January 6th 2024 to January 12th 2024
This was my first week back to teaching after winter break. I was excited to teach again and felt prepared for the start of the new year. I had planned a bunch of lesson plans and also feel more comfortable with being in the classroom now. The other teachers at the schools have taught me a lot and over break I took some time to reflect on my own teaching as well. I understand that I may not be the best English teacher, in fact, there are many Malagasy teachers here that I would say are better at teaching English than me. As a native speaker, I must admit that I do not really know many of the grammar or spelling rules that are being taught to students. It’s my mother tongue, so I never really had to worry about that too much. The Malagasy teachers have years of experience, explaining this material and have also gone through the process of learning English themselves, so they know what parts of the language are especially difficult for non-native speakers. I found that I put a lot of pressure on myself to have all the answers, but I am realizing that it is okay to not know everything and to turn to my Malagasy teaching counterparts for advice on how to best teach the language.
One thing that I do bring that is different is that I am a native speaker with an American accent and the students are eager to participate with me. I see myself as a cheerleader for the students to speak English. I structure my classes with that in my mind and focus on speaking, listening, and showing the students that speaking English is fun so they don’t get discouraged. This week, one of the classes was about learning parts of the house and the different things in each room. For the lesson, I focused on items in the kitchen, and I brought in a whole bunch of kitchen utensils. The kids thought it was really funny and I think they were amazed by how much stuff I could fit in my bag. I mean I had a bowl, a mug, a coffee pot, a cutting board, a strainer, and all the small things like forks and knives. I like making the kids laugh and I hope that it helped them remember some of the items in the kitchen.
In other news, I unfortunately woke up with spiders in my bed on Wednesday night. I was sound asleep and then around 1am I felt something on my leg. I woke up and turned on the light only to find a spider in my bed that had just crawled off my leg. I was definitely freaked out, but told myself that it was just one spider, and that it is not a big deal, and that it wasn’t even that big (the size of a Daddy Long Legs). However, before I turned off the lights, I saw another one in the corner, and then more on the ceiling. I ended up finding and killing 15 spiders in my room. The good thing is that Madagascar doesn’t have any poisonous bugs or animals so that at least put my mind at ease and I was able to sleep a little more that night.
The other update from this week is that pink eye is spreading like crazy in the city and the areas around it. In my class of 60, 5 to 10 students are out sick and then another 3 to 4 students who are still coming to class have pink eye. Some teachers that have pink eye also continue to come to school to teach but are wearing sunglasses. I’m not exactly sure how that will help but everyone is handling it differently. I think it is spreading so fast because there is limited access to running water so people can’t wash their hands as often to stop the spread of bacteria. The hospitals have been helping people and it is free to get the antibiotic to treat your eyes if you come in. I’m not yet sure how or when, but I’m hoping that the spread will settle down soon.