This blog is having a lot of throwbacks! Well, it's because I had such a wonderful experience in India but the memories are just locked away in a dropbox folder. I'm so eager to share them now!
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| sweet farewell gift from my senior animators |
Today is Teacher's Day! We never celebrated teachers day in my schools in Nigeria, and I don't remember anything in University. So last year was my first time, not as a student but as a teacher! We had half-day work at City Montessori School (CMS) - I was greeted with "hi ma'am! here's a pen for you!" Yep, got a bunch of pens that day. I followed the teachers as they hopped from class to class - each class had a presentation for them. The two most memorable were with one 8th grade section and the naughtiest 6th grade section. In Grade 8, they did a comedy show! One boy was in front, making hilarious imitations of some of the teachers, including the junior in-charge who was present. We laughed so much because he was such a pro, especially at imitating her shouting! It got a bit awkward when he imitated another teacher insulting the students. Then suddenly one of the teachers said "do Farzaneh ma'am!" I thought to myself 'I don't think he can pull it off, I haven't spent enough time with this section', and you won't guess what happened... He walked to the door and put on a pack bag and walked to the front. I laughed like a hyena - he noticed that detail about me - I carried my pack bag to all my classes (I never left it in the staff room because I always had my laptop with me, and I also always carried coloring pens/crayons and chart paper around). This boy stood infront of us and said "everyone stand up, let's pray." So the students played along (they stood up and they started to chant "O Friend, in the Garden of they heart" then he stopped them and said "Wait, you stop laughing. Let's start again" ....oh yeah he got my serious face on point!! IT WAS SO FUNNY! The other students laughed too, but my fellow teachers in the room looked lost - they didn't know I started each class with a prayer...guess I was the only one who did that.
The next class I went to - well, I didn't even want to go there.
This particular Class 6 section was always "hell" for me, sorry to say. I would HAPPILY give my period away whenever a teacher asked for extra time with that class, Oh I still don't know how I survived them. So I sat in the corner. I just wanted to observe. Before I knew it, they were having a disco! I had no intention of dancing with those kids who made me lose my voice several times, but I was enjoying the music. Modern Indian pop music! I went up to the kid who was controlling the songs on the computer, and then I brought out my laptop and started copying the songs. That's also how I discovered Honey Singh hehe. The students must have drugged me because I found myself in the middle of the class jumping with my hands up, dancing with them to "Saturday Saturday!" It was fun, but quickly removed from my memory the next time I had a class with them.
This particular Class 6 section was always "hell" for me, sorry to say. I would HAPPILY give my period away whenever a teacher asked for extra time with that class, Oh I still don't know how I survived them. So I sat in the corner. I just wanted to observe. Before I knew it, they were having a disco! I had no intention of dancing with those kids who made me lose my voice several times, but I was enjoying the music. Modern Indian pop music! I went up to the kid who was controlling the songs on the computer, and then I brought out my laptop and started copying the songs. That's also how I discovered Honey Singh hehe. The students must have drugged me because I found myself in the middle of the class jumping with my hands up, dancing with them to "Saturday Saturday!" It was fun, but quickly removed from my memory the next time I had a class with them.
So that's about Teacher's Day. Being a teacher last year was by far the hardest thing I've ever done. Mind you, I wasn't even a normal teacher (I didn't have books to mark, I didn't have grades to give, I didn't have reports to file - nothing!) I was basically a JYEP animator in the school, mentoring senior student animators, then I also took the regular JYEP periods of the junior students. But you can't do JYEP with 40 students at once, just not possible. There's no way of knowing if EVERYONE's on the same page with you unless you give surprise quizzes just to scare them into paying attention next time. I was in a school setting, and I just had to play along. There were things I did that made me feel really awful (like I once yelled "hush up" to a student. Even though everyone laughed, but I lived with that regret for several months). I'd spend lots of my free time in the staff room planning and planning amazing activities, but I couldn't even accomplish half of them because I'd always spend half the period getting everyone to sit down and stop making noise OR giving them a long talk about the sacrifices I'm making to be with them, so they should consider my feelings! Anyways, it's wasn't always awful. There were equally as many wonderful moments, satisfying moments, encouraging moments!
Like this - when they'd say sorry with cute cards (and in my head I'd sing "it's tooo late to apologizeeeee, it's too late") haha.
Or this time when I cried along the hallway because I was so upset when my animators about something, then when I entered my next class, a boy came up to me and offered me a bar of Cadburry (yes, chocolate makes everything okay!)
or being given bracelets by the students on Friendship Day.
The greatest joy came from the students expressing themselves. In the beginning, everyone was shy and quiet and had the same ideas - they weren't used to thinking outside the box. This changed a lot after a few months of JYEP. Suddenly even the most timid student was volunteering to draw on the board. Suddenly everyone had something new, something different to say. That's when I knew I was being a teacher, because all the students were being teachers as well to one another. I knew I was being a teacher when I was learning from my students.
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| Station Road Junior Teachers |
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| Tarannom (she took over from me) |
