I am utterly humbled by a class of Kenyan 13-year-olds who are learning English as a foreign language. They are in the final year of Primary School in Shela village.
While carrying out my very alternative lesson plan, we managed to crack up laughing and collaborate as a group, while also encouraging individual creativity. I was endlessly impressed by their willingness to learn, substantial amount of existing knowledge, and endearing shyness and eagerness at the same time to let their light shine.
They now know about abbreviations and acronyms, and the differences between them. They also learnt about antonyms, and how to construct them. And they even worked out the antonym of antonym! They reverse-engineered phrases using their own names as acronyms, they made an antonym version out of the entire school motto (and promptly ran to tell the Headmaster after class — who thankfully found it funny!) and they shouted an astounding YES when the Headmaster asked them if they wanted me to come back tomorrow for more…
Humbled and beaming, is how my insides were feeling!
So I now have teenage-teaching slots on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings throughout my stay here, if I can come up with enough wacky lesson plans that stealthily contain all the necessary exam preparations. I would love for these young people to fly through their Kenyan Certificate of Primary Education paper in English later in the year. I remember teachers from my childhood who had that exam-passing effect on me… It would be nice to return the favour to the next young generation!
It is quite curious that a day can start in an iodine-splattered operating theatre scrub uniform, with my gloved hands holding an inflamed appendix that has just been removed (the Chief’s daughter is making a great recovery), and end in smart trousers and shirt, holding a piece of chalk to draw on a blackboard that also contains Swahili and Arabic words for the school children to learn. Life is pretty wide, profound and vast these days.
One of my happiest moments was perhaps when I left the class after teaching and ran into some very young children with ice lollies: I asked them where they had got them from, then got led by a giggling flock of them to a family house across from the Dispensary, and I was then given a choice of four different flavours by the mother of the house! I don’t know if I have words to describe how glorious an orange ice lolly is in this continuous sweaty stickiness… maybe I will ask the English class for some synonyms tomorrow 🙂
Thank you Shela village.
