Through all of this teaching and lesson planning, I’m now starting to see one of the most important differences between levels of education. In lower education settings, it’s the role of the teacher to seek out students who struggle; in higher education it’s the role of struggling students to seek out the teacher. This statement is pretty obvious, higher education is independent learning. But, the implications of this weren’t very obvious to me before: teaching elementary, middle, and high school is arguably more demanding than teaching a college course.
Yesterday I was able to sleep until 8:30 (two and a half hours later than I usually do). I wasn’t intending to sleep this late, but I snoozed my regular alarm and slept through the ringing of my other one for 30 minutes. I must have been pretty tired if this was the case. I felt a bit groggy waking, as happens when my sleep cycle gets a bit messed up, but I think I needed the extra few hours
Most of the morning I was doing some lesson planning. I’m feeling like a bit of a failure because the kids aren’t improving much with their tenses and that’s what we’ve been focusing on. However, I’ve only had the chance to do one full lesson; the other teaching sessions have been exam review or something Pius instructed me to do. I’m hoping today I get to finally get cracking on some true lessons. Jovin and I played our rainy-day adaptation of football. We use two opposing doorways as goals and it requires some technical skill moves. He beat me good yesterday: 12-10.
Some safari guests of Lucas’ came to the house for lunch. It’s clear to see why Lucas has been so successful when he interacts with his guests; It’s such a special experience to be welcomed into your guides home after a multiple week safari, and I think this intimate meal is a unique feature of Lucas’ company. This group had begun their safari in Kenya, went down to Serengeti, and then moved through many of the parks in Tanzania.
At two in the afternoon I was supposed to be picked up to leave for a friends’ university music performance. It wasn’t until 2:30 I was told that my ride was busy in town and wouldn’t be able to take me. Thankfully I had told everyone the performance was an hour early than the true start time because I think I’ve finally figured out how to get people to be on time!
The concert was great. I went with two of my friends and a third met us there. Ezekia, the one who met us there, was performing a few songs at the end of the concert as part of the choir. I’m bummed I missed last weekends performance because he did many songs compared to yesterday’s.
I got home pretty late last night—around 8:30—and went straight to dinner. I was pretty tired, so I went to bed soon after finishing. I’m excited to be going back to school today, I’m hoping we can get a lot done in English and music this week.