School this morning was interesting. As with the previous day, my teacher pretty much ignored my presence in the classroom, so I sought out Ajeeb during the break to figure out what was going on. He invited me to teach Year 6 and 7 Maths and Science with him and another teacher. I gratefully accepted his offer. About 20 minutes after our talk he came back to me, saying that he had talked with my teacher and believed there was a ‘misunderstanding’. I have no idea what the misunderstanding was and I don’t know what he said to her but it did make a difference. I guess coming over to the school, with the expectation that I was going to start teaching straight away and having that not happen threw me a little. Prior to arriving in the Maldives I thought I would be teaching a couple of lessons a day, but it turned out that my role was more as an aide, someone to support the students’ learning of English. Maybe if I had been more forward in asking I might have had more of an opportunity to teach, but I also think it depends partially on the teacher to which you are assigned.
Before school finished I showed the students pictures of Brisbane and my suburb. They went nuts, asking about 20 questions at once that I couldn’t understand due to a) the noise in the room and b) their accents. It was a really good activity and I found that some students who hadn’t said a word to me opened up a little and asked a few questions.
Today also signalled the start of swimming lessons. We had been told by Ajeeb that there would be two sessions, with Years 1-4A participating in the first hour and Years 4B-7 participating in the second hour. There were roughly 70 students in each session.
The first session was pure and utter chaos. Thankfully there were quite a few volunteers in our group who had previous experience teaching swimming – I don’t know what we would have done without them. They decided that we were going to assess the students’ swimming capabilities and then sort them into ability groups. We would then divide ourselves between these groups and teach the same set of students each day. Well, the kids (being kids) got bored pretty quickly while waiting to be assessed and started to run around, pick up the rather large rocks on the beach and throw them wherever they pleased. Trying to get them to stop was a battle. Thankfully the second session wasn’t as bad. For those future Maldives volunteers reading this, the school needs goggles. Lots of goggles. Quite a lot of the children wouldn't put their head under water unless they had a pair. And while having goggles was a pain at times (at least 5-10 minutes of each lesson was spent tightening and loosening them) they did allow the children to gain a little more confidence in the water.
Being a Thursday night (the equivalent of our Friday night) the island was a hive of activity. There were people everywhere. As we passed the Bashi court on our way to dinner Nicole and I overheard one of the children call out, “The Barbies are here!” We knew that was what we were referred to on the island by the children, but it was quite amusing to actually hear them call us that.
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