A Chance to Teach

I was given the opportunity to teach a lesson to the standard 3 class today. As I have said, there are about 125 children in the class. I was excited to try my hand at teaching in this setting. I had watched other teachers all week, so I wanted to give it a go.

I built my lesson from the previous lesson that was taught to the class. It was a reading lesson using a poem about mice. Yesterday’s lesson only worked on the first part of the poem, so I thought it would be good to complete the poem today.

I built a song around the poem, one that had a simple yet attractive tune for children from Malawi. It began with a rhythm that was easy for the children to imitate. I drew pictures, acted out the meanings of the words, and lead the children to learn the poem and the vocabulary through song. The lesson structure was well developed.

HOWEVER, at the end of the lesson I knew the children had learned very little. They certainly had fun, but the measure of actual learning was small. I was discouraged with myself!

I am rather glad that this happened the way that it did. In the end it illustrated to me that leaving the decisions to the expertise of those who know the children and the culture is best! In many ways it reinforces my direction and keeps the greatest responsibility for change with those within the culture.