Bananagrams and Canes

After careful experimentation, I've come to this conclusion: canes hurt. A lot. I finally had one of the teachers cane me yesterday and my hand was stinging for minutes after he hit me. I assume my pain tolerance is higher than these kids' too so I can only imagine how bad it must be for them. Thank goodness we don't believe in caning in the U.S.

Speaking of caning, one of the teachers tried to get me to use a cane this morning when I was teaching "How Great is Our God" during worship. He said it was the only way to get kids to listen. First of all, I found it highly ironic that I was told to hit kids while teaching them a praise song. Second of all, there was no way I was going to take the cane and hit kids with it. Third of all, I don't believe him at all. It's not my place to tell these teachers what to do, but I am determined to show them that I can teach these students just fine without physical punishment. Maybe if they see enough volunteers come through and teach without caning, they'll start coming up with different methods too. That's the hope at least.

As far as teaching goes, it's been really fun these first couple days. I've been working on English and all that entails right now (for 2nd and 3rd graders) is working through the alphabet and helping them sound out words. It's especially difficult because the Ghanaian accent doesn't pronounce R's so they say "wata" and "playa" instead of water and player, meaning that many of the kids forget that some words have an R at the end. They're also having a really hard time distinguishing E sounds from I sounds. At first it was really frustrating because I'd try to sound the words out with them and break up long words into shorter sounds but my accent made it so they didn't really understand what I was doing. That's where the bananagrams come in. Since I couldn't communicate what I was trying to do verbally, I just showed them visually. This worked so much better! Now, not only can they see the letters in front of them, they can also manipulate the word by literally breaking it up into smaller pieces. Plus, it's always fun to play with bananagrams. :)

Before I go to bed, I'll leave you guys with a link to this website. One of my trippees (Hi Julietta!) sent it to me and I found it absolutely hilarious. The math geek in me especially appreciated #16. http://therionorteline.com/2011/11/30/the-56-bestworst-analogies-written-by-high-school-students/