I can hardly believe that I have been in Kenya for two weeks and two days! This place is incredible. I am learning so much about the challenges of teaching. I believed that the skills and teaching techniques I learned at Farmington and I used throughout student teaching were easily transferable. However, I am quickly discovering that not everything is that simple. It is much more challenging to teach here when all you have is a student copy English textbook that you are told to follow and not stray from the curriculum, a piece of chalk, a classroom with only a chalkboard, and a classroom full of desks and over 40 students! Lesson planning is much more difficult when you do not have resources and materials. You don't realize how vital the Internet and technology becomes when you are trying to teach. The internet opens up a whole new world to students. It makes lessons exciting. It is extremely important when you are trying to foster research skills and a sense of responsibility in students for their own education.
On Tuesday I wanted to do a debate with my Form Three English class. The curriculum called for a reading comprehension lesson on the battle over television. The lesson from the text was a short realistic fiction piece about the pros and cons of watching television! I was shocked to find that this would be the only exposure students would get to this debate issue. I was also worried since students seem to be doing the same repetition exercises with no new learning. So I decided to check out the library and learned that the library consists of a few shelves of student textbooks. The computer lab doesn't have internet access. I had to go to town and find articles and print them out in order to teach students how to do a debate. Students seemed to enjoy having class structured differently. I think they also appreciated applying the skills they were learning to real life situations, plus they learned something new since the articles presented facts and not fiction! This was by far the most rewarding class yet!
