Thursday, June 26th, 2008. Today was a quiet day. I decided to visit my Sunshine Kidlets again. It’s always a joy to be around these kids. They’re so friendly, eager, and curious. When I got there, I quickly got roped into reading a story. Now realize that most of these children don’t even speak Afrikaans yet, let alone English. What am I to do now? Give it a go anyway, of course. I perused the selection of books to find that there wasn’t anything really age appropriate for them… the English books anyway. They weren’t in too good a shape either, most books missing pages and what not. Sigh… I eventually picked the one that looked the most interesting and simple to understand. Still, I found myself acting out the story more than reading it. Haha… the kids totally looked glazed over. I don’t think they really got the story and I probably looked really silly to them what with all my gestures and facial expressions and occasion Afrikaans word. But hey, I gave it a try. ‘E’ for effort?
Sigh… then we went on to coloring. But they didn’t even have paper for the kids to color on. The crayons were lacking and broken and the coloring books that were available had been colored in already. Note to self: get paper and coloring books for the kids.
I then visited the Music room and the Sign Language room. Get this, the music teacher doesn’t know a lick about music (what the heck do they do in music class then??) and the sign language teacher doesn’t know how to sign nor does she have the resources to learn (she said she typically just plays with the kids and teaches them how to put on their clothes). My goodness, can you imagine how frustrating it would be to teach something that you’re not qualified or knowledgeable to teach? I was a bit disheartened by the lack of resources available to the children and the staff. I commended the teachers for doing their best with what they had. So now I’m in search for various resources in town and on the Internet that could possibly be of assistance to the Sunshine Kids program.
I just hope I can help them out while I’m here. Too bad I’m so far away from my own resources from home. Sheesh… I should’ve just shipped some of my teaching resources here as well. That would make things so much easier. Haha… it’s not actually easy to find good teaching materials here in tiny Walvis Bay. Even if there were, where is the money to get these things? This is something that a lot of the educational institutions here struggle with every day. We in Canada are privileged to have what we have. We should not take our blessings and resources for granted.
1 comment:
Good for people to know.
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