We had a great class today. When I was approaching school I found all
the students playing outside. They all seemed to be active, either
playing soccer (the boys, who were playing two separate simultaneous
games) or something like the game we call "Matar" ('to kil') in
Catalan, whereby two teams separated by a line are supposed to throw a
ball to each of the members of the opposite team to kill them; when
someone is killed, they go behind the opposite team's field to catch
any missed balls and kill the opponents back. I thought it must be
physical education class or else some of the kids might decide to sit
and chat or play a greater variety of games. As I walked by most
children greeted me, as usual.
As I walked into the tiny school building I saw just a couple of very
young kids hanging out in the middle room, while teacher Ali with
another couple of small kids in the more advanced levels' premises.
After exchanging greetings, he called everybody inside and some kid
played a bell to contribute to the call. None of the other teachers
showed up today (only one other was present yesterday for half of the
morning) so Ali was alone with all 6 levels students, which, I
guessed, explained why the kids were playing instead of being taught
in class.
I noticed all my students but one were absent too, so I asked about
it. Ali answered, quite frustrated, that he didn't know where most of
them were and that he had sent some back to collect the camera
provided by our project, which they are using taking 24h shifts, and
which wasn't returned to school today. I started working with the one
student who was present. When Ali returned to our classroom I
explained I saw one in the village, fixing a fishing net. I asked him
whether he was going to school today and he said he couldn't because
he was going fishing. Ali was upset now, so I sympathized with him
saying that if the kids came home this evening, I wouldn't allow them
to play with the computers because they haven't been coming to school.
I think that often times kids don't attend school because they have to
do work for the family, but from this teachers' annoyance, I'm open to
believe that that might just be a bit of an excuse.
The little boy had done his homework (yay!) and we were soon done
reviewing it. I then asked him to write one more sentence on the
computer. He was smiling, all excited, since it was the first time he
had ever typed on a keyboard. I switched the virtual keyboard from EN
US to Mani and showed him how to type ɛ and ɔ. He managed perfectly
fine. Oh, I forgot to tell him about the space bar in the beginning,
so all the words in his sentence were stuck together: my bad. Then 3
more kids came. One had done his homework, two hadn't, so I made them
write their sentences right there. I went back and forth helping them
all with each their own thing and it worked perfectly well. As soon I
as was done reviewing their sentences, each kid joined the one with
the laptop.
When the last one finished fixing his sentence, I asked for everyone's
attention and integrated the Mani learning with some language concepts
introduced by the teacher at some earlier point in time, as I could
see it written on the blackboard: proper nouns vs common nouns. I
reviewed the concept with the students and asked them to provide me
examples of common nouns in Mani. I had them all come out to the
board, write a noun, correct it with the help of the others if the
initial spelling was incorrect, and finally spell it aloud for
everyone to repeat letter by letter and the full word pronunciation.
Once I'd been there for about an hour, I showed them how to save the
file so we can go back to it later. I thanked them for the very good
class we had today and let them know that they are very welcome to
come to my place to play with the computers this afternoon.
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