First two weeks with the kids

My first two weeks of camp ended today with a song created by the students. I will ask for the kids too write the song so I can post it, since I wasn't feeling very well today as I puked my hearts out yesterday night maybe because of food poisoning. The song was composed in English and even had rhythm. Before the song, one student, Jennifer, stood up and made a speech in which she expressed how thankful the class was for the t-shirts, notebooks and pens that were given to them and how grateful they were for having me. I realized that i was sad as I will not see many of them again after two weeks of being their teacher and mentor. I told them that they could come and visit the camp site any time they liked, and I will probably ask some of them if I could visit their homes and maybe have a meal with them. It will be interesting to see in what conditions many of them live in, since one of the teachers that assists me in camp said that most of them come because they get fed and are concentrated during the day’s activities only because we’re are providing the meals. I will like to think that the kids see this as an opportunity to improve their English, as the camp gave the kids tools to be used in reading and comprehension in their next years of education.
I was very impressed with many of the kids, how composed and respectful they were during the day and how motivated they were towards improving their reading skills. I think some activities that we used in the reading workshops, to improve and teach the basic English principles such as sounds and pronunciation, were the best methods to use as their reading level was lower than expected. Tests are always good as long as they receive feedback from the teacher so they can see their mistakes and improve upon them.
The librarian, Bennet, always handed me an Alvaro, a pineapple or pear soft drink, for lunch as he knew I wasn’t so fond of their local cuisine. It is very hard to get used to their food since they use a very hot sauce and crush small pieces of fish in the sauce which doesn’t provide a nice flavor, especially when you see the fish sold in the market –not very hygienic-. I have been also enjoying some eggs with my dinner as one of the kid’s mom sent me 10 eggs to show her appreciation for the effort we were putting into the camps. I had the opportunity to meet her one day as she passed by to thank me personally. That same day that I received the eggs, I told Asore that I wanted to go to his house to thank his mom personally but he said that his mother will probably be in the forest.
I had a very odd range of ages, from 11 to 17, especially for a form 5 in primary when the normal age, this said by our friend Romanus –a son of one of the board members of CESRUD-, is 9. Many of the older students had the hardest time with the camp activities since they had a tough time reading words besides ‘the’, ‘in’ and some few others. This was why Francesca and I decided it was important to create the reading workshops in which we emphasized teaching the sound of the letters. This surprisingly also helped the strongest readers as they had some trouble with some advanced coding with CVC, VV (C- consonant, V- vowel) that the English language has. Since I wasn’t taught the English language but mostly learned from speaking with my mom and memory, I enjoyed learning the basic principles of the English language and know have a better understanding of how to teach kids that not have had the opportunity to learn English. I got frustrated sometimes with the kids as they had a very hard time understanding my instructions given for each assignment, fortunately one of the other teachers always translated it into Frafra –the local language-. The kids then gave me the opportunity to practice two of my many weak virtues, tolerance and patience. Especially as they nodded when asked if they had understand, after a few days I knew better and started trying to explain slower and making sure they understood.
One of my future students for week 2, Mathias, was in the camp site at 2, as he was collecting maze to crush it and make millet. I went over as I was interested in knowing what he was doing, and they explained to me that you pound the maze to get the millet out of it. I asked for the wooden stick and started pounding it until I was stopped and said that I wasn’t pounding but hitting. The difference is in the technique, where hitting means taking it over your head and dropping it into the maze, and pounding means taking it over your head but as you bring it over your head, you go down with it. I guess I’ll get better.