Finding My Footing in the Classroom

I had lots of ideas as to what 5 and 6 year olds “should” know. I had to repress the doubts that crept in … for example, I never actually had a 5 or 6-year-old kid of my own. And most of my experience with children was really with older kids, those who had been through first grade, certainly, but I mostly clicked with older kids, kids in their teens. And never mind the fact that I wasn’t actually a teacher. Yeah, I’d taught English (writing) at Penn State and Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, but those kids—er, young adults—came with a vocabulary intact and didn’t let snot run unperturbed from their nose into their mouth.

            I also had to disregard a few other facts:

·      I had no idea what would be expected of them academically when they arrived at public school.

·      I had absolutely no information about what they’d already covered since they began school in September last year.

·      It wasn’t clear to me if I was teaching them the English language or teaching them kindergarten-type stuff in English.

·      There was no Internet available in Asko to Google “What to teach 5-year-old African kids.”

·      And at the end of the day, I was only going to be here for a month and of that, only teaching three days a week (the other two days are dedicated to education in their native Ahmaric). I had exactly 10 class days to make some impact on their learning.

“Okay, okay, okay,” I thought to myself. “This list of have-nots is running into oblivion and I’m going to be standing in front of 15 sets of expectant eyeballs in 36 hours. Figure this out.”

What did I know … I knew I needed an hour each of “words” and “numbers” and 90 minutes of “creative” something for 10 classes. I started scratching down goals for the first time block, “words”:

·      Name

·      Alphabet

·      Phonics

·      3-letter words

·      Site words

·      Greetings/Manners

·      Body parts

·      Shapes

·      Colors

           

I tried to do the same for “numbers”:

·      Numbers

·      Addition

·      Subtraction

·      Ummmmmm ….

I sensed my tension. “I’ll come back to numbers,” I thought, forcing myself to drive forward. “Stick to what you know. Get an outline and it’ll develop.” I looked back to my “words” list … that was a lot of stuff. I pondered “shapes” and “colors” … “I’m gonna throw those into that afternoon ‘creative’ bucket,” I decided. I reviewed the list again: alphabet, phonics, word recognition … strategy. I needed a strategy to achieve the goals of teaching kids these things. “Body parts,” and “greetings,” and “colors and shapes,” for that matter, were more part of the strategy than objectives in and of themselves, I decided.

I felt a breakthrough! Ha! Yes. “Objectives” vs “Strategies.” Yes. I thought I might be on to something. If I could come up with a few long-term (one month! Ha!) objectives, I could break them down into daily tasks. “Duh,” I thought. “This would be so obvious to a real teacher! A real teacher who has to plan for a whole year of this!” Blah. Stay focused. Don’t intimidate yourself right out of a baby curriculum.

Hand coordination.

Letters of the alphabet.

Writing my name.

Sounds of letters.

Vowels vs Consonants.

Alright! Good! Good! I devised a little chart to lay out the classes I would be teaching on Mondays, Tuesday, and Thursdays. I began to structure the “9:30 to 10:30” block by sketching in activities to achieve a goal: “Hand coordination = mazes; connect the dots; tracing letters; coloring.” “Alphabet = song; backwards; identify missing letters; capitals vs lower case” …

Hours passed. I dodged any discussion on the topic of teaching and got away with it into the next day, a day we were out of the classroom serving food to the homeless. Twenty-four hours till curtain. Ideas and structure and activities swirled a tie-dye in my mind; I wanted to share it all with Robin but I noted that I was becoming more and more committed to the idea of organization and structure and wanted to run with it, not commiserate. “Don’t be that chick, Debra,” I thought. Over breakfast, before we left for Addis Ababa to dish out 500 meals, I casually pulled out my notebook. “So,” I started my pitch, “like I said, I’ve been sketching out a few ideas …” I looked down at the page: it looked as if a psych-ward patient had a manic moment working a theory on the time-space continuum.

“Oh, that’s fine,” Robin chirped in her Australian accent. I relaxed a bit.

“I thought we could divide up each day into these sections, sort of like I witnessed on Monday: vocabulary, numbers, creative time,” I offered.

“Yes, that sounds good,” she responded. Man, I love cooperation. I gained a little steam:

“Okay. Which section do you think you’d feel more comfortable with?” I offered. “Vocabulary or numbers? You can have the one you’re most comfortable with and I’ll take the other.” Please say numbers. Say numbers. Numbers, numbers, numbers. NUMBERS! PLEASE! Say numbers!

Robin was thoughtful for a moment: “I think I’d be more comfortable working with numbers,” she said. “Weights, comparison, greater than and the sort.”

YES!!! YES!! WHEW!! THANK GOODNESS!!! “Alright, no problem. Then I’ll get working on the vocabulary time block.” I smiled, breathed, and felt the furrow in my brow soften.