Sounds dramatic, but that's a little like how it felt as Joelle and I watched our student teachers do their first full week of teaching, having written lesson plans and prepared resources and themselves. We watched more lessons than I can count, and got to know our students a little better each time. We were definitely rooting for their success, and in some cases, even found it! They were still very green and a little nervous, but it was gratifying to see them put things into practice that I know we taught them. A real sign of success came at lunchtime on Friday. A delegation of first graders came to see me to ask that Teacher Elijah not have to move from teaching them! Eljah had spent 6 weeks in their class, observing, then teaching math, English, and phonics. He really fell in love with them, too, and told me one day that he wants to be a first grade teacher. He had been taking extra lessons and even tutoring a couple of them on his own time. It was so special to know that they felt the same way about him, but, sadly, he had to move on to a middle grade next.
One of the things we did every day was give feedback to the students about all the positive and negative things we saw. Their attitudes were so good it made it much easier to tell them the hard things. One of them, Agaba, said, "Only tell me the bad things so I'll know what to work on." He has no idea how demoralizing that could be, so I told him that wasn't an option! At the end of the week when we were telling them how positive we felt about the week, they thanked us for our input in ther week and our feedback, which they knew would make them better teachers. We also gave all the Karanse teachers, who have been supervising our students through this, sodas and bananas at lunch as a thank you. That's how they celebrate really important events, and, as a result, when Agaba came in the dining hall and saw them, he said, "Is it Christmas?" He was joking, but what he meant was - this is a big deal! Gladness, one of the Karanse teachers said, "I knew you would do something like this." I asked what she meant, and she said, "It's the end of their first term and their first teaching week. I knew there would be a celebration." I loved that!
One of my favorite parts of the week was actually getting to be in classes every day. The biggest drawback of my job is missing time with children, so this really helped that. I got to help teach games to 5th graders, lead a group math game in frst grade, go around the classroom observing and looking over shoulders in 3rd, 4th, and 6th grades, listen to a story in second grade; the only grades I missed out on were pre-one and 7th!
I went back to Karanse just for the day Tuesday as we were getting 3 of our students settled in a new school (they had been at a school that didn't work out, then back to Joshua, and now a YWAM primary school, hopefully for the rest of the year) and it was close to Karanse, so I spent the day getting our guys settled in to their new classes. I'm sure they didn't need me, but it was also fun to surprise Abraham with his birthday cake! He thought I had forgotten, so it was more fun than usual!
In for the rest of the weekend, then back out to Karanse on Monday.
For those of you who remember my dad's past bouts with melanoma, he was back in surgery this past week, but we're praying they got it all this time, too. You can join us in that prayer, and that this is the last one!
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