Teaching Da Nang

Today I'm going to talk more about the teaching aspect of our stay here in Da Nang. 

A usual day in lovely Da Nang begins in many ways. But each weekday afternoon we all put on our "business" clothes, meet up with our Volunteer translators downstairs, then hop on their motorbikes and ride to our respective schools. Each week we teach at two different classrooms, but our groups of two (Amanda and I) stay at the same school this month. Thus we've one week to teach these kids, who've probably never spoken english before (let alone have heard many forgeiners speak it), so there's a couple of boundaries to leap before any concrete absorbsion begins. 

A typical lesson goes as such:

Enter. Say hello, try and see if they'll remember your name, or at least repeat it. Often not. But smiles are good enough. Start things off with either a recap of the last class day, or an introduction if it's the first day of that week. That's usually the Hello song, which, is exactly what it sounds like. Then we go into whatever we're trying to teach for the day, and approach it from different angles. Take a color for example. We would first say the color to the group, hold a card featuring that particular pigment, and have the kids repeat the name til we're satisfied. It's all about pronounciation. After that we like to have some of the kids come up and call out the particular color to the class, this way we see how they're doing individually. Then it's game time. And we try to make them interesting and engaging, which is difficult when dealing with young minds. One game, for example, involves the color cards laid on the floor. I call out the color, then whoever gets to it and brings it to me first wins. Which.. works better in some classes than others. Some classes are competitive, some shy. In the former we have huge collisions over a color, and in the latter only a few tenatively go over to the right color, and it's usually the same kid. And in some classes, whether it's our explanations or they're learning level I'm not sure, won't pay attention to the actual color and just pick up whatever card they want. Yeah- that's when adaption is essential.

Our lofty goals for the kids during our weeklong tour of the english language consist of: The Alphabet. Colors. .. And that's pretty much it. And even the coverage of those two topics vary. If the class is really responsive, the Alphabet works well. If not, we usually focus more on the colors.

A week in and I feel like we're getting the hang of it. The best thing to realize is that we aren't trying to, as much as I'd love to, teach them all they need to know about the joys and perils of the english language. That's an impossible outcome for a weeks worth of brief lessons. Our goal, and hope, is to get their interest, build a bit of confidence and compitence, and leave a few words in their memory. So that's what we set out to do.

PS-Maybe we're just teaching Vietnam about hi-fives. And once they know, they can't stop. Someone send the Todd here.