The\nnext day, Marc and I got into our stride, helping in the clinic;\n\u201cMarkus\u201d called us into a meeting in the evening (the first\nactual sit-down any of us had had with him). We thought he had\nnoticed the shopping we had done and wanted to hear our thoughts and\nsuggestions for the school. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As it turned out, he told us the founder of Mudita Foundation\nwould arrive the next day and made it clear to us he wanted us all\nat our correct posts (i.e. not all in the clinic) \u2013 in the morning,\nI was to go help the teacher in the 6th<\/sup> grade English\nclass, Marc was to help in the Kindergarten and Elna, Agata and\nKarolina were allowed to stay in the clinic. In the afternoon, Marc\nand I were allowed to join in the clinic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I insisted (with a bit of difficulty from a language perspective)\nto receive the school book the children were using, so I could review\nit and prepare for the next day; finally, I was told someone would\ngive it to me after the meeting. Marc was shown the kinderkarten and\nI was supposed to be shown to my class in the morning. After the\nmeeting, everyone left and nobody gave me the English book. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The next morning, I met one of the teachers in front of the school\nand she explained I would be teaching two classes, with a free period\nin between. She (finally) gave me the book and told me they were on\npage 36. She also informed me that the English teacher was absent\nand I\u2019d be giving the class alone. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n It would be too long to go into detail about how the class went,\nbut in short it was pretty disastrous: despite being grade 6, very\nfew, if any, of the 60 students in my first class understood any\nEnglish, except to recite the contents of their book. I tried to\nexplain the exercise they had to do (to write an imaginary postcard),\nbut to no avail. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The most confusing part, at first, is that they answer \u201cyes\u201d\nto pretty much everything. So when I asked if they understood the\nexercise, they all said \u201cyes\u201d, then started writing. After a\ncouple of minutes, I noticed they were simply copying the\ninstructions from their book. I decided to change tack, and instead\ntried to get the class to work together on the postcard. It worked\nmarginally better, though I still don\u2019t know if they fully\nunderstood what they wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most of the kids know how to say \u201cwhat\u2019s your name?\u201d And\n\u201cHow are you?\u201d (or chant \u201cHello teacher, how are you?\u201d) but\nthey don\u2019t all know what they\u2019re saying, so they ask \u201cwhat\u2019s\nyour name?\u201d about a dozen times, just to say something in English\nto the volunteers. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Having learned from the first class, the second lesson was easier.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n That evening, we were introduced to the founder of Mudita\nfoundation, a German who had discovered Buddhism and meditation about\na decade ago and had found out about Aung Myae Oo school in 2015 andd\ngot involved in financing and managing it. During the group dinner, I\nsaid \u201cI\u2019m sorry, I didn\u2019t catch your name\u201d, to which he\nanswered \u201cMarkus\u201d. Seeing my confusion, he told me the project\nmanager we had been calling Markus was in fact called Peto. He took\nthe opportunity to ask Peto to correct volunteers when they called\nhim Markus (spoiler: he still doesn\u2019t to this day). The fact that\nthere is no nurse in the clinic also came as a surprise to him. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the next couple of days, we had the opportunity to address a\nnumber of issues with him. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The next day, I discovered the English teacher was still absent,\nbut based on the experience of the previous day, I managed my two\nclasses marginally better. \n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The next day, Marc and I got into our stride, helping in the clinic; \u201cMarkus\u201d called us into a meeting in the evening (the first actual sit-down any of us had had with him). We thought he had noticed the shopping we had done and wanted to hear our thoughts and suggestions for the school. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[20,21],"class_list":["post-29541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-myanmar","tag-aung-myae-oo","tag-volunteering"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kastoof-ontour.world\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kastoof-ontour.world\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kastoof-ontour.world\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kastoof-ontour.world\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kastoof-ontour.world\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29541"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kastoof-ontour.world\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29542,"href":"https:\/\/kastoof-ontour.world\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29541\/revisions\/29542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kastoof-ontour.world\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kastoof-ontour.world\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kastoof-ontour.world\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}