First 3 Weeks Teaching

Teaching.....has been an adventure. Maybe more of an adventure than moving to Casablanca. While I love my students, there are so many challenges that come along with teaching young students who are all english learners. Although I am used to the United States' standard of third grade, my third graders here are on a much lower level. Reading is quiet difficult, due to lack of vocabulary. I find myself loosing patience as the day go on. I need to repeat the directions. I need to write the directions on the board. I need to have students repeat to me the directions. I need to have students following along by repeating a word in the story. I am most frustrated when students are just not paying attention. In order to keep their focus, I constantly find myself looking for new ways to make sure the students are engaged. I credit this to both Breakthrough (my summer teaching job) and working with my 3rd grade supervisor last year. Breakthrough taught me to always have students actively involved. When one student does not know the answer, I have another student tell me the answer and then I go back to the original student to tell me the answer. This way I am ensuring that the first student, who originally did not know the answer, is listening and can repeat it in their own words. I often find myself asking multiple people to repeat the correct answers, because many of the students have trouble listening. The most frustrating times are when 5 people have already said the correct answer and the 6th person was not listening. My work with my 3rd grade teacher has taught me to always have the directions placed on the board so students can have a visual, and to provide alternative ways of learning for students who need it. These alternative ways include having things printed out, and allowing students who work diligently but slower to do fewer problems. 

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Now for some interesting things the students call me:

I am mostly Miss. At times I am Miss. Olivia, and other times I am Miss. Ahmadi.

3rd grade girls: They are clingy and will not stop hugging you. I have already been called mama 4 times. I have also been called Mul Hanout, which means shop keeper, because I like to keep my pen on my ear.
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So far my students have learned about the King of Morocco, worked on reading, addition and subtraction, and have learned about making inferences. Two weeks from now we will be going to the Parliament in Rabat for a field trip!

Besides teaching, life has been flying by here in Casablanca. Last weekend, I spent friday watching a movie and staying in. Saturday I made a trip to the beach with a few other teachers, and Sunday I made a trip to the mall to buy a few necessities. Even though my sense of direction can be off at times, I am starting to find my way. The other day a fellow teacher and I were shopping for classroom supplies at Derb Omar and needed to get a taxi back. For some reason (maybe due to traffic) cabs will not take us to our street, so we had to pray that we were walking in the general direction. With my broken Darija we were  able to eventually find our way home! Success! (it did take an hour and a half)

My biggest goal right now, in addition to becoming more patient with my students and connecting with them all individually is to improve my language. I had my first Darija tutoring session today and am excited to keep working on it! At times I think the language pressure takes more energy than my teaching. Due to my appearance, parents, taxi drivers, and people on the street all assume I am Moroccan. Its not a bad thing. In fact I love it. At times I feel so accomplished when people speak to me in Darija (even though I don't really have to do anything for them to assume I am Moroccan). However, trying to listen closely to what people are telling me in Darija, comprehend it and then respond takes so much energy. As I am writing this, I am starting to see that maybe the patience Moroccans have with me is the patience I need to have with my students language abilities. It is not easy to learn a new language, and we often take our native language for granted. This week, I will be more patient, I will improve my Darija, and I will become a better teacher. Inshallah.