Friday, December 11, 2009

pay our teachers more!

yesterday, i taught two classes of grade nines at a school where my friend is a teacher and after two hours, i was exhausted!  i was a little nervous going into it and i wasn't sure how detailed to make my presentations, but i focused on human rights in africa and jammed my presentations with photos to keep their attention.  it fit within their unit on the canadian charter of rights and freedoms that is in the social studies curriculum (which, coincidentally, was my favourite subject!).

i think it worked and they had me thinking on my toes with some of their questions.  and i had a hard time convincing some of the kids that having aids is not 'gross' and you cannot get hiv from being bitten by a monkey, but overall they were attentive and interested in learning more about africa.  next time i will brush up my kiswahili so i can at least speak a sentence to them rather than just random words that came to my mind.

but man alive, i could not do that everyday and i think i have even more appreciation for our teachers than before.  they work tirelessly to educate kids, manage parents, and do it all in schools that really could use a little sprucing up.

one of the pieces of information i left the students with was that if they want to get involved, go to spreadthenet.org and buy a mosquito net for $10.  i just did.  the campaign is only 75,000 nets away from their goal of 500,000 nets to people in rwanda and liberia, so head on over there and spread some christmas cheer all the way to africa.

i hope i inspired at least a few of the kids to stay interested in international events and human rights in africa.

2 comments:

La Cabeza Grande said...

Well done, Lu! We seem to value the least the ones who do the most to shape our future.

kristen said...

I spent about 15 minutes in my mum's kindergarten class and was exhausted. Grad 9s are tough- glad you survived them!

I think spread the net is PERFECT for kids. $10 for a net is something tangible and affordable for that age group!