Teaching English
I’ve now taught three informally organized English classes at “Le Centre Sociale Derkle,” a community center about a half hour walk from my house and CIEE. Gamo, the CIEE “outreach” coordinator, helped connect me with them and so far it’s been great!
This past Saturday, I went from 15h00 to 19h00, teaching both a children’s class and an adult one. We had met briefly with Assane, the man in charge, the day before and learned a bit about the center and what they did, but I wasn’t prepared to be thrust into an actual teaching role! I thought I would be watching for a few weeks or helping out in some way, but they’re very short staffed and run just on volunteers. Since I was the resident expert on English, I had to teach.
At first I was like, “What? I’ve never taught English. I don’t know what they know or want or usually do… Why am I holding this chalk?” But after a few seconds of shock, my workshop-leader-swim-instructor-math-tutor skills clicked on and I got going.
Today was even better. I went over after class and split a cab with two other volunteer students (who didn’t go on Saturday) because I couldn’t quite remember the route for CIEE. We got there too early because I forgot that the kids session, from 15h00 to 17h00 is only on Wednesdays an Saturdays. The other two got another tour but then had to leave for something else before we could do anything. I stayed, and had come prepared with ideas, makeshift lesson plans, and games. It was just adults, or rather advanced students, today and we practiced pronunciation and weather words and then played a simplified Taboo game to practice speaking. It went really well and no one wanted to leave. One little girl even gave me a Canada pencil as a “thank you teacher” gift. It’s only been two days! But young and old alike seemed to think I was funny and my animated impressions of temperatures and exaggerated facial expressions to match some difficult pronunciations put everyone more at ease. It’s hard to speak a language you’re learning if you’re worried or tense! If your teacher makes herself look like an idiot over-pronouncing the differences between “th-ree, tr-ee, and fr-ee” then maybe you won’t be so worried about looking like an idiot too.
It’s also great practice for my French and Wolof since I need to speak a mixture of both to teach. The students already know a decent base of English, so sometimes it’s me asking them how to say something in French. I’m excited for Wednesday and the game I have planned for the kid’s class on “playing verbs.”
I can already tell I’m going to be spending too much time at Derkle.