was way too fact-based (and boring!) for children who may not be the most motivated bunch in learning. Most of these kids come from very difficult backgrounds – they either used to be on the street, or lived with abusive or otherwise dysfunctional families. The fact that the textbooks are in the English language (not their first language) doesn’t help either.
So the new challenge was to think of ways of teaching the subjects (General Science, Biology and Chemistry for me; English and Social Studies for Rob) in as interestingly a way as possible – to inspire the children to learn in the first place, but without compromising on having too little content / actual things that they could learn.
I couldn’t really remember how photosynthesis works anymore, or much about Newton’s laws, and was semi dreading my first lesson. I tried to think of why I had studied so hard in school, what motivated me, and why it didn’t seem to bother me that there were loads of facts to memorize, half of which I didn’t quite grasp until years later. The exercise forced me to rethink from first principles – about what is the whole point of learning about science, and its relevance in the lives of the children.
1.5 weeks later, I feel like I’ve been teaching for a whole month! The kids are absolutely amazing – they do want to learn, they are mostly attentive (with good classroom control techniques, which we term Tough Love), and they are actually very bright. But it’s also been very challenging to convey complex ideas to them as they don’t seem to have much of a strong foundation. I also found it slightly amusing to see how, initially, they seemed to be at their best when they were not listening to anything but instead were copying things from the board – I wondered if I was just the same, having been educated in hugely rote learning environments.
Today I just took over a class which my friend had very kindly taught last week when she was visiting the CFA project. It wasn’t the easiest class, as one-third of the kids seemed perpetually distracted. Despite remembering not liking being picked on by teachers in my school days, I found that paying attention directly on the kids who were not “with me” - working through the task with them whilst still standing at the front of the class and really encouraging them when they got anything right – actually worked, and it was fun!
Today we talked about F = m x a.
Perhaps I could reinterpret the formulae this way:
Fun in teaching = massive preparation x attending to the areas where kids have difficulties i.e. don’t move on until they understand what you’re talking about
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