Bangladesh Bound: God Bless Our Teachers

11/07/14

Brooke

This is the end of my second week teaching English, Math, Science, Health, PE and crafts to class 4. Boy am I tired. I teach alongside the regular teacher so she can translate for me if need be. I follow her lesson plan but I get teach how I want to. Class can be fun when everyone is quiet and paying attention but that happens rarely. There is always someone distracted, someone talking, someone hitting someone else, or someone out of his or her seat walking around. Sometimes they are trying to help someone else understand but other times they are just messing around. I firmly but calmly say, “You need to sit in your seat, be quite and listen.” That works most of the time.

Marc

In class 4 there are 13 students, 4 boys and 9 girls. Rosie, Matthew, Bartholomew, Johnny, Akhi, Joni, Cloe, Crissy, Brianna, Savanna, Marc, Brooke, and Deborah. For the most part they are all sweet kids. However, some like to test my authority and end up running laps, doing squats, or extra math homework. My biggest issue is kids being late to class. Yet, their teachers are late some of the time too. It is hard to convey to the kids how serious it is to be late to class when their superiors are late. I guess it is a culture thing.

Bart

As you could guess my favorite thing to teach is science. Right now the kids are learning about reptiles and under the sea. There is a picture book I read to them from, and I adlib what I know on top of it. Thank you biology teachers and Planet Earth for that knowledge! After each “under the sea” class I would show them a short clip from Planet Earth. They love it! “More teacher, more!” they always say after. I usually get swindled into playing one or two more. They are so much fun! It is a bummer my computer crashed and I lost all the videos.

Akhi

Health is also a fun class to teach. It is only once a week. One week I taught them about the hearth and blood vessels. I explained to them how to feel your heart beat, what to do to keep your heart strong, how when you sleep your heart beats slowly and when you exercise your heart beats fast. Later that day I was running around playing line tag with some of the older girls and Crissy ran up to me, put my hand on my chest and said, “Look teacher, heart beating fast.” She was listening! That’s a wonderful feeling.

Brianna

Math and English are a little trickier to teach. It is tricky in the sense that according to the lesson plan I am supposed to teach about adjectives and adverbs but they don’t understand what nouns and verbs are. In math we are learning how to divide three digit numbers by one digit numbers and half the class doesn’t know what I am saying when I ask, “How many times does 7 go into 62? 62 divided by 7.” Not all of the class struggles, around five of them do. The biggest struggle is to get them to try problems on their own. They always want me to walk them through the problem. The phrase I hear the most in class is, “Teacher, ja ni na (I don’t know).” and they point at the next problem on their paper. “You can do it on your own. It is just like the others we did.” They normally pout a little, give me sad eyes, and when I walk away they start working on it.

Johnny

Johnny is a special case with epilepsy. He is a bright, sweet, perfectionist that has a hard time focusing. It is a battle to get him to do anything. He is always up out of his seat yelling, “Teacher, madam, I did not understand, you did not teach me.” I would show him again and he would reply, “Ok teacher now I understand.” At the beginning of this week I would have him stay in the classroom until he finished his math work. Boy he hated that. This kid can go through different personalities like me eating Halloween candy, really fast. One minute he is crying, then he is angry, he smiles, he laughs, he’s sweet, he blesses me, he’s distracted, then back to crying. Patients is the number one virtue I need. One day he was really getting under my skin in the review time. I couldn’t get him to do anything. Bart, another student who also struggles with math, noticed my frustration and stepped in. He walked Johnny through the problem in Bangla, not telling him the answer. And it was right! Thank you Bart!

Deborah

It is difficult to keep the fast students engaged while helping the slower students. I am just catching on how to do this. In the afternoon review time I give them math worksheet to do. When the fast students finish I give them more challenging problem to figure out. This keeps them occupied so I can help the slower students. When the slower students saw the faster students having fun with the harder problems, they wanted to try. So they quickly finished their work sheet and I gave them more. Even Johnny said with a big smile on his face, “Math is my favorite!” Let’s hope this continues.

Joni

Teachers are very important. They are molding the minds of the future. They also need to build a curiosity for learning and the confidence to figure it out. The main thing I have learned is that teachers need a lot of patients. I am so grateful for the education I have received and blessed by the teachers I have had. May God bless our teachers.