Teaching the class

25/01/2012

Today I arrived at school and my teacher wasn't there. Awesome. Some of the other volunteer's teachers had already been away so I kind of knew the drill: you have different substitute teachers, over different periods and no work is done as no plan is left by the absent teacher. Generally, it is the volunteer who is left to teach, which I was initially happy enough to do at the beginning of the day.

The day started off well. There was quite a bit of work for the kids to do in maths, so that took them straight through the first 80 minutes to Dhivehi.

During break Nicole and I went to see Ajeeb about painting. Frustratingly, the paint had been outside the Year 1 classrooms all along - he had always made it sound as if he had to go out and buy more, when in reality we could have started painting straight away. I wasn't too happy to see brushes clogged with paint sitting in blue water. Who knows how long they had been there for.

After break things in the classroom went downhill fairly quickly. The sub teachers did nothing, so I was left to teach the kids, despite the fact I had no idea what they were meant to be doing that day. It didn't help that they weren't listening at all. By the time 12:00pm came I couldn't get out of the classroom soon enough. The kids picked up on my bad mood and asked me if I was angry. They honestly had no idea what the problem was, even though I had lectured them numerous times throughout the day.

Swimming went about the same as it had in previous sessions. Over the past couple of days I had been working with a kid called Looma. He is super frustrating to teach because his attention span only lasts about 3 seconds, but he is hilarious at the same time. I have a love-hate relationship with Looma. The second session was not the best either, as none of our girls were listening. Caitlin and I gave them a lecture about how badly they were behaving, which seemed to work for all of 1 minute. Soon after this two of the girls began to misbehave again, so I told them they were going to sit on the beach for the rest of the lesson. As I made to get out of the water they freaked out - they obviously didn't think we were serious. After that they were pretty well behaved. A tip for the volunteers: if the kids are misbehaving, do take them out of the water. The first time. We always threatened them with that, but never followed up (breaking the golden rule of behaviour management). It does make a difference in how they choose to act in the water. The third session was spent trying to fine tune the girls' freestyle. Some were beginning to make slow improvements, while others were progressing very quickly. With only 3 sessions left before we leave Thinadhoo it's a shame that the kids have to wait another 6 months before they can participate in more swimming lessons.