Kindergarten teacher!

So maybe I will follow the family trade of teaching one day. . . .

I’m helping out at the “pre-school” which is broken up into the “baby class” (3-5 yr olds) and the “top” class (5-7 yr olds).Top is basically kindergarten—and that’s where I found myself a few days a week helping out!
I honestly don’t know what kids in America are learning in pre-school and kindergarten but these kids definitely know how to read and write pretty well. Most of them are pretty smart kids.

I’ve been pretty impressed by what they’re doing. . . but I do not have much to compare it to either. . .

One thing that is different though is the lack of one-on-one attention that the “slow” kids get. There are definitely a few kids who take foreeeeeeeeeeever to do anything and they rarely do it right. The teacher, Eve, pretty much just says “oh well, they are young, they have time to learn.” It’s just not really a big deal to repeat a grade a couple of times here, it seems. Age doesn’t really matter that much. If they are smart—great, move along! If you’re slow—just keep trying till you get it!
I try to help the slow ones as much as I can but I don’t know how much I’m getting through. . .there’s two of them that seriously look at me and respond as if there is absolutely nothing in their head.

And then there’s the “special needs” kids. . . Eve said there is no one to work with these kids so they just stay in pre-school—pretty much forever. They really would love for someone who could work with these kinds of kids. I’m not exactly sure what “special needs” means. Agnes is in my “top” class and she is at least 10, quite possibly 11 or 12. She has “something wrong in her head.” Seriously the work she does. . . I don’t even know what it is sometimes. And Eve just tells me to check the right ones (sometimes there actually are a few right ones, which she may have simply copied from her neighbor) and write in the right answers for the wrong ones. It’s just so sad to not be able to do anything for her.I do not have much experience with “special needs” children so it is weird for me with Agnes sometimes because she LOOKS completely normal. Like a normal 11 year old in every way. And sometimes she looks at me and I swear I feel like it’s all a joke. For instances, I will mark her work and say, “good job!” and she’ll just look at me—and I sometimes think her face is saying, “oh come on, you know that is crap! Gotcha! Got you all!” I know that might sound awful for me to say that, but it’s just so weird to have these seemingly normal 11 year old in a kindergarten class who can’t even do what the kindergarteners are doing!

It is crazy to me how little adult supervision there is around these kids ALL the time. Even at school during break, they all hang out and play outside the building and there’s no teacher most of the time.
I am trying to figure out if these kids are just really good and don’t need watch dogs OR are they doing bad things but it just doesn’t matter that much here. It is hard for me to figure it out since I don’t know the language.

Are they being mean to each other but I can’t hear it?
Or have they just learned the hard way what they can and cannot do?
Or have they just been disciplined really well? (Like I’ve already said, these kids are SO disciplined!)I just couldn’t imagine seeing a school playground in America filled with 177 kids and no teachers standing at every corner. . . .

Don’t get me wrong, I do hear the kids doing “wrong” things around the house lots of times. I’m not exactly sure what it is most of the time, but I can tell that someone is being mean to someone else or just doing something wrong.

This thought just occurred me to. Perhaps the reason they are so well behaved is because they still receive spankings as a form of discipline? Well I do not know what actually happens at the school. I haven’t seen any discipline like that. But the Bethany Village kids receive spankings if they have repeatedly been disobedient and have already received discipline in other ways.

But I would venture to say that in general, Africans use spankings as a form of discipline more than Americans. And perhaps, just perhaps, that is why they are “better behaved???”

Who knows. . .I am trying to work my way into the role of authority slooowly.
I HAD to learn these Luganda phrases the first day at the pre-school and I am implanting it into my day to day language around ALL the kids!
There were caught off guard when I started saying these things in their language!

Toekooba! = don’t hit!

Seedeeka! = be quiet!

Toecheecola! =stop doing that!

(this is not how you actually spell these words. I just wrote them how they sounded so that I had better odds of saying it right.)

And it turns out that just a stern look can do the trick much of the time—and you don’t need any language for that! I love the power of my eyes in a classroom! Haha

And it is fun to be in there with Christine (the 5 yr old from my house.) Mama Jane said she had heard that Christine “played a lot” when she should be working in class, but I have not seen that yet! She is the first one to finish every time! I think she is so excited to have me in there—she is on her best behavior most of the time. It’s so cute!

One more funny note from the classroom. They had to draw a picture of the sentence, “she carries a basket.” Claire had to act it out for us. So she picks up a basket and walks. The teacher immediately yells, “She CARRIES the basket, Claire!” At which point Claire immediately puts the basket on her head and walks. Duh, Claire, you don’t carry things in your hands! So all of the pictures they drew were of a woman carrying a basket on her head. Made me laugh.