Our first week at school!

So cute!

On Monday morning Daisy and I once again found ourselves going to school for the first time. Unsurprisingly, it was very different to previous experiences we had had in England! Monday was simply a teachers day, and so our time was spent introducing ourselves and getting to know the other teachers. We also had the task of trying to find out what we would actually be doing in class! We soon found out (to our dismay) that the school day starts at 6:45 with a staff meeting which we must attend (although the news did manage to get worse - Wednesdays is a 6:30 start :( !!!) To our surprise we learnt that all the teachers shake hands at the beginning of every day- apparently this is a sign that you are happy to work with the other person.



Our first visitors

Daisy and I eventually found out that we would be responsible for teaching two subjects for Grades 5-7 (this is children between the ages of perhaps 11-15, ages can really vary here). We would be teaching Arts - a mix of art, drama and music, and a subject called BIS (Basic Information Science) which seems to be a kind of introduction to the library and book keeping. And so on Tuesday we began teaching for real. We had no resources, (the 'learners' as they are called here are each supposed to have a pen and a book to write in but half of them don't), no lesson plans, no idea about what was on the syllabus and no plan. Surprisingly though, everything seemed to go ok!



They love pictures!

Daisy and I quickly figured out ways to fill up the 40 minute periods. Each lesson we would introduce ourselves to the class (once again my name was a great source of confusion and amusement - half of the learners still seem convinced that my name is Kebe), we would then ask each of the learners to stand up one at a time and tell us their name and their favourite subject. Next was a question and answer session about ourselves, London and England in general.

We then had to look for another way to entertain the children. Singing, we soon learnt, was the answer. We were both amazed to find that practically all of the children love to sing (although just like anywhere in the world there's always one that refuses to join in with the rest and just stands slumped against the wall looking grumpy and bored) and so our suggestion that they stand up and teach us some Namibian songs was one that they jumped at - quite literally in fact.

But rest assured, Daisy and I also taught them something from our own culture....the bean game! Teaching the children 'French bean', 'broad bean', 'runner bean', 'chili bean' may have taken some time but the game soon brought about fits of giggles - from both the learners and the teachers! And once we had finished the game and announced the winner the lesson was normally finished, much to our exhausted relief!

So that was pretty much our first week of teaching  - introducing ourselves, meeting the children, (working out which were the nice classes and which were the horrible ones), working out what rewards we should give (stickers!) and what punishments worked (giving the childrens names to the principle) and just generally working out what we needed to do and how we could do it. And suddenly, before we even knew where the time had gone, our first week of teaching was at a close!