Heading North

6/1/2013

Well I was going to blog last night, but I got really caught up with helping Brett, my field director, and his girlfriend Angelina make salads for our braai, which got started a little earlier than I anticipated.  A few Tafels later, and it was 2:30am, and I had to be up at 7 for an eight hour car ride up North. (this morning was rough!) There is a breaking news story at the end, but you have to read all of my babble before I get to the good part!

Training has been going really well so far.  We’ve talked about the practicalities of teaching, such as lesson planning, classroom management, and handling large class sizes with multiple levels of English ability. Some of this is super repetitive for me, but it’s nice to be able to help teach and support the others in our group.  We’ve also been talking a lot about Namibian culture and how culture shock sets in and is recovered, as well as how to cope with culture shock and loneliness. The last main chunk of our training so far has been language learning.  Nicholas, our Rukwangali instructor was very helpful and patient with me, since our sessions were usually around 4:00.  I get really hyper/spastic around 4:00 (preceded by intense sassiness from 2-4). Apparently, many taxi drivers, bar tenders, men in general propose marriage to women a lot, so I asked him how he would propose to someone.  He got really awkward (not in a deeply uncomfortable culturally awkward way, just a cute “I’m teaching a woman who is older than me this stuff… how awkward” blushing way), but he taught us, and also how to say no!

We are on our way up North to Eengedjo Secondary School for a week of practical training in front of students who are volunteering to be in our classes.  The drive is spectacular! You look out the window, and there is just nothing for miles and miles, except 10-20 ft tall brush, and termite hills taller than me (insert joke here about how Rachel is short, Mike Mayer).  We’ll be teaching one 45 minute lesson each day this week.  I am partnered with Ted, who is actually placed at Eengadjo for the year, and we have a science themed week of plans.  We’re looking at what happens when things mix together, and then running an experiment with controls, an independent variable (type of candy) and dependent variable (how high the geyser goes when that candy is put in Coke).

It will be really helpful to be at a Namibian school, teaching Namibian students, who are really different from American students, and are used to classes structured very differently than I structure my own classrooms. We’re partnered with the Namibian government to help bring a more student-centered approach to education to the schools here, but most of the teachers use a very teacher-centered approach, where the children are expected to be silent, not ask questions and memorize facts, not to make connections or think critically about the world.  I am hoping that I can break my students out of their shells somewhat, and help them develop more concrete reasons to go school beyond “because I have to.”  More to come on this later, but I’m realizing how important fostering connections between all subjects in school and facets of life is to me, and I want to make that a bigger part of my life’s trajectory. 

BREAKING NEWS: I will be meeting the President of Namibia!  Since my school is the first of the Vision 2030 Schools, he is coming to the inauguration in late January, early February.  Namibia is such a small country that people all know each other, which is cool-government isn’t this like totally distant entity.  The leadership are tangible people.  When the whole country has only 2,000,000 people, it’s hard not to know someone involved in national politics at some level.  And I get to meet the President!! I’ll need to buy a new dress!