Being a Teacher

On Friday September 12th I went to the school with all the other teachers.  I was greeted by many of the people I had met on Thursday and more.  One that I met Friday was the other teacher who is in the Grade R class (kindergarten) with me.  Her name is Ms. Gabela, she is a sweet older lady who only speaks very little English but understands more, other wise she speaks Zulu.  When we met and I introduced myself as Rebecca, she looked like she was going to cry.  She squealed and said “I am so tired”.  She was so thankful that I was finally there to help her in the class.  With 4 little boys she had her hands full!  I was sad to tell her that I was going to be in the grade one class in the morning and then I would start teaching on Monday.

I started that day in the grade one class with Philile (the grade one teacher) and then moved to grade R to get to know the kids a little bit.  I spent most of the afternoon listening to them recite all the things they had memorized, days of the week, months, counting by 10s, 5s, songs in Zulu and some in English that Mr. Russell (the other SALTer who was there before me) had taught them.  Than Ms. Gabela looked at me and said “Now you teach.” And I had no clue what I was supposed to do.  I had not even gotten the curriculum 30 min before. So I told her I could not, so instead I read them some stories, than she did a Zulu lesson with them.

Monday has come and gone. It was my first day of teaching and it went as well as it could.  Josh or Mr. Russell had given me a rough schedule that he went off of with the kids and that has saved me! Thank you Josh!  This week has been getting an understanding of where the kids English is at.  A lot of what I noticed was that the kids had forgotten a lot of what Josh had taught them because they were not using English everyday other than the things that they had memorized (there was about 3 months gap between Josh leaving and me getting there).  But it has been fun getting to know them and making the schedule more of my own thing.  This week has also been a cleaning week too.  There were many piles around the class of papers and old work books, so because of the person I am I have been cleaning them all up and going through each pile trying to get rid of the things we don't need any more.

Here are some pictures of my kids and my class room.  Their names are Unathi, Aphelele, Ayanda and Lefanelo.  Until next time remember that it is okay to be silly sometimes!