MAKE A DIFFERENCE !

BUY COFFEE :-) 

https://www.justlovecoffee.com/bringlolahome

 If you by coffee from this website, you can help SAVE a child's life.

Lola & I 

I have talked about Lola in my past blog post. She is a little girl that my friend Melissa is in the process of adopting. With each day that Lola is still here in the orphanage, she gets worse. There are not enough people who love her here. There is not enough medical help that she needs. I visit her as often as I can. But that is not enough. She needs to be home with Melissa and she needs love every second of the day. 

She has cerebral palsy as well as epilepsy. She needs to be somewhere that she will get the attention that she needs. That is NOT here in Uganda. As of now, she is left alone with no physical therapy. One day Lola will walk, talk, learn, play and HAVE A LIFE. But until she is home in America, those things will not happen.

Me, Lola, Hilary 

Christmas is just around the corner - Buy a gift that will make a difference ! 

Teaching Brings Joy To My Heat

I never know how much teaching could bring me joy,But it sure does. I wish I had a picture of my class to show you but… instead maybe I can give you a visual.

 I have a class of 20 students on a good day and about 13 on a slow day. My class is a garage that was once turned into a classroom. I have 2 long rows of desks.

My first row is always filled with all of my Somalian girls. They are all beautiful young teenaged ladies and they are always so colorful with their scarves and long dresses.

My second row always has my 2 Somalian teenaged boys in the back right corner who always get their work done fast in hopes that I will give them a break so that they can go play football (soccer) for five minutes. Which, I have found out that if I talk about football at any point of my class, they pay attention 100%.  

Then the rest of the back row is filled with the one Somalian girls who just sits in class with a smile because her English is very bad. I just mastered the Alphabet with her. Yet, on the good days, the back row is also filled with my Eritrean, Congolese, Rwandan, and Sudanese students.

Recently I have had two older Eritrean male students sit in the back of my class. They are my best students. When I ask the class to write a few sentences on a topic, most students will give me 2 or 3 sentences, but those two always give me at least a page.

My favorite part of my class is when I correct their work. Every single student is excited to hand me his or her work to check. As I check their work, they all sit there eagerly. Often times I have to ask them what they meant to write since it is so off base. But recently, they have had very little mistakes. Sure, there is a misspelled word here and there, but for the most part it all makes sense.

But my favorite parts are the smiles that I get when I tell them good job, or the hands that go up when I ask if someone wants to read something aloud, or simply the fact that I have to dismiss them two or three times before them leave because they want to stay and learn more.

Teaching has definitely been a blessing. I love It ! 

Change In Plans

So I may have thought that Charlotte's Wed was and easy read for my students, yet I was wrong. My students level of reading is just a bit lower than I had expected. They also can not grasp the fact that animals can talk, and if they can understand that, they don’t understand that there is a little girl who can hear then as well as understand the animals.

So I have gone onto different plan. I found a Magic Tree House book here in Uganda. I remember reading Magic Tree House books when I was learning how to read as a young kid. Magic Tree House is a series about a brother and a sister who go all around the world through their Magic Tree House to solve puzzles or riddles.

The book that I have chosen for my class is about Africa and the lions that they run into. So far, my students are enjoying it. The book has 10 chapters. Each class we read one chapter together as a class. We are now on chapter five. My goal from reading this book with them was to work on their reading comprehension. I told my class that there is no point to knowing how to read if you do not understand and remember what you read. Therefore, in my class, the students read the chapter once together as a class. Then I read it aloud for them. After that, I answer any questions they have. Most of their questions are about what different words mean. After I answer their questions, they answer questions that I make up about the chapter. So far we are successful. :-)

I have also picked up teaching a computer class. I teach basic computer skills to a small class of about 6 students twice a week. I teach them things such as how to save and open a Word Document, make a list with bullets, chancing fonts and sizes of their text, and copying and pasting texts. Before I too over teaching this class, they had just got past learning how to turn the computer on and basic typing skills. So it has been fun and quite an easy class to teach.

 I am not only a Reading and Writing English teacher, now I am also a computer teacher. :-)