Kaaaaaatttuuuh

My hyper-organized mind can be too rigid; I know this. I know I tend sacrifice spontaneity in order to “stick with the plan.” Doesn’t mean I can’t punt—I’m pretty good extemporaneously—but if there’s a plan in place, it’s hard to get me to jump off the tracks even if the train is heading right at me.

            I promised myself I’d keep this in mind as I developed lesson plans for my classes. I’d already recognized that Robin was perfectly comfortable with “on the fly”: “I haven’t a clue what I’m doing for my lesson this morning,” she once said casually at breakfast, cradling a cup of tea at her lips. I could feel the tension creep into the back of my neck and down through my shoulder blades at the very idea. Not know?!? I screamed in my head, horrified. How could you not know?! How will you get them to count by tens? How will you get them to add without using their fingers?! You need a PLAN! A STRATEGY! VERIFIABLE OBJECTIVES! You can’t miss a single MOMENT, a single OPPORTUNITY for PURPOSEFUL LEARNING!! I’m sure my breathing accelerated and I became quiet. Robin had raised three children, one with learning challenges; she’d participated in schooling her children both in the classroom and at home; she’d been doing this for a month on her own, yet somehow I figured I knew better.

            Class begins at 9:30 a.m. The kids have been at the Home for about an hour: they’ve changed into their uniform; played in the courtyard; washed their hands; prayed; eaten breakfast; washed their hands again[*]. Whether they finish this routine at 9:05 or 9:28 doesn’t seem to matter … they sit and wait in silence (pretty darn well for five year olds, I might add) until 9:30 a.m. The first time I went in at 9:15, I was aware of my trespass and asked Beza: “Do you mind if I begin early today? I have a lot I want to cover this morning.”

            “Yes,” Beza nodded. “It is fine.”

            And we were off.

I like to begin the day with greetings and using their names—it’s been my experience that kids love the acknowledgement of their name. My daily notes boldly state say “ROLL CALL” to draw my attention to the topic at hand, but I look for a new way to do it every day. For example:

“Good morning, Malkamu.”

“Good morning, Debbie.”

“How are you today?”
“I am fine, thank you. How are you?”

I’m fine, thank you.” Applause, applause. Next.

I’ve stirred that pot by having kids come to the front of the classroom to greet one another in a mock meeting on the street. (A few of them were intimidated by the idea of coming forward … they shuffled their feet to get to the front or spoke so softly as to be barely audible. Another opportunity: these kids needed some leadership opportunities to build confidence! I made a mental note.)

Because I took on the vocabulary aspect of the teaching (Robin numbers/math), I sometimes work in the spelling of their name: I may ask “Whose name begins with the letter M?” I’ve written out each of their names in large block letter and without saying a word, I might hold up each card for the owner to recognize him or herself.  I’ve taken those same name signs and asked each child individually to come to the front of the room to read (“read”) someone else’s name and then go acknowledge that person. It’s supposed to be fun (let’s face it, 5 year olds think pretty much everything is fun, right?, so it’s not like I'm a genius here).

I’ve also committed to working on ‘left” and “right,” which in myriad ways has so far involved by using a Sharpie to mark an “L” or “R” on each appropriate hand and, man, it’s fun being written on. That might have segued somehow from the name sign recognition game to “please go find Malkomu’s right hand.”

I have a plan for emotions, too, so during roll call a child might be required to find and ask, “Hewot, are you HAPPY or SAD today” and exaggerated facial expressions generate lots of giggles. These goofy exercises have led to the game of Simon Says, which was something that I wanted to play because I noted that in their manner of recitation-learning (a phrase I just made up), I’m convinced that they don’t listen well, let alone comprehend … they become parrots mimicking whatever is said. The winner(s) of Simon Says earned a Starburst candy[†]. WOW! That’s a big deal to any 5 year old. Lemlem won two on Tuesday for being an exceptional listener.

If I fail to keep an energizing pace (sometimes getting through 15 kids’ names can take a bit), we might stand up and play a silly game to, perhaps, reinforce “left” and “right” by standing on one leg or shooting the correct hand in the air; this inevitably leads to reinforcing LOUD!!! and quiet as enthusiasm for silliness can quickly turn to mayhem.

Vocabulary? Yes, yes, I’m getting to it. It’s in my notes: Roll Call, Left/Right, Emotions to start the day, then glide into today’s color! A color a day … that’s my hyper-organized-sometimes-to-a-fault mind at work. (God forbid we have to deal with a rainbow.) I try to stir up the the color thing a bit: “Abete! Can you find the color yellow?” and Abete will wander around the classroom looking for yellow.  Meanwhile: “Yabsra boy [there are 3 Yabsras: Yabsra boy, Yabsra girl, and Yabsra little], what letter does yellow begin with?” and Yabsra boy will be handed a whiteboard marker with my hope that a Y will appear. Later in the day we’ll reinforce the color du jour by only using that color crayon on a dot-to-dot exercise or look for the color on the walk through the neighborhood.

