God's wonderful creation!
Saturday, 17 November 2012
The beautiful garden
I am very blessed to be living where I am. I have friendly people around me and the compound is safe and quiet (except the hyraxes at night!) The surroundings are absolutely beautiful, and I hope I don't ever take them for granted. After we'd had quite a few rainy days in the past couple of weeks, I took the opportunity this week to get out with my camera and take some photos of the flowers, and I thought I'd share some of them with you along with a few of the birds that come to the feeder/bird bath outside my window.
God's wonderful creation!
God's wonderful creation!
Friday, 16 November 2012
Update
Well I'm feeling rather bad that I haven't posted for a while. I was feeling quite under the weather last week; I didn't go to school on Wednesday and was still a bit weary at the weekend, so didn't do much at all on Saturday. Then on Sunday I had an eventful afternoon, much of which was spent at a local hospital, because Dee's stepmother had a nasty fall while we were out for lunch. She's getting better now but she came right down on her face and did quite a bit of damage, so needed to be checked out.
So what with one thing and another, and my failure to get to bed early enough, this week seems to be hurtling past so quickly and I'm tired out by the time I get home. And tired out doesn't make for a good post, so I'll try to get on and stop rambling! Here's what I've been up to:
We had a meeting a while ago now with all the staff and some of the trustees which was long but good I think. We were mostly discussing next year, when we plan to take in an extra class so we have two baby classes, and there will now be fee-paying places alongside the normal places. The aim is to make Mahali Pa Watoto a little more self-sufficient as it currently relies largely on funds raised in the UK. There is a lot to be done practically to prepare for this and we would value your prayers.
We also met last week to discuss the teachers' visits to the Montessori nursery. Most of them really enjoyed going, and thought the place was wonderful! However, it's clear that many of them still didn't really see the independent activities that the children were doing as learning - rather they seemed to think that unless they were with an adult they weren't actually learning. And because they don't get started on formally learning letters and numbers as early as ours do (which is far too early in my opinion) the teachers saw those children as 'behind' ours. It's hard for our teachers, who have been through a very traditional education themselves, and have been trained in traditional teaching methods, to accept that there is any other way. But I think gradually they will start to see the benefits of using play and letting the children make choices. One thing that was suggested is that we use a spare classroom as a 'Montessori room', where we keep all the equipment, instead of each class having a small selection. The room could be set out like the rooms they saw, with no tables and chairs, just a big carpet space, and child-level shelving around the walls with the equipment there for them to access freely. I wasn't sure about this to start with, but actually I think it could work well and I'm quite excited about it.
We all have our allocated rooms to mop on a Tuesday and a Friday - actually this isn't my area but my room wasn't too bad so I did a bit of the veranda too - one of the mums was doing most of it in lieu of a food contribution for this month.
So what with one thing and another, and my failure to get to bed early enough, this week seems to be hurtling past so quickly and I'm tired out by the time I get home. And tired out doesn't make for a good post, so I'll try to get on and stop rambling! Here's what I've been up to:
- Having meetings
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| (This one's just to prove I was there!) |
We had a meeting a while ago now with all the staff and some of the trustees which was long but good I think. We were mostly discussing next year, when we plan to take in an extra class so we have two baby classes, and there will now be fee-paying places alongside the normal places. The aim is to make Mahali Pa Watoto a little more self-sufficient as it currently relies largely on funds raised in the UK. There is a lot to be done practically to prepare for this and we would value your prayers.
We also met last week to discuss the teachers' visits to the Montessori nursery. Most of them really enjoyed going, and thought the place was wonderful! However, it's clear that many of them still didn't really see the independent activities that the children were doing as learning - rather they seemed to think that unless they were with an adult they weren't actually learning. And because they don't get started on formally learning letters and numbers as early as ours do (which is far too early in my opinion) the teachers saw those children as 'behind' ours. It's hard for our teachers, who have been through a very traditional education themselves, and have been trained in traditional teaching methods, to accept that there is any other way. But I think gradually they will start to see the benefits of using play and letting the children make choices. One thing that was suggested is that we use a spare classroom as a 'Montessori room', where we keep all the equipment, instead of each class having a small selection. The room could be set out like the rooms they saw, with no tables and chairs, just a big carpet space, and child-level shelving around the walls with the equipment there for them to access freely. I wasn't sure about this to start with, but actually I think it could work well and I'm quite excited about it.
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| One of the shelving units at the Montessori nursery |
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| Lucy doing an activity on the carpet! |
- Teaching groups
- Holding a choir each day (and trying to get better at the guitar!)
