I recently realized that I haven’t written much about the daily classes that we teach to the kids at Project Genesis. Obviously, I am not really a qualified teacher, and it is quite difficult for me to teach to a class of screaming 8-year-olds who just want to go outside and play. In order to understand the difficulties with teaching this particular group of kids, you have to imagine a scenario quite different than a classroom in the United States. First, imagine you went into an elementary school. You select at random two kids from each grade, and put them all into a room about the size of your average home bathroom. Then, you sit them all down around a tiny plastic table, and try to hold their attention for an hour and a half with educational activities about math and English.
On Monday I began a unit on story writing upon suggestion from my mom (who holds a master’s in education and is quite a good teacher). All we have to work with is scrap paper and crayons, so I started off by telling them to brainstorm a list of things they could write their story about. Many of them chose a butterfly as their main character, others wrote stories about each other falling off of bicycles. Once they had chosen a topic, I told them to write an outline of everything that was going to happen in their story. This went fairly well, and I was quite pleased that most of the kids were jumping into the unit with enthusiasm. Of course there were a few kids who found the idea of writing a story to give to their parents to be the most odious thing they had ever heard, but to those kids I gave special one on one attention- I sat down with them and had them dictate to me what they wanted their story to be about. Once they had their outline all written out, I gave them a big piece of paper to begin drawing their front cover. During all of this, they’re all shoving pieces of paper in my face asking me if they’re doing it right. This would normally be cute and useful, but when you have twelve pieces of paper shoved in your face, it’s difficult to see much less give a kid what they need in terms of one on one help.
Most days there is something going on that makes it easier to have class. Either another volunteer will have an idea, or the kids will have an idea for something they want to do. When we can’t think of anything, we end up just doing flash cards with math and english- something that isn’t particularly helpful but is better than nothing. I’ve been wanting to incorporate science and art more into the classes, but it is very difficult because we have basically no supplies. At this point, because I only have three weeks left (!!!), I want to establish some sort of mechanism for continuity in the lessons that the kids will receive from future volunteers. I have yet to devise this mechanism, but hopefully I will be able to figure something out.
As always, thanks for reading and please feel free to leave a comment below (click on the title of this post if you can’t see the comments section).
