We just finished with Kids’ Club today. It went really really well. The name of our lesson today was “the dangerous chain of sharp objects,” which explained the chain of events that can take place due to sharp pieces of trash being discarded on the beach and elsewhere. For instance, a myriad of people could step or fall on a sharp object: a woman carrying fish to Mangily or a man walking to his pirogue to go fish or a child playing football on the beach. A chain of events is then set in motion, starting with physical pain and the potential guilt of whomever dropped the object, the need of a doctor, the need of money and transport to the hospital in Tulear, potentially an infection or operation which will cost more money and time, and the inability to work during recovery. Christina explained all of this to the children and then they were divided into four groups of 8. (All of the younger children were outside tracing stencils Lucy made of various sharp objects- fish bones, open aluminum cans, broken coke bottles, pieces of glass, etc- and coloring them in. We are going to use these next week to decorate homemade trash bins we will make.)
There were four groups of 8 and each group was in charge of creating a mini-narrative of this possible chain of events and assigning who was going to act out what part in their group. Then at the end we had everyone come inside and watch while each group performed. We were a little nervous at first it might not work; maybe the children would be too shy or maybe they just wouldn’t quite understand. But it went off without a hitch. The kids really enjoyed it; some of them had quite a flare for drama and were really funny. Lucy, Christina and I were really really pleased.
Lucy is leaving next Friday so I believe (and pray) she has at least one more Kids’ Club. I think I’ve worked out enough that I can figure out how to carry on from here, but I’m still really nervous about it. Hopefully the fact that there will be no one else to do it and it needs to be done will ensure the fact that somehow the universe will come together and make it happen for me and for the kids. I’m not sure what I’m more nervous about now though, Kids’ Club or English. I’ve been working on some more English stuff, and think maybe next time I am going to try to do Pronouns and a couple of simple verbs and show how to conjugate them in the present tense. It’s just going to be hard though because literally no one else at ReefDoctor even knows what a pronoun is so if I can’t explain it to the people helping teach how can they teach it? But I think it would be really beneficial to the students to actually learn English properly with formulas and with solid foundational skills, like pronouns and like simple sentence structure. I might wait until Lucy goes to start trying to do my own lesson plans though because we won’t get anywhere if everyone else is confused. I just really don’t want to teach English in a haphazard way that doesn’t get across any of the basic rules of the language. I have always been so OCD about spelling and grammar (even if these blogs don’t necessarily show that, none of them are double-checked, my apologies) that working with people to try and teach these things who have no clue about the structure of their language is worrying me a bit. We’ll see what happens. I’m going to make some random vocab list posters for English as well through the time I am here like I used to have in my classes as a child and even in French and Latin class. Unfortunately the “posters” here are made out of really thin, easily tearable paper, and we only have thin markers to write with, so I already know they are going to look like shit. But I guess it’s better than nothing. It’s too bad I can’t leave them in the classroom as well, but we just borrow it. And the classroom is completely falling apart anyway, the roof is caved in and rotting, you can see the sky in parts. There is bird shit all over the desks, dust and sand everywhere. Not the best environment to do anything, much less teach. But actually we’re lucky to have anywhere at all to teach so I won’t complain anymore.
Oh yeh, yesterday, Josh and I officially got certified as Open Water Divers! Woohoo. A cold and two and half panic attacks later, I finally got it! We start Advanced next week. That should be interesting. We have to have in finished by the first of September because another volunteer, Michelle, is doing it with us and that is when she leaves. I’m gonna go get ready for dinner, I actually look forward to the beans and rice here.
Alex
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