The Real Term I WrapUp

By popular demand, it's about time to actually talk about what I learned about teaching in Term I of 2009 -- a lot! I just got a site visit from my boss, Dora, who came to observe me teaching and to discuss any issues with my supervisor at the school, counterpart and headmaster. She also came w/ the security guy Hector to see my new teacher house that I just moved into. Yay for not being homeless anymore! But my house is huge - and so empty it echoes.

Teaching thoughts:
- My way of implementing the Malawian method of ad-hoc hands-on learning (we call it TALULAR) relies almost 90% on bottle tops. Thanks god PCVs guzzle the Cokes/Fantas/Carlsbergs here like water. I now have a rainbow assortment of colors!
A sample lesson from my Thurs F1 Physical Science Class:
The lesson was about current flow in Parallel and Series circuits, so to show how current moves when it comes to a junction, I used passing of bottle tops. I called up 3 boys and 3 girls to the front (who were probably thinking, "Oh no! Everyone can see my shirt's untucked!") and arranged them in two lines, with me at the end (as the junction). I wanted to pass 6 bottle tops, but since there were two lines, they were split into 2 groups of 3. The kids passed them (a few tried to keep theirs, but they weren't quite slick enough for me!) along one by one and I collected them at the end. To check to see if the other 75 got the point, we verbally proved the additive property of current (I1 = I2 + I3):
Me: "We started out with how many bottle tops?"
Class: "6"
Me: "Now, Lucky has 3 and Chikondi has 3. 3 + 3 equals?"
Class: "6!"
Pretty monumental, haha. Well, at least Dora liked it.

- Learning when to stop and wait is really important. Especially for making sure the kids have the information from your lesson in their notes (or copy books: makope). I can usually get through about 2 4x4ft chalkboards before it's time to stop and walk around so they actually *open* their books and start writing. And now, my form 1s (9th graders) are much better trained than the form 3's (11th graders).

- Specific questioning to check understanding works much better than asking 'Muamva?' or 'Tili pamodzi?' (Ya heard? or, Are we together?) because then they actually have to use their brains and check themselves. Plus, any monkey can say 'yes' at the right time.

- Learning how to be an enforcer is huge. First I was a lil timid (OK, that's just my personality, frankly) and I didn't know them well enough to be a hard-ass rulemaster. But now, If kids are being little jerks, I don't hesitate to make fun of them or even kick them out of class. Kicking them out works real well for Form 1, but a lot of the F3's think they're real cool if they're not studios, so being outside of class doesn't work too well. Maybe I'm just lazy, but physical punishment isn't really my cup of tea (ok, it takes too long!) and none of the kids can actually be held accountable to staying after class to do any kind of punishment then. It's hard to blame them - I'd be hungry if I had to go to school from 7-2 without any real lunch break, too.

- Chronic problems that I identified but still haven't really combated successfully: kids that don't bring their exercise books to class, kids who don't even have pens but don't bother to ask the kid in front of them who has 3 or 4, their perfectionism that makes them wait for a ruler/protractor just to draw a line, and the worst tragedy (IMHO) of not doing my damned homework exercises. That problem is almost the same as the fact that kids don't do any kind of studying (at least not until the end of term exams, for sure). How do you change the structure of their day or enforce that? Any ideas, gladly pass them along.