My second semester here in Kibuye is finished! This year was one of the most eventful of my life, with a lot of traveling, vaccines, quarantines, new team jobs, and of course, my main role as teacher to a 5th grade student. For this semester I had one student who has been such a joy to teach! Having such a small class, there is a lot of time for learning opportunities to extend the curriculum. This is an incredible gift to me as a teacher, and the students as well.
Now of course, we spend most of our time in the classroom with normal schedules and nothing extra exciting going on. However, every once in a while we have the time and the opportunity to have a little fun. Below are some of the extra interesting things that happen in our small school.
Math has proven to be one of the harder subjects to make interactive. Once you get into the older grades the concepts become more abstract. It no longer is practical to use physical objects when adding 1,456 and 239. But one of our favorite things to do was a flipped classroom. This where the student has some time to study the lesson in their textbook, and then teaches me the concept, while I listen, learn, and enjoy. It is always fun to hear how he chooses to explain the concept, and to learn how his brain works.
Science this year has been full of fun experiments!
We became chemists making reactions, seeing what happens, and trying to figure out why. Like in the video above.
We became culinarians, making ice cream using only juice, ice, and salt to learn about the states of matter. It was delicious.
My student then became an engineer and worked on a car design that traveled using only the air from balloons. His first 5 trials went 0 cm even though each one was an improvement of the last. On the sixth trial it finally went 407 cm! It was quite the learning experience.
He then turned environmental scientist studying and reporting on different forms of renewable energy. He took a deep look into our own solar energy system where the hospital and our homes get most of their energy. We got a tour from the team engineer and both learned A LOT about how solar power works! It was a fascinating project for both of us.
PE held all sorts of amazing adventures. They learned about teamwork by writing letters with their bodies, making decisions together, drawing pictures using strings attached to only one pen, and other team building games. They practiced throwing, catching, basketball, soccer, four square, and corn hole (a mid-west favorite for those of you who don't know it). It was always a special treat too when a younger sibling became an assistant teacher for the day. It is never a dull moment with these kids!
We don't only have fun within the classroom though. This year around halloween each child chose a character of a book or a character in history to dress as and write about.
The younger students chose a book character, wrote about them and the book they are in, dressed up as them, and presented their work to the school and many parents! We were so proud of their hard work and presentation skills!
The older kids chose a person from history and created a living wax museum to present what they had learned about who they chose. Once their "button" in the museum was pressed, they talked all about who their person was, and what they did in history. I was equally as impressed with their writing, memorization, and presentation skills, as I was with how still they stood when they were 'wax'! It was quite a fun day.
This past fall we participated in a 5K run for the AME Fund (African Medical Education Fund) which raises tuition for people specifically in Africa who would like to go to medical school. In the months leading up to the run, I lead the middle schoolers and some other teammates in training to get ready! It was a blast to get to share my love of running with them, and see their appreciation for it grow as it got easier and easier. And still to this day one of them continues to join me on my runs!
One last great aspect of teaching here is how often we get to be outside. With small classes and weather that is almost always perfect, going outside for a day or even just for a class period is such a fun way to throw something new into the week. And who doesn't love some fresh air!
Looks like fun!
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