My first class

I taught my first class this afternoon, and it was VERY challenging!  Probably the most challenging thing I have done in my teaching career.  I was escorted to class by one of the students (30 minutes late), and then had a couple of students helping me set up the projector to hook my laptop to for the PowerPoint.  As the students that were helping me were trying to decide the best place to put it, each time they moved to a corner of the room, all of the other students would move and turn their chairs towards that corner, so they could see well.  The students mostly crowded together towards the front of the room.  I started by saying, “good afternoon,” to which they all replied, “good afternoon.”  At this point, I thought, maybe they all understood English pretty well.  I then asked them to raise their hand if they could understand what I was saying…..and only about 3 people raised their hand!  Oh man, this is going to be a long summer!  It is stressful for me, but mostly I am concerned for the students.  I am hoping that they will be able to understand enough that they will be able to learn something!  They have a class delegate who speaks pretty good English, so he was helping me interpret some things, but not everything.  I think they understand the written words better than when I speak it, which makes good sense.    When I introduced myself and told them my name, many of them laughed.  I thought maybe being in a foreign country where all names would be unfamiliar to them, that they would not know that my name is typically a name for a boy/man in the U.S..  But, no, pretty much everyone I have met here so far has laughed at my name.  They are usually polite about it, but they do find humor in it.  The only problem is that my story of telling people that if I was a boy my name was supposed to be Cleve, doesn’t mean much to them, because they don’t see that there is anything wrong with that name.  I should have rethought things, and went by my middle name, Jonelle, while I was here J

Today I just went over taking a health history, and even though only a few people raised their hands that they understood me, I can tell that there are more that do…they are just very shy, especially the girls.  I had them work in groups to do a pretend health history on one of their classmates, and I think it went fairly well.  There are definitely the students that I can tell are interested and engaged and want to learn, and then there are others that are not.   The students all hold their cell phones in their hands here constantly, and when they get a call or need to make a call, they step outside of the classroom…not sure if I find this more distracting or less distracting then what my students in the U.S. do.  There were many students sitting in class, copying down notes from one of their classmates.  These notes were several pages long, and are from a class that apparently they have an exam in on Friday.    So, much like my students in the U.S., when there is an exam coming up, it is very hard to get them to pay attention to what I have to say.   I feel bad for the students, I am not sure why they had me start teaching right now, the students are just finishing up a term and have their final exams on Friday, and had me start teaching today…bad timing!  So, the students convinced me to cancel class for Thursday and Friday and resume on Monday with the understanding that class will be for a longer period of time each day next week to make up for the time lost.   Hopefully I haven’t been tricked!!

Since we will be going over health assessment, I asked the students how many of them had stethoscopes, as I held mine up.  Not a single person raised their hand.  How sad!  How are they to do their job and learn if they do not have the most basic tools?  The students I have in the U.S.  get a stethoscope usually the minute they find out they are going to nursing school.  This is so sad!

As I am sitting here typing this, I am listening to some wonderful drumming and singing taking place outside.   I can hear it, and but cannot see where it is coming from, or I would go get a closer look.  I have a feeling it might be part of a class, as they have a music degree here.   Burundians are famous for their drumming, and it is sound I have heard often while on campus here.  It is a beautiful sound!