Teaching practicum

The third week was super busy with a teaching practicum in the mornings and meetings in the afternoon. At Cummingslodge secondary, we led maths and science lessons for 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th form students (which is roughly equivalent to 8th-11th grades). I helped plan and taught food chains with three other volunteers to the 2nd and 3rd form students the first three days. The last two days we taught the nervous system to the 4th and 5th form students.
It was pretty eye opening to work with the classes. Not only did I get some much needed practice in leading a class and planning a lesson, I also learned a lot about the difference between Guyanese and American students:
-Guyanese students are very meticulous about keeping their notebooks neat. For example, they make sure that they’ve copied the board exactly as written, they use rulers to underline or draw diagrams, and they’re not allowed to tear pieces of paper out. A lot of time in class was spent letting them copy things from the board. I also noticed that they would either draw a line through any mistakes and write “cancel” or they would (neatly) remove the entire page from their books. I remember back in middle and high school that there was not particular way we had to keep our notebooks. Students would tear things out of their notebooks all of the time and would hand things in with rough edges. Here, students would never do such a thing; the one time we asked students to tear a piece of from their notebooks (before we were informed that it wasn’t allowed), most of the kids spend a long time making sure that the pieces were neat by tearing the paper with a ruler.
-teachers here are called “sir” or “miss” and their first names. For example, a male teacher would be “sir Luke”, and a female teacher “miss Lizzy”. When they answered us, it was “yes miss” or “sir” followed by the answer; much more formal than I expected. Sometimes they stood when we entered the classroom in the morning (it was a little inconsistent though; it seems like that may be a custom, but since we didn’t know the students relaxed after the first day).
-Even though we were only there for a week, it seemed like some of the students became really attached to us. On the second day, a couple of students brought me and another teacher flowers so they could show us what some of the plants we talked about looked like. Also, Colleen, my house mate, got hugs from several of the students after the second or third day.
On Friday, we had a closing ceremony with the students. A couple of them sang songs for us, there were some impromptu speeches, and we gave them certificates and snacks. It’s really unfortunate that none of us will be teaching there this year, because it was great that they came out for the week to get lessons from us.
In the afternoons we had our last orientation sessions in preparation for our dispersal along the coastal regions. After spending three weeks together adjusting to the new country, it was a little strange to leave to our sites, but I’m sure that the group will visit each other during free weekends.