Another shining PC day:

Thursday is Teacher Meeting Day... wooo........... yeah, not so much. GUY22 has arrived and I hosted a PCT for the week. Kate came on Monday, and I took her through what I do on a normal basis. I told her Thursday was the best Peace Corps example I could give her.

It's been three weeks since our last teacher's meeting. Last week was Mash activities, the week before was prep for Mash activities. The week before that, we had talked about questions. The differences between open-ended and close-ended questions, and using the 5W's (and H) to get your students to express more, verbal and written. We tried organizing the answers the the questions in brainstorm webs. We worked on one as a group, then I asked the teachers to bring one of their own for our next teachers' meeting.

I was all ready to continue with our "Questions" sessions, I had creative activities to do, etc. And, as Peace Corps requests, Kate would help facilitate that meeting. I looked forward to the collaboration.

Except, Thursday at lunch (about 3 hours before the meeting), our HM asked for help with explaining how to do components of the teachers' Notes of Lesson (lesson plans). She equipped Kate with a handbook and suggested we look at the grade one teacher's Notes of Lesson for Science or something. Um, ok.

We both were a little unsure, and didn't really have much time, but we said we'd do what we could. So, after lunch, we sat down, poured through the handbook, the Notes of Lesson and the textbook. The HM wanted help with showing teachers how to better write the Specific Objectives of their lessons. We sort of paraphrased our interpretation of the handbook's instruction on writing Specific Objectives and then threw in there our creative ways for doing a lesson, too. We turned our brainstorming into a handout for the teachers as well as an exercise with the science lesson. We printed it out and finished with a couple minutes to spare. The snacks were ready, we were prepared. I was pleased with ourselves and optimistic.

Then, Toshao comes and asks if he can use the upstairs in the library for a meeting for 30 minutes. Well, we have the teachers' meeting up there at 3.... he says it won't take more than 30 minutes, that'll give us time, plus the HM was in the meeting. News to me. Ok... It turned 2:45, and the HM and some other teachers still hadn't reached yet, so the meeting hadn't started yet, and when it DID start, the HM would be still occupied... Then the other teachers reached, and one brave spokesperson said the teachers wanted to go get vaccinations for their babies at the health post. That could take all afternoon...

Well, there's no arguing with that! Mentally, I throw my hands up in the air in exasperation and resignation. Out loud, with a laugh, I say then we'll have to reschedule it for the next afternoon. I was SO prepared, and SO optimistic for how it would go, thinking maybe this would be a breakthrough on working WITH the teachers, on truly integrating the library and creativity with the school and formalities, but then thing after thing got in the way to change things. Kate good-naturedly said this sort of thing always happened at her old job. (Which tells me she'll do fine here as a PCV.)

So, we held it on Friday. Some teachers still didn't show (like the one in particular our HM wanted to benefit from the session), a lot didn't participate in our interactive parts, and almost no one gave feedback as to how the session went. But, we assisted our HM with something she wanted the teachers to work on, AND - one teacher asked "What about my composition notes of lesson? Could you help with that?" So, next teachers' meeting, we will use Miss' grade 3 composition notes of lesson as an additional exercise. That's cool. A step.

We are here to for specific and non-specific reasons. We are here because we feel we can facilitate improvement to not only our specific projects (such as health and education) but living habits and life skills. We are here to explicitly facilitate development in an environment foreign to our one back home. Projects, setbacks and satisfactions like these happen back home, as well, but it seems more vivid here, for some reason.

So I was thinking about it and I decided that besides a passion to help, and technical skills, there are three qualities I feel are most important to be a (good, successful) Peace Corps Volunteer:

1) Flexibility.
2) Diplomacy.
3) Creativity.

They are, as they say down here, "a must." Otherwise, your passion and skills won't mean anything. (An ability to laugh helps, too.)