Last week, G9 began practicum teaching and what started off
being the most nerve racking thing I have done thus far in Ethiopia has become
the most exciting thing and the happiest I have felt in country. Our group has
been dispersed over three schools in Butajira. Last week we co-taught for 3
days with a fellow G9 member. This week we have been solo teaching one section
and observing a fellow PCT for a second session. We’ve had to make our lesson
plans and make sure we timed our classes correctly (50 minutes). We took the
lessons from the student textbooks, but had to make them our own. Our training
has taught us that the textbook objectives do not often match the level of the
students, therefore we had to adapt out lessons to the classes we were teaching
while at the same time making sure that the new objectives we had come up with
matched the Ethiopian curriculum. Each day we switched classrooms giving us the
opportunity to teach from 3rd grade to 8th grade. I was
so nervous on my first day. After the 2 hours were over however (with the
co-teaching the first week we taught 2 classes), I felt a huge rush of
happiness. I did it!! Yes it was difficult and yes it did not go as planned, as
I had been told it wouldn’t however I was so happy to have gotten through it with
no major catastrophes. The children were so excited to have an American teach
them English for that afternoon session that truthfully it didn’t matter too
much how well the lesson went.
So here’s why practicum has made me
feel so much joy…
Thus far, to say that pre-service
training has been stressful is an understatement. Ever since we arrived in
Ethiopia I have felt so many emotions and gone through so many moods it would
be too complicated to try to describe to anyone back home how I am feeling, but
I’m going to give it a try. First, living with a host family is challenging. My
Ethiopian family is wonderful, but they are of a culture very different than my
own and so the integration process gets frustrating. Second, our medical
sessions can get stressful because the Peace Corps doctors are keeping us
informed of all the sicknesses and diseases we could possibly get if we are not
careful. Third, there are our safety and security sessions where we are told to
constantly be on the lookout and watching our backs because we can’t trust
anyone. Fourth, we have daily language sessions that are crucial to our
integration process because if we can’t speak the language, it’s going to be an
even more difficult two years. All in all, it’s a lot to process at once.
With all these stresses however, doing
practicum for the past two weeks and having our technical training sessions
puts all those stresses and fears away. I’ve enjoyed teaching and lesson
planning and it makes me so much more excited to get to my site. I’ll be
honest, having to go through all the challenges I listed above makes me wonder
at times what I’m doing here, but going through practicum has gotten me excited
all over again about working in Ethiopia. The students loved having us as
teachers, and to find out that I’m able to get the students focused and
attentive for a lesson is such a rewarding feeling. There may be tons of
challenges around me, but it feels good to know that I’m going to enjoy my job
and that teaching can completely alter my mood, in a positive way. When we go
for our technical sessions on training Ethiopian teachers, or when we get to
teach as we did the past two weeks during practicum all those stresses seem to
disappear.
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