Day Eight: March 28, 2012

Second day in the schools, and this was a little smoother.  I knew more of what to expect, and I think the students are already getting used to me being around.  I taught my first lesson today and I think it went pretty well.  I taught the 1E math class.  What that means is that the students are in Form 1 (freshman) and they are group 5.  Each class is separated by Form, and by a letter so that there are more than four classes.   I taught students how to change percentages into fractions, and then we reviewed going back and forth from fractions, percents and decimals.  I found that the students seem to be comfortable with new material, but then when it is time for them to combine topics they get confused.  It was really exciting to be in this class because when I asked a question to the class I had almost all 16 shouting out answers, both right and wrong.  The students wanted to come to the board and show their work and they wanted to help their classmates.  I wish I could bottle up all the enthusiasm in these classrooms and bring it back to the States.  If we could mix the focus of the students in the States with the enthusiasm of the students here in San Pedro the educational system would be unstoppable. 

 I also was able to obverse Mrs. Iris in a Form 2 class.  They were reviewing for a geometry test for tomorrow.  She did an awesome activity where she put diagrams up on the board and gave the students the matching vocabulary words but all cut into little pieces.  The students had to not only make the vocabulary words would the strips they were given, but they also had to match them with the corresponding diagrams.  She also made it a race to see which groups could do it the fastest.  I really liked this activity because it really made the students think about the meaning of the vocabulary words. 

I have only been in the classroom for two days and I have already realized that sometimes technology isn’t the best tool in the classroom.  I feel like I spent so much time using technology during my 10 weeks in the States, when I could have done it without the technology and the students might have done better.  Technology for the sake of technology is a complete and total waste.  These classrooms only have chalk and craft supplies, and that is literally the extent of their supplies, but their students are still getting an education.  It has really made me think about the role of a teacher in the classroom.  The teacher is the GPS but the students are the drivers, and it doesn’t matter how snazzy the tools you use to get to your destination, all that matters is that you get there.

**Random story of the day: So the 1E class is the prep class that didn’t score very high on their entrance exams and they have a lot of character and even more class clowns.  Today a boy in class looked and me and told me that he was probably going to behave badly.  I asked him if he was acting badly now or if he was just warning me that it was coming.  He told me that he was going to try really hard to behave but he could make any promises.  Well he did his work and participated in class and never acted out until I was trying to learn names.  He made sure that he told me all the wrong names haha.