- Helping do some cutting out for the card-making group that Dee has started up with a few of the mums and Joyce (teaching and kitchen assistant) This project has been a real eye-opener to me; the mums mostly have little or no experience of using scissors and glue, of straight lines and spacing and all the things we take for granted when we make a card. But they're coming along nicely :-)
- Mopping the floor!
We all have our allocated rooms to mop on a Tuesday and a Friday - actually this isn't my area but my room wasn't too bad so I did a bit of the veranda too - one of the mums was doing most of it in lieu of a food contribution for this month.
- Generally having lots of fun with these amazing children!
Friday, 9 November 2012
Choir!
Apologies for the quality, and the fact that there's at least one child singing up in the stratosphere somewhere, but just to give you an idea of the choir - they're all in top class, about 6 years old, and we've been going a few weeks.
Monday, 5 November 2012
Some pictures from my groups today
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| Elizabeth from middle class counting out ceramic zebras (donated by Dee) |
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| She's counted out 9 correctly! |
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| We also did number matching (Steve I've stolen the foam numbers!) |
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| Language group from top class making words |
Sunday, 4 November 2012
'Navigating your journey'
This was the title of the church retreat that I went on last weekend. It was based on the story of Joseph (of technicolour dreamcoat fame!) from Genesis, and linked the journey that he undertook, with all the events surrounding it, to our spiritual journey. It's impossible to summarise all the things that were covered, but I wanted to write a little about a couple of things that stood out for me.
The first session was entitled 'The presence of the future' and it was mainly about dreams that God gives us. Joseph of course had some famous dreams that he got into trouble for, because he boasted about them, but they were dreams from God and accurately predicted future events in his life. We were challenged to think about our own dreams, and were then given a practical exercise - to write or draw about them and think of some steps we could take towards them. I found this extremely hard, as did most people on my table, perhaps partly because it was the first evening and we had really only just arrived and hadn't quite got our brains in gear! But also, and more significantly, I think we often learn to ignore or even bury our dreams, looking on them as silly fantasies that bear no relationship to real life, rather than as God-given and possibly pointing us in the direction he wants us to take. I think once you've entered the 'real world' of work and so on, there seems little choice than to continue in the path you have started on, whether or not it is really what you dreamed of. I suppose I've taken this year out and come to Kenya partly to get off the treadmill, and to think about where I should go next, but it is a gradual process and at the moment I don't have any definite answers. I know the picture I used to have of my future hasn't worked out and doesn't look likely to, and I am starting to realise perhaps it was not from God and was more of an assumption I'd made. I know I love teaching but not the way it is in the UK at the moment, and I know I have a particular heart for children who are needy in some way, whether that is because of disability, poverty, lack of family or something else. I am keen to use play to help children learn in a fun way, and I feel strongly about helping each child to develop as a whole person, addressing his/her social and emotional needs not just intellectual. I also know I love to be outdoors and to encourage children to be outdoors getting hands-on and dirty! And I have been drawn to Africa for a long time and feel largely at home here (despite the frustrations along the way). But I have no idea how these different things could link together into a coherent 'dream' or vision for my future. And whenever I think about things like this a voice says "But these are for other people, people who are stronger/ braver/ more outgoing/ more talented/ better Christians than you" - and that's hard to get past in the first place.
Some of the other things that particularly spoke to me at the retreat need more thought before I can be coherent about them. Broadly speaking, another big point that came out was the barriers that there are along our journey, that hold us back from taking the next steps. Pastor Doug referred to these as 'equators'; several of his pictures linked in to explorers of the past, including those who were brave enough to cross the equator for the first time, even though people thought there was nothing there or they would fall off the edge of the world! The equator was a huge barrier for a long time, but once it had been crossed they made new discoveries. Joseph had several barriers in his journey, not least the betrayal of family and friends and his long imprisonment. Lots of things can be 'equators' in our lives, such as our own or even society's long-held beliefs that are hard to get past. I know this is true in my own life.
The last thing that I want to share was the most exciting for me really, and also the most personal. We had a session where we talked about 'home' - which included an enlightening theory about integration into a new culture which was pretty relevant to me! The practical part of that session involved us building 'home' out of various crafty materials - not our table's strong point - but it was nice seeing what others had come up with. We thought about different words that defined home for us and the one that kept coming out for me was 'acceptance'. Anyway, after that we had a sort-of directed prayer session where a lady who does coaching (a little bit like counselling but different) led us in a time of prayer/meditation and listening to God. She encouraged us to 'build' a little prayer home that we can take with us wherever we go. We physically stepped 'into' it and 'out' of it several times and each time she asked us to focus on the word that had stood out for us and ask God for a picture or words/verses about it. My word was acceptance and I had a really strong sense of God's presence in my 'prayer home'. My picture was that he placed his hands on my head and told me that I was his precious child. There were other words and impressions but it's hard to express them, it was more of an overall feeling. Anyway it was exciting to me because I've never really had anything like that happen before and it was what I needed to hear at the time. No doubt I will need to hear it again and again before it really sinks in but we were told to pack up our 'prayer homes' and put them somewhere safe about our person, because we can take them out anywhere and God will meet with us.
