Colombia: Day One
Today was the first day that I taught without the help of my brother, which made me a little nervous. This day was the day that I put my teaching skills to the test.
As I drink my last sip of coffee and milk, my grandpa hands me over the keys to his car. He had thankfully let me use his Kia Soul that has now become the "Chicos mobile." As I pull up to the school entrance, My mom and I were surprised to see that the school sidewalk was being newly paved. Yes, it maybe great that the old cracked sidewalk was being fixed, but this meant that we had to carefully cut across wet pavement with our suitcases and bags full of heavy material.
Once we situated ourselves in the familiar classroom, we began class. A total of twenty children showed up, but new people come every day. We started off our day with the typical "Good Morning" song where los chicos learn how to say good morning, how are you, I'm fine, and what about you. We moved on to the alphabet, which most of the children had a good understanding of the pronunciation.
Numbers were next on our agenda, so I taught them how to count from 1-30 and used various games to keep them engaged in the lesson, such as rolling dice and ball toss. Finally, we finished off this lesson with a classroom favorite called "Mata Moscas" or "Fly Swatter." I scattered flashcards with numbers across the floor and had the children sit in a circle. We gave two students fly swatters and called out a number; whoever swats the correct flashcard first wins and the loser must pass the fly swatter to the next person. Of course, they had a blast swatting away.
Next, we stood up to play simon says and taught them up, down, side, in, out, right hand, and left hand. This gave the students a break from sitting and gave them a chance to stretch.
The core lesson was now introduced which are various types of community helpers and places. Today we taught them teacher, doctor, lawyer, and police officer. For places, we introduced the words school, church, cinema, and hospital.
Now it was time for lunch and recess, everyone's favorite time of the day. Students played with water guns, bubbles, jump rope, lacrosse, American football, soccer, and ball toss. Many of the children had previously learned how to play American football from Chris, and they were excited to teach the others.
... And I ended up being everyone's name tag holder. Note: I am also holding someone's glasses
We finished the day off with arts and crafts, which included drawing the school, hospital, church, and cinema on paper bags to build our city.
Overall the day was a success. It felt amazing to be back in Colombia to teach at the school where it all started.