Vocabulary. It took me too much precious time to figure out where the kids stood on the subject of letters and reading (let alone each kid’s ability). They’ve been in school since September, but the classes I observed didn't get far past alphabet recitation (in retrospect, I don’t know how Robin managed it all alone for a month … ultimately, the kids’ abilities are so diverse that it would be nearly impossible to accommodate all their needs so group-learning sort of has to get dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. I suspect any public school teacher reading this will be thinking, “Welcome to my world”). I’ve worked my way through the alphabet—I haven’t asked them to recite or sing it since I arrived because: A. They got it; B. They pronounce some of the letters incorrectly, which I believe is reinforced by the alphabet song (“elemeno”); and C. They got it. Done already. But do they know the letters and what they represent? So I’ve done things like removing letters from the alphabet chart I made, passing out the absent characters, and asking individuals to put them back where they belong. Ah … I saw some wheels turning with that one. We’ve worked on the alphabet backwards. I’ve laid 26 cards with CAPITAL letters all over the floor, then handed out cards with the lowercase letters to be matched to their correct partner. Heard some sizzling synapses there, too.

This week we worked on recognizing and understanding the vowels … A, E, I, O, U, Y.  Yeah, I know you know them, but note that I bagged “and sometimes Y.” I just ain’t goin’ there right now and probably not during my tenure here. I suggested that the “vowels are the glue that hold the other letters together!” I dunno … literally made that up on the spot or but it occured to me as Beza translated the concept for me in Ahmaric, that it’s so brilliant that maybe that’s exactly what I was taught a million years ago and still had it tucked into my cranium for just such an emergency.

I was impressed by their vowel-glue comprehension… they seemed to get it. We spent time identifying vowels in words; giving half-baked words vowels to make a real word (I stumbled on this one … that darn missing “A” in “bat,” “orange,” and “almond” all sound different); later in the day while practicing writing our names, we circled the vowels. (Spelling a name is a little exasperating in itself … it’s been my observation that Ethiopians “spell” words in English phonetically, which works great for understanding but throws consistency out the window). Any opportunity for a vowel that day I would exploit.

I started working on the sounds letters make on Tuesday so we could begin building words. I used flash cards to build 3-letter words, but I’m so far not happy with this method … I’m having trouble getting them to put the sounds together: C-A-T …. “What sound does the C make?”: I get a weak chorus of noise, some of which is “Kah” but I’m also noticing blank stares and more than a few shouts of “C!”

“A! What sound?” as I tug on my ear Carol Burnett-style to encourage sounds like and not the letter. Some “ahhhhhs” as if tonsils are being examined, but more stares. Beza might impose some Ahmaric scolding on a kid or two who enthusiastically shouts “A!”

“T!” What SOUND does the T make?” I plead. Again with the mixed bag of responses. I click my tongue against my palate: “Ta! Ta! T … teeeeeeee says TUH!” Ugh. With a wince, then, I’ll glide my finger across all the letters hoping that the gesture will imply that I want them to mush all those sounds together: “Kaaaahhhhh-aaaaaaa-tuhhhhhh,” I pronounce jerkily. “Kaaaaaaatttttttuh.” I look around in hopes that this somehow sinks in. “Kaaat! Cat!” I offer enthusiastically. A couple of kids study the letters as I continue to wipe my finger across the word, a couple more perhaps ready to move on, more still waiting for the next trick I have up my sleeve.

Yep. Need some more work on those “tricks.”

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[*] Washing their hands … they’re good about it. Wash before each meal, wash after each meal. I’ve wondered if this is a product of Westerner’s efforts to impart health-related practices in health-challenged countries such as Ethiopia. If so, bravo! But we’re not there yet. They are washing their hands in water that isn’t clean; granted, their bodies are used to it and they can drink water from the tap or, in the case of these kids, from the water source we have outside the Home that comes from I know not where. I’m not trying to paint a picture of disgusting, bacteria-ridden, stagnant, slimy water because I don’t know enough about water to make that call, but I can tell you that last weekend at the hotel I stayed at, I forgot to save some bottled water to brush my teeth one night. “Eh!” I thought confidently. “I’ve been here two weeks! A little rinse of the toothbrush under the faucet will be fine. Toothpaste likely kills bad scoobies anyway.” Not so much. Next morning my guts lurched and gurgled relentlessly. Just sayin’.

            So there’s the water. But also there’s no soap. Worse, here’s how lunch goes: All the kids get a dish of injeera and a bean soup. Kalid isn’t very hungry because, well, his eye is swollen almost shut and seeping. His nose runs unremittingly. So he doesn’t finish his food—which, naturally, he ate with his right hand, as all Ethiopians do. So there’s food left over and as food is a precious commodity, it cannot go to waste. No problem. Hayder will finish it. Sintyhu will have some, too. Fkadu has had a chesty cough since I arrived and Tomosgen’s nose runs as a matter of course; regardless, they’re still hungry so will dive into Kalid’s leftovers with thier right hand. Lunch is almost over so Buza comes in with a tall stack of plastic cups and a pitcher of water … but I’ve ever only seen two or three cups actually be filled to share among 15 students.

            So washing hands is a start, but like I said: We’re not there yet.

[†] Those who know me well through Woodward know that I loathe Starburst candy. Why? Because the darn things are a carbon footprint nightmare: inside a wrapped of ten candies are ten individual wrappers. Evil! That, however, is specifically why I lugged two huge, Costco-size bags with me here, even though I’m perfectly aware that I’m perpetuating the evil.

A fun lesson that Robin came up with: working on body parts in English! Glove goes on the hand, glasses on eyes ... and many, many giggles. :-)

Fkadu working away. The Mercy Ministry people are super happy with the progress the kids have made this month. Yay!

This is the courtyard where the kids have their recess.

Working on hand coordination by tracing capital letters. Notice how Bahilu, the boy on the far right, has his paper turned completely sideways ... I was trying to get them to write a letter without moving the paper around as if they were "drawing."