Nicole Keen, a May 2007 CU grad and former CW Program Staffer, is spending the better part of the academic year serving as a missionary in Africa.  Following is her latest entry from Swaziland, where she will be serving through the spring.  Please keep Nicole and others serving in Africa in your prayers...along with the people of that beautiful yet so often broken land.  CLG

I thought that this feat in itself required a separate email...I am officially an English teacher in Swaziland!  I am teaching 6th grade at Mahlanya Primary School, and I have an age range in my classes from 11-18 years.  There are two 6th-grade classrooms and I taught English today for an hour and a half in each one.  First of all, we did a reading comprehension exercise where the students read a story and then we answered some questions.  I went around and made a seating chart because their names are hard to pronounce and even harder to remember!

The next thing we did was to talk about composition and I had them write me a composition about themselves for homework.  We worked on it a little while during class and so I got to read some of their writing.  One little boy wrote, "Thank you so much for teaching me English Nicole Keen."  It was precious. Another one wrote that he wanted to be my friend haha.

There are 42 kids in each class and I have to say that the first class I had was much better behaved. The teacher simply left me in the class to teach while she went and did whatever she wanted to.  One of the problems is that the kids do not understand English completely and another is that I do not understand Siswati at all!  I made it clear that I do not tolerate talking while I or another student is talking and that we would respect one another.  After this talk, however, I had to make one of the older boys bring his chair to the front of the classroom and face the blackboard while I taught.  It was probably a welcomed punishment because the teachers use a switch on their hand.

Allison is in the 5th grade class and we are thinking of combining together to teach more effectively. Her background is not as strong in grammar and the periods for us to teach take up about 3 hours a day, so we are thinking that we could teach 6th grade and then 5th grade, taking up most of the day.  We also think that classroom management will be better with 2 of us.

We have to leave our house at 7am each morning, which means getting up at 5 to do quiet time, breakfast, shower, etc.  We have to take public for about 1/2 on to the school in the morning.  The good thing is that most of the student like us and I am excited to get to know them.  I know they want to learn English because it will help them in the future, many of them told me their favorite subject in school is English.

I am sure that I will have some crazy stories for you after this week...education in Swaziland is a totally different story than America!  We are going to meet at the public library tomorrow to see if Allison and I will be able to tutor in the afternoons.  If anyone has some educational materials that you could email me to maybe help, the resources here are lacking and much of what I will teach I will have to make up.  Hope to talk to you soon! Each Monday will be my day off, so that will most likely be when I check my email and write you back.

By the way...Swaziland is still one of the most beautiful places I have ever been and seen.

God is good!
Nicole
nicolelkeen@gmail.com

PS - Don't forget to send me some recipes!