Hard to believe that just over two months ago myself and 37 seven other amazing members of my cohort were just arriving in this beautiful country. Over the last ten weeks we have gone trough a series of cross cultural training, teacher bootcamp, and language training. We've spend four weeks living with host families to help us learn the language and integrate into our communities, and finally we've sworn in as official Peace Corps Volunteers. Over the last few weeks, our trainers have been telling us what a special group we are. They have commented on the amount of support we give to one another and how uniquely close we have all become compared to the cohorts before us. These ideas and feelings were also apparent in almost every one of the speeches given in our swearing in ceremony last Thursday evening and the love felt around the room was undeniable.
In the beginning, we got dubbed the "clingy" group, but I prefer: incredible, beautiful, intelligent, and thoughtful group. I can't even begin to describe the love I feel from every single one of my peers. I couldn't have asked for a better group of individuals to make it through this journey with. They are each some of the most inspiring people I have ever met and cannot wait to continue on through service to see how much we all accomplish for our schools and communities in country.
But I'm getting ahead of myself! We still have 24 months left in service, and right now we are all settling into our various sites around the country. First term of the school year begins in a week and we have the next three months until our next training to complete assessments with our pupils and students. I mentioned before having a rough FSV (future site visit) and that was very much true. I spent many a nights following those three days stressing out about having to go back. Thanks to the PC staff, especially my Champion, I think we have finally come to an agreement with the teachers and my supervisor that I will NOT be the head P4 teacher and will not spend 12 hours a day at school like they told me I would during FSV. Finally they are beginning to understand my role as given to me by PC to be a literacy specialist for P4 pupils. I will pull small groups of pupils out of class each three or four times a week (much like you would for RTI in the states) and work on building skills such as alphabetic principle, phonemic awareness, fluency, comprehension, etc. In this country literacy is a struggle at all age levels, so while my job is to work with P4, I will also get the chance to help run workshops for my colleagues and hopefully even be able to reach out to families and the community to get them on board with their children's educations as well. I had the opportunity today to talk with one of my fellow teachers. He was telling be how very happy he is that I am here because he wishes to learn how I teach my kids and what he can do to help his. He informed me that some of his P7 pupils still have trouble reading and wants to be able to help him on his own (yay!). While I can't say for sure, I lend much of this student struggle with literacy to the way schools and classes are taught here. You can observe a full school day and see only rote memorization, repetition of definitions or thoughts, yes or no questions, and writing notes. Not once have I seen a teacher ask an open ended question with any type of a response. This is where I hope to focus much of my time. Creativity and exploring ideas is not much of a thing in Ugandan schools. I can't wait to get started! I will post pictures of my school and it's classrooms/grounds once the kids come next week!
On another note, I've been so thankful to have had the ability along the way to stay connected with family and friends. I am SO thrilled for Brian to arrive here for a week in May! Three months to go! Emotionally I am doing well, with some minor ups and downs each week as I go through the roller coaster of thoughts and emotions such as: "can I really do this for the next to years?!"... "am I really going to make much of an impact on my school and the community?"..."am I really okay with having huge cockroaches, frogs, spiders, and lizards for roommates for the duration of my stay?!?!!!". As of right now, all of the answers are "yes". I know I will gain a wealth of knowledge about the world and myself over the next handful of months and I know that it will change me in some ways. Hopefully all of which I can be proud of.
More blog posts soon! (I still need to tell you all about homestay and language training!) ;) Stay tuned.
Missing you all back home. Sending warm hugs from UG!
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