Last week at Unisport

To help the teachers in their process and because we are with quite a lot at the moment, we did observations this week. See how they teach, which ways they use, how they interact with the pupils etc. Afterwards we would talk with them about what we've noticed.

The first time I did this was with a young girl, Mercy, she wants to become a teacher in the future, so she was fine with getting feedback, but she did not really respond with her own opinion about what she was doing good and which things perhaps could be done in another way, or where the difficulties were. That's why I asked her questions with every bit of feedback I gave. For example, if the pupils were writing an exercise or copying something from the blackboard, she would sit on a chair in front of the class and wait until they finish what they're doing, when a pupil comes up to her she'd correct the exercise. I asked her, what could you do with that time, instead of waiting on the chair? She didn't know. I advised her to use that time to go and walk around the class,to see if everyone understands, if they are doing what they're supposed to do etc. She agreed that that's a good solution for the waiting time and that she would do that in the future.

The second observation was with Faides, an adult woman. She felt criticized by me watching her. With talking about the lesson I noticed she felt offended. But she didn't talk to me about it, I just noticed by her body language. With several questions I tried to get her to speak to me, but it didn't work. I also assured her that she was doing a fantastic job, because that's the truth, every volunteer is doing his/her utterly best. But she kept quiet.

For every observation I made a short summary with all the things being said and seen in the lesson, for the volunteer to have a brief overview to look back on if necessary.

With Faides I used the moment that I handed the summary to talk once more to her about the things that had been said. And this time she responded with that she had thought about it, and that she was fine with the feedback she'd got and that she would keep the other comments in mind to be even a better teacher in the future.

The third observation was with Monica, she was one of the new volunteers.

After her observation there was no time to talk things through because she had to go somewhere, that's why we decided to do it the next day. I've never seen Monica again.

The afternoons of sports were filled with testing all kinds of games.

I made instruction sheets which I handed to one of the peer-educators (or someone else, just who'd be available at that moment) and they had to be able to give the game without me helping them.

Mostly there were some little instructions I forgot to add, like with hunterball, I didn't explain that the children were allowed to run freely in the square playing field. So when the game started for the first time all the children were standing on the edges of the playing field, waiting for a ball to come to their side. When things like that happen I write it in my notebook and rephrase the instructions to the peer-educator.

We tried a lot of games, what I remember most was that the children are not used to games where they have to trust each other, or where they have to (really) cooperate.

You notice this because they don't look after each other in the most caring way, if they have to walk a route blindfolded, the instructor could easily be busy with walking the route himself , and the on blindfolded is searching the route for himself.

And for the cooperation, they had to walk a route with their ankles bound together, well I've never seen couples doing this game that there were so many who just were doing their own thing.

After giving some tips about how you could walk faster together it went better.

But of course, this was probably the first time they had done a game like this.

Last day, saying goodbye to everyone, Unisport is closing for two weeks.

I'm going to miss them.

The volunteers

morning prayer

Faides

Mercy teaching her class

Moses giving a dance lesson

Susen doing a trust game

Chinese football

Materials at Unisport

Unisport has no money for materials, they have to do it with what they get from charity.
So we thought about how we could help them.

What I develop for Unisport at the moment is a blackboard.

Because of the new setting in the tent there are more children, and they're being taught in four different age groups. The first lessons I didn't notice that the lack of material was a big difficulty. Because the older groups (which I teach) get the blackboards.
There were 2 portable blackboards available from previous years.
We decided to add another 3 blackboards, to make sure that every teacher has one, because without teaching is even more difficult.

And on top of that, this week, ex-Cara Counseling brought us an old blackboard which we may use, so when the paint from the small ones is dry, we have more than enough blackboards for the project. And we can start focusing on collecting other materials. We always ask schools for old books and stuff, because something is always more than nothing.

Next to that I'm also making basic English lessons, which in the future can be used by the voluntary  teachers, just take a lesson out of the bundle and follow the instructions, and the lesson materials are all included.  This way it's also easy to have a logical follow up between the lessons in a year.

For the sports lessons in the afternoon I'm doing the same, a bundle with all sorts of sports activities, games, a lot of them will be linked to the lessons in the morning.
Where possible the sport in the afternoon will rehearse  matters from the lessons they've had in the morning.
For example, in the morning they have a lesson about animals. The teacher reads them a story about animals, they get to see pictures from animals, they write and draw about animals etc.
In the afternoon the animals will be back in puzzles, games where they have to imitate an animal and so on.
From making the blackboard we had some wood left, from that wood we'll make a couple of 'baseball bats' for the younger children. So that there will be big bats and small bats, so that every child has the chance to play the game on his/her level.

the carpenter measuring the blackboards

the blackboards after being painted for the first time

the kids doing a word-relay-puzzle