For letters, and small packages, it take s about a week. For larger packages, a bit longer.
the address is:
LeAnne Shor and Danielle Benzaken
Ethio-American Friendship School
P.O. Box 1376
Awassa, Ethiopia
Africa
seriously, we live and die by correspondence
cheers,
L
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
School is in session
Last week was our first week of school. Without any formal introductions or orientation, LeAnne and I just walked into the classrooms and started teaching. Teaching, however, entails some kind of learning with a give-and-take exchange between teacher and student. We quickly learned that it would be a challenge. All the children come from very different backgrounds including socio-economical level, educational level, and school background. This meant that most of the students don’t understand a word of English, except for a few key phrases, ‘Miss’, ‘toilet’, and ‘write down?’ It wouldn’t be so hard if there were teachers at the school who understood English and could translate, but aside from the Principal, who speaks very minimal English, it is just us.
In addition, materials and supplies are extremely basic. Each child has a notebook for each subject and a pen and there is a blackboard and chalk for the teachers in each classroom. The students don’t have any kind of workbook or practice book to follow along. So LeAnne and I started with a few basic phrases that we have the children repeat over and over such us “Should I write this down?” And “May I go to the bathroom?”
The next problem we came across is comprehension. It is one thing to teach someone how to read the letters and the words and sound them out, but it’s something else to understand that the word cat is a four-legged animal that meows. Since these children have no exposure to English outside of our class period, comprehension is very low. Unlike an ESL (English Second Language) child in America who is in an English speaking environment and is exposed to English all over, these children have no practice reading or writing English any where.
We are still figuring out which teaching methods work best for each level. There are about 15-30 students in each grade from Nursery to Grade 8. There is a very vast and expansive library at the school which makes books very accessible to the children, but as we have noticed, the students mostly flip the pages and don’t actually read the words.
In addition, materials and supplies are extremely basic. Each child has a notebook for each subject and a pen and there is a blackboard and chalk for the teachers in each classroom. The students don’t have any kind of workbook or practice book to follow along. So LeAnne and I started with a few basic phrases that we have the children repeat over and over such us “Should I write this down?” And “May I go to the bathroom?”
The next problem we came across is comprehension. It is one thing to teach someone how to read the letters and the words and sound them out, but it’s something else to understand that the word cat is a four-legged animal that meows. Since these children have no exposure to English outside of our class period, comprehension is very low. Unlike an ESL (English Second Language) child in America who is in an English speaking environment and is exposed to English all over, these children have no practice reading or writing English any where.
We are still figuring out which teaching methods work best for each level. There are about 15-30 students in each grade from Nursery to Grade 8. There is a very vast and expansive library at the school which makes books very accessible to the children, but as we have noticed, the students mostly flip the pages and don’t actually read the words.
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