Kenya: Week 4 Pre-Service Training

Teacher Training

The main focus of this week was teacher training. At my school, the four Peace Corps Trainees were assigned our own teacher to learn from. We also chose a subject to specialize in. Sophie and I came in anticipating to teach science courses, so Sophie was assigned biology and I was assigned chemistry. Andy took on physics and Lucas is teaching math. All of this may change once we go to our sites, but these are our focus subjects during our training time at our school. The weeks leading up to this week were a lot of logistics about the school itself and the Kenyan education system. This week was focused on creating lesson plans and teaching.

We planned for and taught about two classes a day: one for Form 1 (freshman) and one for Form 2 (sophomores). The classes that we taught were mostly 40-minutes long, but we taught a few 80-minute double lessons. We had ample time to plan with our counterparts who were very helpful in guiding us through the curriculum and teaching requirements. I was able to prepare labs with our lab tech, create manipulatives for students to use during class, and draw diagrams. We had a lot of observers visit us this week in preparation for our teaching evaluations next week. These visitors included each other, our teacher counterparts, and Peace Corps Education staff.

Mock LPI 

I’m not entirely confident in what LPI stands for, but my language group determined it probably stands for something similar to “Language Proficiency Interview”. At the end of our pre-service training, we must each reach a language proficiency of intermediate mid. The ranking starts at novice low then moves up to novice mid, novice high, intermediate low – high, advanced low – high, superior low – high, and distinguished low – high. The LPI is a conversational exam in which there is an interviewer and an interviewee. The mock LPI occurs in advance of the final LPI to give us feedback on if our learning strategies and routines are working and what we can specifically mock before we complete the final LPI.

Our LPI occurred this week at Mama Grace’s house. We each spent about fifteen minutes conversing with the examiner while he asked us specific conversational questions and engaged us in different scenarios. This mock LPI was audio recorded and later analyzed by other LPI examiners to determine which ranking each of us received and what each of us could do to improve before the final LPI. Overall, my language group did really well. I received intermediate high. Overall, this means that I can handle a variety of uncomplicated communicative tasks on self-introduction, family, travel, basic work roles, and leisure. To improve, it was indicated that I need to use more connector words to turn my sentences into paragraphs and eventually extended discourse. Personally, I am very happy with this because I did not know any Kiswahili before I arrived to Kenya. It has given me a confidence boost and I am more motivated to continue learning the language. 

Significant Moments of the Week

I eat bananas now. If you knew me before this week, I have never eaten a banana. For some reason (probably Mama Grace’s persistence), I decided to retry bananas this week and I’m not looking back. They’re delicious 😊

Dan (my brother) and I are starting to watch movies after dinner. I have some movies downloaded on my phone and we watch half a movie every night. So far, we have watched “The Good Dinosaur”, “Elemental”, and we are halfway through “Luca”. I think Dan has started to tell his friends at school about his American sister because the kids know my name now. I know this because I have to walk past the school soccer field on the way to the school that I work at and there’s a field full of children that yell “Anne”/“Anna”/“Hann”/“Hannah” as I walk past. It’s a fun way to start and end my day 😊

I learned this week that Dan is super responsible. While sitting at dinner one night, there was a knock on the door. It was one of Dan’s teachers asking for him to come unlock the school so he could retrieve something he left in one of the rooms. Dan is in charge of unlocking the school in the morning and locking the school back up at the end of the day. What a responsible kid! He thinks it’s funny how surprised I am that #1, this is a responsibility he can have, and #2, that he has this job. It’s something that is apparently common here and an honor for the student. It doesn’t surprise me that he was chosen for this role though because he is an awesome kid.

In the matatu ride home from the hub this weekend, the TV was working. It was playing a variety of music videos which was a new form of matatu entertainment for all of us 😊 I will say that it did add a new level of motion sickness to the journey so I am not sure I am a fan of the TV.

While we were at the hub this weekend, our homestay coordinator came to visit everyone’s homestay families to see how well we were doing at integrating into the home and community. Thankfully, my family didn’t have to exaggerate too much about how well I am doing although they did make it clear that they may have embellished how good of a cook I was. I now have a list of things I need to do this week to prove to Mama Margaret that I will be ok living on my own when we move in December. One of these items was to go to the store and to order entirely in Kiswahili. Mama sent me to the store to pick some things up and told me I had to speak Kiswahili. When I got back, I learned she had called the cashier and was on the line the entire time I was there to make sure I spoke Kiswahili 😊 She told me I got a 20/100 and we would need to try again lol. Dan and Mama Margaret are awesome teachers when it comes to my language and culture learning. They are very patient with me. I also love how Mama Margaret gets her neighbors and friends to practice with me as well, it’s very helpful.

Be on the lookout for Rav and Sav fitness. Savannah and I tried out her portable workout kit at the hub and it was very entertaining. There’s quite a lot you can do with her set-up and it was fun to see what workouts we could do with our surroundings.

Sunday is quickly becoming my favorite day of the week because it’s the only day we do not have anything planned for us to do. This Sunday, Savannah and I listened to a church sermon in the morning and then went for a hike. Cooper, one of Cooper’s brothers, Margaret, and I hiked up to the big rock. Yes, that’s its name, the big rock. You can see the big rock from almost everywhere in our village so it was fun to see it up close. The hike is pretty steep but not long at all. We spent more time sitting up by the big rock than we did walking to get there. On the way back down the hill, we stopped at Mama Linda’s to eat some guava. While we were here, we ran into Andy and CiCi, and they invited us over to try their homemade ice cream. They made coffee and chai flavored ice cream. It was pretty good! It was more of a popsicle texture than an ice cream texture, but with that much sugar and milk mixed together, you can’t really go wrong. Overall, it was a great end to another great week.

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