Well I feel I've written more than enough for one post now. I will finish with a quotation from the weekend that also stood out to me, and some pictures from our nature walk early on the Saturday morning.
'The safest place for ships is in the harbour, but that's not why ships were built.' (Anonymous)
The first session was entitled 'The presence of the future' and it was mainly about dreams that God gives us. Joseph of course had some famous dreams that he got into trouble for, because he boasted about them, but they were dreams from God and accurately predicted future events in his life. We were challenged to think about our own dreams, and were then given a practical exercise - to write or draw about them and think of some steps we could take towards them. I found this extremely hard, as did most people on my table, perhaps partly because it was the first evening and we had really only just arrived and hadn't quite got our brains in gear! But also, and more significantly, I think we often learn to ignore or even bury our dreams, looking on them as silly fantasies that bear no relationship to real life, rather than as God-given and possibly pointing us in the direction he wants us to take. I think once you've entered the 'real world' of work and so on, there seems little choice than to continue in the path you have started on, whether or not it is really what you dreamed of. I suppose I've taken this year out and come to Kenya partly to get off the treadmill, and to think about where I should go next, but it is a gradual process and at the moment I don't have any definite answers. I know the picture I used to have of my future hasn't worked out and doesn't look likely to, and I am starting to realise perhaps it was not from God and was more of an assumption I'd made. I know I love teaching but not the way it is in the UK at the moment, and I know I have a particular heart for children who are needy in some way, whether that is because of disability, poverty, lack of family or something else. I am keen to use play to help children learn in a fun way, and I feel strongly about helping each child to develop as a whole person, addressing his/her social and emotional needs not just intellectual. I also know I love to be outdoors and to encourage children to be outdoors getting hands-on and dirty! And I have been drawn to Africa for a long time and feel largely at home here (despite the frustrations along the way). But I have no idea how these different things could link together into a coherent 'dream' or vision for my future. And whenever I think about things like this a voice says "But these are for other people, people who are stronger/ braver/ more outgoing/ more talented/ better Christians than you" - and that's hard to get past in the first place.
Some of the other things that particularly spoke to me at the retreat need more thought before I can be coherent about them. Broadly speaking, another big point that came out was the barriers that there are along our journey, that hold us back from taking the next steps. Pastor Doug referred to these as 'equators'; several of his pictures linked in to explorers of the past, including those who were brave enough to cross the equator for the first time, even though people thought there was nothing there or they would fall off the edge of the world! The equator was a huge barrier for a long time, but once it had been crossed they made new discoveries. Joseph had several barriers in his journey, not least the betrayal of family and friends and his long imprisonment. Lots of things can be 'equators' in our lives, such as our own or even society's long-held beliefs that are hard to get past. I know this is true in my own life.
The last thing that I want to share was the most exciting for me really, and also the most personal. We had a session where we talked about 'home' - which included an enlightening theory about integration into a new culture which was pretty relevant to me! The practical part of that session involved us building 'home' out of various crafty materials - not our table's strong point - but it was nice seeing what others had come up with. We thought about different words that defined home for us and the one that kept coming out for me was 'acceptance'. Anyway, after that we had a sort-of directed prayer session where a lady who does coaching (a little bit like counselling but different) led us in a time of prayer/meditation and listening to God. She encouraged us to 'build' a little prayer home that we can take with us wherever we go. We physically stepped 'into' it and 'out' of it several times and each time she asked us to focus on the word that had stood out for us and ask God for a picture or words/verses about it. My word was acceptance and I had a really strong sense of God's presence in my 'prayer home'. My picture was that he placed his hands on my head and told me that I was his precious child. There were other words and impressions but it's hard to express them, it was more of an overall feeling. Anyway it was exciting to me because I've never really had anything like that happen before and it was what I needed to hear at the time. No doubt I will need to hear it again and again before it really sinks in but we were told to pack up our 'prayer homes' and put them somewhere safe about our person, because we can take them out anywhere and God will meet with us.
Well I feel I've written more than enough for one post now. I will finish with a quotation from the weekend that also stood out to me, and some pictures from our nature walk early on the Saturday morning.
'The safest place for ships is in the harbour, but that's not why ships were built.' (Anonymous)
Wednesday, 31 October 2012
The name of my blog comes into its own!
