And so it begins...

With the new school year I will TRY to write more often!! I apologize to everyone and especially my mother, since she's been bugged by so many of you about it for months! Believe me, she reminds me your waiting and has told me to write every week. (Lana, too!)

Anyway...I titled the first lesson in my lesson planning book this year "and so it begins..." And so it has. Last week was my first full week of class and it's already soooo much easier than last time! I'm teaching two classes of first years (6eme) and one class of 5th years (2e). For the 6emes I've already got all my lessons from last year and they're still so shy and unsure since secondary school is new to them. Those two classes each only had about 35 kids last week though, so I'm hoping that this week they should be up their normal levels of about 65. One if my 6emes even has 8 of my kids who failed from last year, which is absolutely fantastic. Of course they already understand all of my instructions and all of the others are catching on very quickly. I feel like it will be a real advantage that we can hit the ground running and move quickly past technicalities. It's also so exciting to see these 8 who were so shy and unsure last year being so engaged and proud of themselves for not being the slow ones anymore.

The 5th years will be the real challenge this year. Although they are only in the 5th level of high school, most are probably 19 or 20 years old and my cutesy baby techniques of 6eme obviously won't be so applicable. In some ways it is nice that they are more serious about their studies- 67 showed up the first day, 69 the second, and over 75 yesterday. I have also been very impressed by the amount of English some of them know. The real struggle, I think, is that some are great or right where they need to be, and others need a complete return to my first level class because they haven't got a clue (and/or don't really want one).

The other really interesting thing about teaching this class is that I'm not doing it alone. I'm "team-teaching" with one of my English colleagues. It's a process that Peace Corps urges us to try in order to share strategies and teaching techniques. As of right now, things have been going well with my colleague while still of course necessitating LOTS of patience. I'm perfectly aware that I am just as dependent on him as he is on me, and since it's the beginning I'm really the fish out of water. Until last week I didn't have any idea what the present perfect, present perfect progressive, past perfect, etc. etc. etc. were! He has his lessons from previous years to help guide us through our tense review right now, and I've been studying!!!

Yesterday was the first day I really led a lesson (although it was review), and although I was really nervous about how the students would react to me, I was overall really pleased and felt respected. I also felt like they responded well to my activities. I'm starting to envision technicalities as his specialty and activities and applications as mine. It's difficult for both Beninese teachers and students to think outside of the box in terms of creative activites and critical thinking in the classroom, so I'm looking forward to the challenge of tapping into some of that dormant creativity.

In other news, I've got big plans for year 2!! I'm going to be starting up a geography club at school for the younger kids. We'll begin talking about Dogbo and Benin, but quickly move onto geography of the world (most people here have never seen a map). Then every week we'll learn about a different country, which will be awesome because it means guest speakers! Between my Peace Corps friends and other volunteers in Dogbo I've already got people to talk about France, the Netherlands, Germany, Korea, Greece, Peru, China, Japan, and obviously I might be able to say a thing or two about the U.S., hehe. So yea, I'm hoping to start next week...I'll keep you posted!

Also this year I'm establishing an e-mail correspondace program between older students here and a 4th grade class of a friend back home. They have about the same level of writing skills and it will be great to teach kids here about computers and the internet.

Outside of school, I've recently become involved with helping a local orphanage build a water resevoir with funds from the US embassy. I'm also in charge of planning a large annual fundraising dinner for Peace Corps Benin's gender and development (GAD) program. It will be taking place in May down in the capital of Cotonou. We generally invite a lot of ex-pats and Cotonou professionals to come to our dinner/silent auction to help out and learn about our GAD initiatives. Our kick-off meeting is in 2 weeks and we've already got a lot of interest from other PCVs to help out, so hopefully all will go well!

Last, but DEFINITELY not least, I'm going home for Christmas!!!! I'll be arriving Dec 17th and leaving Jan 6th, and I hope to see everyone in those three short weeks!!

Love and miss you all! And I'll write again soon!!