Running with the Ball

Running With the Ball

Because we are staying on the grounds of a training center that also houses a nursery school, attachments are quickly forming between the adorable little children that come each morning, and our Northwestern students.  Some of the girls visited classrooms this morning, hoping to ?”  They observe early childhood teaching methods.  A couple of them, Sunny and Dani, were “thrown a ball,” and quickly caught the ball and ran with it.  It went like this:

They entered the classroom and were introduced to the children.  The teacher asked them, “Did you come with a lesson to teach, or should we use mine?”  Sunny and Dani were wondering what the polite answer to that would be, so they replied, “It’s better to use yours,” thinking that she would go on to teach her own lesson.   The teacher then introduced them as the” teachers for the day” and handed them her lesson plan.  She said it was a music lesson, and then showed them the sheet, which had four words on it:  “high-low; soft-loud.”  With that lesson plan in mind, they took off running, and taught the children all kinds of ways to make sounds that were high and low, and soft and loud.  They taught them do-re-mi.  They sang songs. They pulled out of their repertoire many fun and creative ways to teach their lesson objectives.  The morning session continued on until recess, and after playing with the children at recess, the teacher asked them if they would like to teach the next lesson as well.   Unfortunately, they had other things on their schedule, so they passed the ball back to the teacher.  When they later  met up with a couple of the other Northwestern students who’d visited another classroom, those girls said, “Guess who got to teach class today?”  “You, too?”

Starting tomorrow, there will be many more opportunities for the team to “run with the ball,” as they have been invited to teach (and other things) in a couple churches throughout the weekend.  Then on Monday, we will be traveling for a week’s stay in a rural setting (about three hours from Mthatha), at the invitation of a pastor there, so we may not have access to internet for a while.   We heard that there used to be an internet café in that town, and hopefully it’s still there!