The First Lesson

One week has passed since I came to my primary school in Jinja.
I did my first lesson in Africa yesterday.

It was unexpected lesson. Since one of my school teacher absent from school, I decided to have a class instead of her. It was a math lesson and I did it for primary 4 (P4).

The topic was circle. The contents of the lesson was not so interesting because I had to explain a lot of things in order to teach what is circle and other things. The things I taught them were, a centre, circumferences, a radius and a diameter. I thought it was not so difficult because some of the pupils have compasses and I could borrow the one for teahcer. Even there were some chalks of different colors.

But it was not easy. They always say "yes", so I though they can easily to understand but it was not true. I think there were maily three problems they have. The first problem is my English. Of course, I could speak English but they couldn't understand what I said because I couldn't use suitable word for instructions. It is because I have no experience to teach math in English. The second problem is my pronouciation. Sometimes I felt they couldn't understand what I said. So, I explained it in different way. The second problem is thier language. The pupils in Uganda they started to learn English from Primary 4. It means they just started to learn Enlish. Since they only use English at school it's might be hard for them to use Enlish especially for speaking in class. And finally, their personality, I feel they were a little similar to Japanese pupiles. Even they can freely say what they think but they sometimes afraid of mistakes. When something happens, for example, a younger pupile was crying, they just had a look.  I don't know the reason why, so, I said "Take care of him."

Though my first lesson was more difficult than I expected, I will be better next time.

The pupils, they are pure and I feel I will be in good with them for the next two years.

Kenya @ Jinja