My First Teaching Experience

This week the education volunteers began model school. Essentially, model school is a crash course in teaching that each ed. Volunteer participates in before we complete our training. Students from the community recieve three hours of English instruction per day and we get teaching experience.

After observing host country teachers for the first part of the week, I taught for the first time on Friday. I had the most advanced students and I prepared a lesson on transition word between sentences. I began the class by having the students read a text containing the five different varieties of transition words. However, it soon became evident that they had no idea what I was talking about and the lesson was much too advanced. I had to think on my feet and redesign my total lesson plan as I went. At the end of the class a few of the students understood transition words and how to use them, so I suppose it was not a total failure.

I think teaching English classes to non-English speakers is going to help me in a number of ways. My own speech will need to become much more precise and I will often have to think of different ways to convey my thoughts. Furthermore, my ability to make instant changes to my lesson plan and still have a coherent presentation tailored to my audiences understanding will be good practice for whatever field I later go into.

I will be teaching for an hour everyday for the next two weeks and after that two weeks all of the trainees will be returning to Kaedi for the final phase of our training before being sworn in as Peace Corps volunteers. My French classes have been cut in half due to model school in the morning. The class has kind of changed into a strictly conversation class, which I am more than ok with. Yesterday, we discussed our favorite rappers, the importance of mo-town in the civil rights movement, and played a french game called loup-garous. My language teacher, Ali, is a super nice guy and I look forward to visiting him in Nouakchott during the two years of service.

In general, I am really eager to begin the transition into my site community and have a better feel of what my two years of service will be like. It seems like I did not get the entire picture of Akjoujt during my site visit. I look forward to exploring the city and beginning my work.

I Found Out Where I Am Going to be Living

The last few weeks have been extremely busy. Monday through Friday I have had seven hours of French instruction and then on the weekends technical training. Therefore; I have not been able to post on this blog with any regularity.

The most exciting news in the last month was the announcement of our permanent sites. I have been assigned to the Lycee in Akjoujt. Akjoujt is about three hours northeast of the capitol Nouakchott and two hours southwest of Mauritanias major tourist draw Atar. The area is in the Sahara and surrounded by moutains and dunes.

I traveled with the other future volunteers in the Adrar and Inciri regions; the regions whose capitals are Atar and Akjoujt and spent about a week there. I will live in Akjoujt with three other volunteers doing agroforestry, environmental education and girls empowerment. We are the first ever volunteers in the Inciri region and so have to do quite bit of legwork to establish the Peace Corps in Akjoujt. The town and region officials I met with during this visit were very welcoming and forgave my limited French and nonexistant Arabic.

Akjoujt is somewhat different than other Mauritanian cities, as it happens to have a lot of western expatriates and probably one of my favorite things in the world.

I have about three more weeks of intense French or Arabic languange training and mock classes before I am sworn in as a volunteer and relocate to Akjoujt. I should be extremely busy, which will immediately change when I arrive in Akjoujt and ramadan begins. Due to the inability to eat or drink during the day, in the middle of the sahara, Mauritanians do not do alot of activities during ramadan. I hope it is a nice period of adjustment to my new home.