"Gauche, gauche, gauche, droite, gauche..."

Although I’m not here to teach, with a bit of free time on my hands I decided to volunteer (yeah, haven’t had enough of that word yet!) to teach English in one of the schools once a week. So last Tuesday I took up some chalk and recommenced my fight against ignorance with a group of 80 bemused and amused Cameroonian students.

Now in advance, I had observed an English class last Friday and taken a few notes. I also talked to the teacher and found out what he had planned to do next. He said that I could stick to the curriculum or do whatever I wanted. I decided to mix it a bit and was planning to do the parts of the face and the five senses (to cover the curriculum) and add in colours in respect of hair and eyes. Good work I thought to myself. However, thinking about it a bit more I realised that I wouldn’t have got very far as every kid I would have asked what colour their hair and eyes were, would have answered black and brown. C'est tout!

And if that wasn’t bad enough if I was to demonstrate on myself I would have ended up with the same result. Thankfully it was one of the few classes in my career (hope Batt O’Keefe isn’t reading this) where I decided to prepare in advance rather than just wing it and changed my approach.

As it turned out however, all my preparations were in vain as they didn’t understand a word I was saying so spent the class teaching basic greetings and classroom vocab. Winging it is definitely the way to go Batt!

It was strange to be in front of so many students but you just get on with it as they do. All of the students bar nine were sitting on the floor. The nine lucky ones (they happened to be the biggest students in the room) were sitting three at a time on desks. There weren’t many books between them but they all had copies, pens and mini blackboards.

Entry into the classroom after break involved lining up in two lines outside the door and waiting for the teacher to start. This is where it all turned a bit boot-campish. The teacher called “left”, and the students shouted “left” and stood to attention while stamping their left foot. The procedure was repeated with the right and alternated for a couple of minutes until the teacher/sergeant major called for both feet, whereby the students started marching on the spot and singing. On the teachers signal everyone marched into the classroom in the most orderly and musical fashion I’ve ever seen.

Am looking forward to working with the students over the next few weeks. Reckon I’ll learn a lot and once I learn the words to the marching song the students in Coola Post Primary School won’t know what’s hit them.

GC