Have I bitten off more than I can chew?
on Tara's Ethiopian Adventure (Ethiopia), 23/Oct/2009 06:51, 34 days ago
Today was quite manic! I somehow managed to organise things so that everything came at once! This morning I visited 2 local schools with the hope of providing a grant to improve facilities for them; this afternoon I facilitated my first HDP session and this evening I hosted 17 administrative staff in my home.    The HDP (Higher Diploma Programme) is the job VSO recruited me for. It involves providing a one year course on teaching methodology to university lecturers and teacher trainers. I think the first session went well although we over ran slightly. The candidates appear enthusiastic about the course and I am looking forward to our next session next Tuesday. So far the planning and preparation seems manageable but I’m sure it will become much busier once I begin the one to one sessions with the 22 candidates and start observing their lessons etc. I have been assured it is a pretty full time commitment.    However... This week I also received some information about applying for a small grant from BandAid to help improve a local school. In particular this project aims to encouragegirlsto stay in school for longer by providing more motivating classrooms or facilities. After speaking to my colleague about it we both agreed it would be irresponsible not to at least apply for the grant and hope for the best. It just happened that the best day to visit some local schools to assess their needs was also today. So this morning I visited 2 local schools; a High School with 3000 students all grade 9 (age 15+) and a Primary School with 1700 students grades 1-8 (the average age of students here is therefore 7-15). Both were in need of so much but the Primary School looked quite desperate. Most of the classrooms still had mud walls as there was no money to plaster with cement, the children were crammed into tiny dark rooms with no learning materials. There had been no library in the 30 years the school had been there. (I will try to upload some photos of both schools ASAP). Over the next week we will need to decide which school to support and then consult with them about the specific area they would like us to focus on. The most likely ideas include building and resourcing a library or building separate toilets for females so that they have more privacy (especially during menstruation). We then need to fill in a complex form to apply for the grant including a detailed breakdown of expected costs. The form needs to be sent off by the 9thNovember so we will need to work fast!   My final activity of the day was again self inflicted. Having made friends with some of the office staff I was keen to develop these friendships but also saw a need to help them with their English. I thought I could kill 2 birds with one stone and offer an English Social Club once a fortnight after work. My intention was just a very informal club with the opportunity to speak in English, play some games and perhaps watch the occasional English film together. However, it soon became apparent they wanted more specific help with English that would support them in their roles as admin assistants. Once word got around that I was offering free English language support then everyone wanted to join in and so 30 admin staff signed up to join this club! Tonight we had an initial meeting to consider the logistics of how this would work. 18 of us sat in my lounge and discussed various possibilities while I provided shai (tea), kolo (roasted barley) and popcorn. Eventually the group decided to split into 3 groups, not by ability like I had suggested but, by the night of the week they would prefer to come. We then organised a rather complicated rota where each group could come to my house 2 times a month for structured sessions on various topics (hopefully with lots of games) and have the option of coming a 3rdevening for a larger social gathering with all 3 groups or to watch a film. What this means for me is that I have committed myself to 2 evenings a week and will need to very quickly learn how to teach English Language in a fun and relaxed way! Yikes! At the start of the meeting I was expecting to provide 2 sessions a month and thought I may offer one a week if they broke into smaller groups. However, they were hoping each group would have the chance to meet every week (this would have been 3 sessions a week). As a teacher I find it quite hard to turn away anyone who wants to learn. Although I feel quite overwhelmed about what I have just got myself into I did at least feel a small victory when I negotiated down from 3 sessions a week to 2 sessions!  So this crazy day has set the groundwork for a lot more work to come. I really hope I haven’t bitten off more than I can chew but at least there is little chance of me getting bored while I am here. The day was made even more challenging by the fact that for the last 2 days my stomach has been less than perfect. So perhaps, this week at least, it was a case of‘I bit off something I shouldn’t have chewed’ rather than‘I’ve bitten off more than I can chew’.