Notes from the Classroom

During my 10 weeks of training (ha--it felt like 10 months), they told us that discipline is a real problem in Madagascar--a huge hinderance to teaching--that we can't smile until December else they'll alk all over us and never listen.

Now, I tried--really I did. I prepared myself. But I'd hardly stepped into the room for the first time when I realiwed I couldn't last 3 MINUTES, much less 3 months, withough smiling. There went THAT idea.

But here's the thing. People are people wherever you go. And when it comes down to it, all people want is for you to be sincere--genuine. And it's the same with these kids too. When I played the stern teacher, they played the naughty students. When I am my normal positive self--when I throw training out the window (sorry, dearest trainers)--it is contagious and they are positive in return. When I am smiling and eager, so are they. When I laugh to myself while they are working, for some reason, they smile and work on the exercise instead of blowing it off and chatting with their friends. And what do you know? After I was told that discipline would be my biggest problem because I'm "too nice," I haven't had a single discipline issue.

But it gets better. See, I tend to . . . find life very entertaining--and I like to laugh at it. So I make fun of myself when I slaughter their names during attendance. I make them do ridiculous warm-ups and exercises. And this is my favorite--I taught them how to pronounce "R" for hangman (the English way instead of the French way) by making them act like pirates. Hahahaha I'm not even kidding. After I acted like one myself, of course. And now our man in hangman always has an eyepatch, peg leg, and hook.

Now here's why this makes me happy: Speaking a foreign language is embarrassing. You sound stupid when you practice, but you can only get past sounding stupid by practicing. Tricky, right? Well, apparently I make weird noises to myself sometimes? Which I realize only when I hear them make the noises back at me (hahaha we acted like kittens and goats one day it was awesome). But hang on--so the point IS, when their teacher is willing to sound ridiculous and act like an indiot and seems to enjoying embarrassing herself, they seem a little more willing to do so themselves. And that's so important if they're going to not sound like zombies when they speak English! But more than that, I think that teaching them to LAUGH at themselves could be the most important thing I could teach them--both for English and life in general.

I'm still learning a LOT (like, you know, how to be a teacher? ha). I've had a couple nearly disastrous lessons when I SERIOUSLY over-estimated what they knew. But come on--when you and a room of 60 kids sit and yell "ARRRRRRRGH!!" at each other like pirates. . . . What more could a girl hope for?