Teaching begins

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Teaching began today. We left for the Lomonox school around 7:15 am. On our way there, there was a major road block that made our taxi driver need to figure out a new way around. It was closed in front of the stadium that hosted the Japan vs. Vietnam game last night for the Asia Cup. It was unclear why the road was closed off, though, because the game was last night while we were at dinner. It was actually on TV while we were at the “sportsbar” for dinner last night and we had to pause conversations several times for major cheering and celebration. Even though Japan won the match, they showed another match that meant that Vietnam stayed in the tournament. The drive home was like any drive out of a sports stadium—crowded and full of major cheering, shouting, and horn-honking (though this is more common in everyday driving here).

By the time we got to school, it was 7:55 and there was no one to meet us. We waited in the lobby of the main building and about 10 minutes later the principal arrived and was dropped off by his driver. We went up to his office and waited until the head of the English department came in. We then went to her office and had iced tea as other teachers started arriving one by one. We talked about the teaching “schedule” and they wanted me to do “all day” for 2 days. We decided that today would still be just the morning, but that we would do “all day” tomorrow.

When there were 20 or so people in the office, we all went down to the training room. All the seats were neatly lined up in rows with attached desks, so the first thing Sandy and I had the students do was turn them to create groups with two desks facing each other. This would make it easier for them to do the type of work in groups that I was going to require and also make it easier for me to get around the room. We started around 8:30 after the desks had been moved, already challenging part of the comfort zone.

We had a wonderful morning together. One young women was very sullen and not engaged, but when we went around doing the introductions and I invited her to share, the woman next to her said that it was her niece and that she wasn’t a teacher. This now made sense and it was easier to feel at ease. For introductions I gave them a sheet of symbols and they needed to choose one and introduce themselves and explain why they chose their example. One woman chose a key because she liked finding the answer to unlock her questions.

I did a lesson on multiple intelligences and then we read a story together. After we talked about the story, each group was assigned one of the intelligences and they needed to use that one to retell the story and explain the moral. The kinesthetic group did an entire play of the story and another group retold it as a comic strip. It was a very fun morning together. We finished at 11 and discussed the schedule for tomorrow. It was decided that we would go from 8 (or 8:30…) until 11 (11:30 was vehemently protested) and then the afternoon would be from 2pm until 4pm. Later, at lunch, I found out that this is the school schedule and that, if I wanted to take a nap, there would be an office for me to do that.

We went to lunch with a team from Auburn, Alabama at a restaurant across the street. It turns out, the assistant principal/head of the English department’s family owns the restaurant and the ELI team that is there eats lunch there every day. I will eat with them tomorrow and Sandy will leave me all on my own!

When we got home today, I took a major power nap. Now I have some details to finish for tomorrow’s lesson and in an hour we’re having 16 people over for dinner. Thanks for all of you who were praying for my first day. It went really well.