Teachin has started

What has happened lately? I have moved away from my observation period in the classrooms and have started teaching in the classrooms as a co-teacher. I have found this to be quite enjoyable because after observing for so long and remaining silent it is quite enjoyable to speak to the students. The observation period was effective and essential because had I just jumped into teaching I would be out of breath trying to speak my mind. Rather, I have been able to priortize what I believe to be some important aspects of teaching here and have chosen to start with these areas in the schools. One issue I am engaging in is getting the teachers to show up and another is being positive (and by being positive I mean not hitting the students). My main objective is to implement learner centered methodologies into the classroom, and while this will be my focus, there are some building blocks that need to be laid as well. The students and teachers currently view being wrong as a failure as opposed to being apart of the learning process. Therefore, classroom participation is minimal and held to a very few kids. I am trying to be overly positive and encouraging in the classroom to get the students comfortable with me and eachother to increase the participation. It's a slow process that I think is working, however we'll hopefully see the differences with time.

I visited our clinic to help pass out Anti-Retro Virals (ARVs help prolong life) to people living with HIV. This, like most of the things I do here, I just sort of fell upon one day, and before you know it, I was trying to give my strongest, hardest, most positive and healing thoughts to a dozen or so of 1 to 5 year olds. Granted, there were mainly adults and my wishes went out to them, but I was not expecting to see little children. Some kids had looks of discontentment that belonged to people ten times their age.

The job here is tough. They did say that this is "the toughest job you'll ever love" but I like to think of it as "the toughest job you'll sometimes like". I am learning new things though. The situations seem hopeless at times, however, the resilience in the children inspire me unexpectedly everyday. They laugh, dance, sing, and play all in the face of hunger, coldness (it's winter here now), sickness, and abuse. When I witness this first hand, I can't help but think how crazy of a world this is, how crazy it is that I am here, but most importantly how crazy it would be if I were anywhere else.

The pictures are of a district track meet (that's the high jump you're seeing, and I got to sleep next to 12 teachers, a goat, and 3 chickens in a classroom for 3 nights for this event), and the other is of Chimusanya and Luangwa High School Futbol Teams (I am in the back row 2nd from the right).