A New Motto

This is my first week teaching by myself and the 6th week that the kids have been coming to class. I am feeling a bit stuck because I am at the end of my repertoire and am being forced to start the nitty gritty, by which I mean the dreaded verb tenses. Because I only have three weeks left, I don't really want to get into it with the kids.

It occurs to me that I need to take moment to define two key words in the last few sentences.

Class- This is three or four "benches" (pieces of wood) set in a semi circle under one tree in the front "yard" (dirt plot) in front of Mama Zenebu's house. Some days when there is a large class the boys run to the neighboring "houses" (mud and stick shacks) to get green plastic lawn chairs. There are NO resources other than what I bring with me. I write sentences on paper and hold them up to my chest so that the students can copy them.

Kids- These vary every day and it isn't fair to use the word 'kid'. Most range between the ages of 13 and 17 but there are now four mamas that have been coming to class that are probably in their late twenties. Sometime they bring their babies with them. The size varies depending on the day and the often wander in a half hour late.

At first I got really nervous about teaching by myself and overwhelmed by the sense that something had to change with the way that class was run. It has come to the point where the kids don't know why they are there and they are getting bored. So I have decided that the most important thing I can do is to attempt to teach just the things that they specifically want to be taught. I have passed out note cards that they are writing Swahili words on that they want to know in English and I translate them into English with the help of dear Amani everyday. I am also doing my best to make it as fun and exciting as possible. We are doing speaking exercises everyday by drawing questions in English out of my cheeseball safari hat (sorry dad). And on Friday Amani and I are going to teach the kids to sing Lean on Me. This was the consensus after about 4 hours of hard core thinking on which song to teach. I had the whole house debating what the best song to teach a bunch of punk teenagers was.

The moral of the story is "you can only do what you can do". I am excited about it.

So if anyone has a good idea about what would be fun and informative (not necessarily an English lesson either) that I can do without electricity or any place to hang or write anything, I would appreciate any advice I can get. I have very limited funds as well but I am open to suggestion. My email is chelseahowes@gmail.com. Thanks!