Sorry It Took So Long...But Here's Etosha National Park!

Well, it has been way too long since I last posted a blog entry, and I apologize for that! So much has happened in the past couple of weeks, so I am going to do three blog posts today to make up for that! And then, I will do my best to post at least two times a week for the rest of my time in Namibia! So, I will start with the week after thefourth of July. That week, not much happened, we got to know the three new American girls, Cecily, Amy, and Brenna, and prepared for our weekend trip to Etosha National Park! That was my first week really taking charge of the remedial reading and math program at the BNC, and I really enjoyed it! There are so many kids at the Center who are in fifth, sixth, seventh grades, but they cannot read, or write clear sentences, and they can barely do basic addition and subtraction. The way the teachers in the school systems here have failed the children is remarkable. It is my understanding from talking to my boss, Marybeth, that the private schools are fine, but the public schools, where the children at the BNC go, are not up to even Namibian standards. What happens is the children are either "passed" or "transferred" from grade to grade. Passed means that they have passed the standards for that grade, and transferred means they have failed, but will still be moved into the next grade. So, many of the kids at the BNC have been transferred and are now in the seventh grade but are still at the second grade level. So I have essentially been put in charge of a remedial reading and math tutoring program for the kids. What we do is take them out for one-on-one tutoring time with different volunteers (whoever happens to be there that day), and work on phonics, simple books, and simple math, gradually advancing them into harder materials. So far (I believe we are in the third week of the program), it has been working out very well, and I am very pleased with how it is going!
This coming week is the last week that the other American girls are here, so starting next week, depending on how many volunteers we have, I may end up going back to teaching a class, rather than tutoring, which would also be fun! Next entry will be on Etosha National Park!!