WordWorks

Well, yesterday marked the beginning of our WordWorks Program with the Bakwena Primary school, Standard 7s. We will be getting a group of twelve 13 year olds every afternoon for an hour to do some English Language activities. Yesterday was alright, I think, considering it was the first day. The kids were a little shy and nervous, and so was I! I was happy that Max was there because he really lightened the mood and got the kids to relax a bit. We made name tags (it's going to be really difficult to keep all their names straight!) and had everyone do a short composition about themselves. They talked about their favorite foods, a lot of rice, porridge, and meat; what subjects they like in school, mostly English, Math, and Setswana; and what their place in the is - first born, second born, etc. Then they paired up with a partner, read their compositions and then we all introduced our partners to the group. It was a good way to see what level most of them are at with their English language skills and a little bit about who they are.

I'm a little nervous about all of a sudden basically being an ESL teacher for the rest of the summer, and also about the sustainability of the program. Right now Rachel and I seem to be the main people in charge of the programming, and I'm hoping that we can start to switch some of the responsibility of the planning and execution of activities over to library staff so that when we leave they can easily continue on. One of the library workers is actually trained as a teacher, so I'm hoping that perhaps we can get some of her input and/or advice.

Yesterday I had the littler kids finish with the alphabet so I will put the rest of the letters on the wall today and then I'll have to think of another project they might be able to work on for a bit. The other thing about the WordWorks club is that is takes up the time that I was using to do activities with the younger school children, so I'll am going to concentrate on WordWorks for a bit but then maybe find a way to still spend time with the other children.

Tonight we are making dinner for our family, which makes me a little nervous, but hopefully we can prepare something that they will like. The communication with our host mother is rather difficult. We can often tell that she is unhappy with something and that we are not doing something right, but she refuses to tell us what it is exactly we are doing wrong or what we should be doing instead. The woman we met at Tayla's dinner party said something interesting that was "In my culture I cannot tell you what you are doing wrong." So, it seems to be a cultural thing not to criticize, but it makes it hard to know what you should be doing differently.

Oh, cultural exchange, how interesting you are.