I may take this back if and when I decide to rejoin the corporate army one day... I dont care what job you can think of involving working with adults.. and I include professions such as Rocket Scientist, Brain Surgeon, Physics Professor... etc there is not one that is more challenging than working with children. They are Brutal!
So this week we started at the school. Here are some points to note before I start:
1. We are not teachers
2. The children do not speak English
3. We do not speak Nepali
4. It was apparently impossible for the real teachers to tell us what level the children were at for each subject we were "teaching"
Ok so you get the picture.. we arrive on Thursday morning at 11 ready to take 2 pupils for 3 hours of lessons. We literally were going in there blind as we had no idea whatsoever as to what level they were at.
We spent three days preparing only to realise pretty much immediately after entering the classroom that all the material we had was way too hard. Oh no. 1 minute down, 2 hours 59 minutes to go.. right then. Luckily at that point I looked over into other half of our makeshift classroom to see Jon playing an ingenious game with his kids which I very quickly adapted for mine. I was so relieved when day 1 was over at least now we had an idea of what level the kids were at. Day 2 was much easier as we had tonnes of stuff to keep them busy but it is just non stop for the whole 3 hours. The kids demand so much attention and they are so excited at this new environment they find themselves in. As well as that you have to constantly make sure that no one is bored or has finished their work. That no one gets more attention than anyone else. That everyone is having fun. That everyone can understand you... aaaaaagggghhhh bring back iMAKE!! ha ha
To be honest I think Jon an me have learnt so much this past week an I am quite proud of what we have done (we are still rubbish but we are getting better). And at the end of the two days the kids were really upset to hear that their special class was finished and that it was some other kids turn the next day. So we must be doing something right.. or was it the chocolates we were handing out every 5 minutes!!!
We have had power cuts for the last 2 days so have had to travel to the next town for the internet. In light of that we decided to take the rest of the day off (all the kiddies at the orphanage are sick) and we are off to town to have a bit of a well deserved knees up! (Does anyone say that anymore..?)
Have a nice weekend!
Caroline
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