Workshop #1 and Other Misc. Activities

Lesson Planning Workshop
My primary job is to offer workshops for the 6 secondary schools in my cluster. I held the first one last Friday on lesson planning. Overall, I think it went pretty well. To be sure, I have listed the positives and negatives as follows:

Positives:
1) One representative came from each school! (though one was 2.5 hours late but who is counting?)
2) I have never seen Malawian men so giddy as when they were matching up math facts as a race-hilarious!
3) They asked legitimate questions (and some ridiculous ones) but they were genuinely interested!
4) At the end they actually went to the teachers room to get books to write a five-step lesson plan! They were using active strategies, using resource books, and wrote REAL lesson plans!

Negatives:
1) We held the workshop at the head cluster school--the headteacher was supposed to reserve the teacher development center but as I was setting up 15 guys came in for a red cross meeting. whoops, guess he forgot.
2) I have visited all but one of my schools because it is SO far away (I am actually not really sure where it is...) anyway, their representative walks in and says "you are just a stranger to me." yikes, nice to meet you too.
3) I am not sure these lessons will be implemented into the classroom....baby steps.


I am Teaching!
Wahoo! I have been wanting to teach but it is difficult with traveling for school visits so my headteacher is letting me teach 2 days a week. I am teaching English to form 3 and Life Skills to form 1. I really love teaching the form 3 class, but form 1 can barely speak basic conversational English (secondary school in Malawi is supposed to be taught entirely in English). The first lesson was on self esteem. Imagine trying to learn about why self esteem is important in Greek--yeah, it was like that for the students.

A.Y.I.D.
Active Youth In Development--This is is a youth group I have been working with in a small village about 20 minute bike ride away. They named me their "patron" (technicalities) and I am really excited about working with them because they are super enthusiastic and ambitious. Last week we had a composting workshop (thanks to Sarah and Austin my environment volunteer neighbors!) The fields in Malawi are totally depleted of nutrients because they constantly grow maize and burn the fields, then they have to spend tons of money on expensive fertilizer with lots of nitrogen which runs off into the lake, etc etc...Now, they are planning on doing more workshops with the farmers to teach them the stuff they learned! This week we are having a speaker come from the local health center. They have some big goals and I am trying to keep mine realistic but it is so refreshing to work with an enthusiastic group.


I think that is all for now...I love hearing from you! Please keep the letters/emails coming! I miss and love you all!

loads of love,
elisabeth