These last two days I have been actually teaching! A whole class! For the whole morning! By myself! And as a result I have been liberally coated in chalk dust as well as red dust, hence the title of this post.
The two days have been rather different from each other, and I'm glad I had today, because after yesterday I felt exhausted and a bit of a failure. I think I was a victim of 'supply teacher syndrome' in middle class yesterday! Having seen how well-behaved they are with their teacher, and beginning the day with them listening attentively, it was a little bit of a shock how quickly things deteriorated when they'd had enough time to get used to me (about 5 minutes!) They did what I asked them to but they were very noisy about it, and kept asking for the rubber or the toilet - ah, the old tricks! As the morning progressed I started to learn ways of dealing with them - not the same ways as I would use at home - and things mostly improved. In fact I took one child outside the door to have a quiet word and made her cry - oops - but she was really well-behaved after that and she had been a pain before!! As a bonus I think the rest of the class were a bit shocked by how mean I could be when it was needed. My best part of the day was doing a 'creative' lesson where I'd decided to read 'The Gruffalo' (a favourite of mine!) and then get them to draw their own monsters. I drew the characters on the board and named them (ooh just realised that was sort-of pre-teaching like we learnt on the TESOL course I did!) and then began to read... and they were engrossed! They were so quiet! I read but also talked about the story to make sure they understood, and acted bits out for them, and they listened the whole time! I was wondering just how long I could spin this story out as it was so peaceful! Anyway, they did some nice drawings afterwards too so I felt at least that lesson was relatively successful!
So today I had to take the top class. I felt on slightly firmer ground with them because I know them from choir, where I've had to be pretty strict to get them to stay on task and sing rather than mess around! I had prepared a 'fill in the gaps' phonics sheet for them for language, then I gave them zillions of + and - sums for maths (they're mainly doing revision). After long break we had half an hour of music and movement, where I did choir-type stuff and action songs, then we had 'social skills'. I'd checked it was ok to use this time to get them to do a picture of themselves and write a couple of sentences to make a book that I'll send to All Saints (my school in the UK). I managed to explain this to them and get them to understand the task (thank you again, TESOL training!) and the results are quite fun!
Anyway, it's getting late so I shall leave you with a photo of my extension task from the phonics lesson - not the most thought-out list of words (sea was too difficult) but I was quite proud of my board work with chalk! (By the way that's a hook as used to get fruit down from a tree, before anyone quibbles with it!!)
The two days have been rather different from each other, and I'm glad I had today, because after yesterday I felt exhausted and a bit of a failure. I think I was a victim of 'supply teacher syndrome' in middle class yesterday! Having seen how well-behaved they are with their teacher, and beginning the day with them listening attentively, it was a little bit of a shock how quickly things deteriorated when they'd had enough time to get used to me (about 5 minutes!) They did what I asked them to but they were very noisy about it, and kept asking for the rubber or the toilet - ah, the old tricks! As the morning progressed I started to learn ways of dealing with them - not the same ways as I would use at home - and things mostly improved. In fact I took one child outside the door to have a quiet word and made her cry - oops - but she was really well-behaved after that and she had been a pain before!! As a bonus I think the rest of the class were a bit shocked by how mean I could be when it was needed. My best part of the day was doing a 'creative' lesson where I'd decided to read 'The Gruffalo' (a favourite of mine!) and then get them to draw their own monsters. I drew the characters on the board and named them (ooh just realised that was sort-of pre-teaching like we learnt on the TESOL course I did!) and then began to read... and they were engrossed! They were so quiet! I read but also talked about the story to make sure they understood, and acted bits out for them, and they listened the whole time! I was wondering just how long I could spin this story out as it was so peaceful! Anyway, they did some nice drawings afterwards too so I felt at least that lesson was relatively successful!
So today I had to take the top class. I felt on slightly firmer ground with them because I know them from choir, where I've had to be pretty strict to get them to stay on task and sing rather than mess around! I had prepared a 'fill in the gaps' phonics sheet for them for language, then I gave them zillions of + and - sums for maths (they're mainly doing revision). After long break we had half an hour of music and movement, where I did choir-type stuff and action songs, then we had 'social skills'. I'd checked it was ok to use this time to get them to do a picture of themselves and write a couple of sentences to make a book that I'll send to All Saints (my school in the UK). I managed to explain this to them and get them to understand the task (thank you again, TESOL training!) and the results are quite fun!
Anyway, it's getting late so I shall leave you with a photo of my extension task from the phonics lesson - not the most thought-out list of words (sea was too difficult) but I was quite proud of my board work with chalk! (By the way that's a hook as used to get fruit down from a tree, before anyone quibbles with it!!)
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