The following was written by the Laurier teacher candidates who are participating on the Haiti Listening and Learning Team.
Today was the last day of
teaching in Haiti for the Laurier Teacher Education Candidates. After 3 days
of preparing lessons and thinking of helpful ways to engage the students and
teach them what they wanted to learn in English, it is hard to believe it is
coming to an end.
We got to the Regina Assumpta Girls
School where we would be teaching for two and a half hours in the
morning. The girls came in on their holiday to participate in an English
class with us. These were the girls that the TECs had met on our first
day in the schools. One group learned basic conversational English skills
such as family, food and conversation starters. The other group learned
pronunciation, and did little skits about meetings and greetings. Both
classes learned a little bit about Canada.
Throughout the week we have been
arriving at the school during one of their recess breaks. Everyday they
play a version of king’s court dodge ball. There was a big tournament
happening between classes through the week so we couldn’t play with them.
Today in break, the TECs got an opportunity to play the game.
All 20 members of our group met
at Lakay restaurant for lunch. It was the first time in a week that we
got to choose what we ate, and we all took advantage of that. There was a
lot of conch, pork and cashew chicken.
After lunch we headed to Susan
Schuenke and taught our last class with them. The TECs have working with the
same groups for the entire week. The students are in a 4-day English
program that ran after school each day for upper year students. Over the
week one group focused on basic conversational English and interacted with
Canadian students via snail mail. The other group focused on meetings and
greeting, and building conversations using skits.
At the end of the class, we
combined the two groups for a certificate ceremony. Both the Canadian and
Haitian national anthems were sung proudly. Students received a
certificate of completion, Canadian pins and hats for participating in the
program. Students were really grateful for their opportunity to learn English
and we were grateful for the opportunity to teach them.
Overall we had an amazing week
teaching English to the Haitian students and learned a lot from the invaluable
experience. As we type this we are already getting messages on Facebook
and WhatsApp from our new Haitian friends!
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