Need some more help from my friends

I just received another email from Cherokee giving me more details about working at Kechene School and I need your help again in two areas.

First, this list was given to me of some of Kechene's basic needs and I would love to bring as much of this stuff as possible with me. So if you and your family, church, homeschool co-op, etc would partner with me again and help me get this stuff that would be amazing.

School needs: The school doesn’t even have electricity and lacks the resources of even the most basic schools in the US. The following list details the current needs of the school and includes suggestions of items to bring from home. Please, please try to bring some of these items, as they will greatly improve the school.

1. Teaching Aides: the walls of the school are pretty bare and don’t offer the students visual aides from which to learn. Thus, if you can, it’s highly suggested that you bring posters with which to decorate the walls and reinforce learning points. The students have responded extremely well to the posters I have made by hand (I’m an awful artist) and would benefit greatly from other visual aides. Posters are cheap, easy to pack, and rare in Addis Ababa. Anything that offers a visual supplement to English-learning would be a huge help (depictions of emotions, physical characteristics, weather, math, school supplies, basically anything you can find at a teacher’s resource store would be great!)

2. Classroom/school supplies: chalkboard erasers, pencils, pens, pencil sharpeners (individual or for the class), erasers, notebooks

3. Medical supplies: hydrogen peroxide/rubbing alcohol, cotton swabs, antibiotic ointment, a scale to track the growth of students, eye drops, ear drops, nose drops, splints, gauze

4. Funds: teacher salaries, rent, school supplies, door guards, food, and other expenses add up quickly. If you can raise money in any way for Kechene, it will directly improve their quality of life and education.

Second, while I am at Kechene School I will be helping teach. Now, my gift is not teaching so I am going to need a lot of help getting ready to do this! I will need to make lesson plans and come up with ways to engage the children. Now, all you homeschool moms and elementary ed teachers out there I know have learned a few tricks of the trade and I would love love love it if you would help me with this. Here is what I was told:

Teaching Suggestions:

1. Be energetic: The students are young and have short attention spans. Act out things whenever possible, be goofy if necessary, and always engage the students. I found that asking the class questions, getting students to help act out the lesson, and using hand motions to reinforce teaching points were all effective ways to maintain the attention of the class and increase the likelihood of the students remembering what was taught. Basically, the kids will learn more and you will have more fun if you are energetic!

2. Incorporate visual aides: Drawings on the chalkboard, posters on the wall, and any photos you can bring will catch the attention of the students. For example, when teaching the kids adjectives such as tall, short, fat, thin, strong, and weak, I brought pictures from my safari to incorporate into the lesson. They absolutely love to look at photos, especially if you are in them, and it makes the lesson more exciting for them (The giraffe is ____. The hippo is ___.)

3. Prepare lesson plans: Though the concepts you will be teaching are simple, you will be much more effective if you have a game plan heading into each class. Have the concept you plan on teaching, examples, a few questions, and ways to engage the class prepared each day.

4. Learn basic Amharic: For basic communication at the school and in Addis, it is to your advantage to learn some basic Amharic. Particularly at Kechene, learning basic math vocabulary is very helpful, as it allows you can understand and help the children more.

Thank you for all your help and support thus far and please continue to pray for me as I step farther and farther outside my comfort zone to follow God's will.

Job Placement

I got an email today from Cherokee Gives Back- Ethiopia Program with a description of where I will most likely be working.

Probable placement: Kechene School:
Kechene School is located in Kechene neighborhood, one of the poorest in Addis Ababa. All of the students attending Kechene are from destitute families and 36 of the 82 students are orphans. Luckily, the orphaned children are living with relatives in the local community. The school consists of grade levels KG-1, KG-2 and a 1st grade class.
Cherokee Volunteers assist in teaching and tutoring students, serving meals – breakfast and lunch are served daily, organizing games during recess, and helping with overall facility improvement – such as installing a water tank and plumbing for a shower, shelves for organizing the storage room and classrooms, installing trashcans, etc. Volunteers have personally raised funds to support these initiatives and also contributed to Kechene’s overall budget.

I am soooo excited!!