May 15

I have been in Pakistan for almost a week now and have adjusted very well. Everyone keeps commenting on how well I have adjusted to the heat, which is nice to hear. It is very hot to be honest though reaching 40 some days.

Monday- Saturday I am in the classroom teaching kindergarten- grade 8, English. This is going very well. I have been able to use a lot of what I learned in university here. They teach children only through memorization so I find that the children often do not understand what they are learning. I am trying to show the teachers that there are other ways to teach children. Another thing that I am trying to encourage in the school is incorporating fun and variety into the classroom through having interactive lessons. Sometimes however the language barrier gets in the way and neither the teacher nor students fully understand what I am trying to explain. For example the other day in the kindergarten class I wanted to play bingo. I made the cards and asked the children to write one letter from the alphabet in each box. Some of the older children understood this and for the ones that didn’t I filled in the boxes. I then handed out 6 gummy bears to each student and tried explaining that they should put a gummy bear on the letter that I call. That did not work at all, what they did instead was make the shape of the letter with the gummy bears. They did have a lot of fun doing this however.

Yesterday night I ran a workshop for the teachers in the school. This also went very well; the teachers were very responsive and eager to learn some new ways of teaching. It’s very exciting to be using what I just learned in university to help people here.