Into the Deep End

Muriel Schön (Switzerland)

Contributor

I just graduated from high school this summer and I wanted to take a gap year to gain new experiences, see unique perspectives and just do something different than what we did in high school. I started looking for volunteering opportunities. My boyfriend wanted to do something in a school somewhere in Africa so we started researching. One of the first places that we found was Kyosei Training Centre in Arusha. We didn’t think about it much. We just decided to go for it. 

When we first arrived, I didn’t have that many challenges adapting to the new culture. I came here with an open mind and I knew it would be completely different. I didn’t have expectations. 

For me the hardest part is that there are no resources at the school and I have no experience teaching. At the beginning it was just my boyfriend and me and we were the main teachers for the whole class.

We didn’t have much information about what the students had learned before and what we were supposed to do with them. We were thrown into the deep end. But I also love that challenge. Right now, I appreciate that I’m free to do whatever I want. I can be creative and come up with new exercises or games. When I see how they are making progress it really motivates me to do more. They have their notebooks and I have the blackboard, but that’s it. You really have to get creative. 

The biggest challenge is to reach every student because their English levels are so different. Some of them don’t speak any English. It’s especially hard when teaching chemistry to explain something to them in English. What I do is write the most important words on the blackboard that I’m going to use a lot in the following lesson. That way they can follow along. And I’ve seated them so that advanced English speakers are near the beginner students so that they can help each other understand.

When I want to explain something, it has to be interactive. I have to take a few volunteers in front to help me explain it together. When I teach chemistry, I would take two students to form one molecule so they see that two atoms together make one molecule. They have to see it visually. It helps them. 

The biggest improvement I’ve seen is that they now have more courage to speak up and that they have become comfortable and opened up to us. Some of the shy girls, are now the loudest ones when we start dancing.

Before I came here I never thought about being a teacher. It was never a dream for me. But now that I’ve done it, I’ve found that I really enjoy teaching. I feel really proud when I get them to understand something. So right now, it’s become an option for me.