Senegalese Kids are Awesome!

I have been very lucky to be paired with Carmen, my co-teacher, on this exchange. She is hilarious, fun and great with kids! She is a bit braver than me, so she is a great role model for me when I need it. Both Monday and Tuesday (today) we visited a LOT of schools in the area. We met with administrators, teachers and best of all the students. Most teachers are on strike, but those teachers that are not on strike allowed us to visit their classrooms and see how they taught and work with their kids. (Some teachers are in different unions, so if your union is not on strike you work, so some kids in the school have a teacher while others do not.) These teachers are striking for better pay since they have to do so much with so little.

This picture is of all the science materials the whole local high school has for teaching all the science classes. The students are so numerous, and supplies are so little, most teachers do not even do demos, just notes and problem solving. The students here either pick a literature or science track. The science track is less popular. I wonder if students here had more labs and materials if they would choose the science track.

My host teacher is currently on strike but he set up his classes and had his students come meet with us, which was SO great. They are the oldest kids and have taken six years of English, but are still nervous about speaking. Carmen and I helped them with their English lesson, which I do realized I should not be the person helping them with that, but I did ok. Mr. P would have been proud, well maybe, he does have some high standards. Haha. Then we got to just chat with them. They were very interested in American culture, our President, marriage and wondered why I was not and if I wanted a Senegalese husband, and of course what my students were like. I met the popular boy, the different friend groups of girls, the funny boys, the serious students, everyone was there… it was like walking into one of my middle school classes. Supreme was even present on phone cases. They were SUPER happy that my students donated candy for them, this made them want to ask more questions, who knew sugar would bring us all together.

This is from a math class. That girl in the front row, I am told, is portraying the official math class pose.

We also toured a school that the Clinton Foundation help build 5 new school rooms for and saw them working in collaboration on math problems.

Ok and this I had to share, driving around here is entertaining... you never know what you are going to see... but this made me the happiest ever!

Yep... that is not just one goat... but 2!!! on top of the car. Amazing!