One month of teaching at my permanent site!

One month down.

It’s hard to believe I’ve already been officially teaching at my permanent school for a full month. Time here moves in strange ways, some days feel incredibly long, and somehow the weeks still disappear.

So relax, friends and family. Let’s talk about it.

Currently, I teach English for Grade 5 and both English and Numeracy for Grade 4. Peace Corps volunteers have counterparts who are to be with them at all times. This is meant to bridge any gaps caused by language barriers, teaching style differences, and discipline practices.

In Lesotho, corporal punishment is very common and preferred by many parents. It was explained to me like this: parents discipline their children physically at home, so that’s what the kids recognize as punishment. If teachers don’t do the same at school, some believe the children won’t change their behavior because they don’t recognize any other form of discipline.

The Peace Corps bans schools that host volunteers from participating in corporal punishment. It’s outlawed in the States, and personally, I don’t believe physical punishment teaches the right lessons. I’ve had many students come to me crying because someone was “beating” them. I’ve also confiscated makeshift wooden knives and even whips…

But I digress.

Volunteers are supposed to have co-teachers with them during lessons. Unfortunately for me, my school has a teacher deficit, so I teach all my subjects alone.

Earlier, I mentioned three areas where a co-teacher helps: language, discipline, and teaching style. As you can imagine, having no co-teacher has caused challenges in all three areas—especially discipline with some of the male students.

---

Language

We’re sent to schools with an English need, which usually means rural sites. Some of my students speak English at a Grade 1 level, or even lower. In my Grade 4 and 5 classes, the range is huge. Some students can’t spell words like my, and, am, or the. Others can write short fictional paragraphs with minimal spelling mistakes. My students range between 9 and 13 years old.

Because of that, I’ve had to rely more on Sesotho while teaching, and honestly, it seems to have been a good decision. Sometimes students tell me something in Sesotho and I translate it into English, and sometimes I do the reverse.

It keeps them engaged—and it usually earns a giggle or two when they hear their own language in the lesson.

To be fair, when I hear long stretches of Sesotho, my ears kind of turn off because I don’t understand. So I imagine that when I speak too much English, some of my students experience the same thing. My solution has been to incorporate more Sesotho instructions into class. And when I’m really stuck, I’ll run to a neighboring classroom and pull my co-teacher in for translation.

---

Teaching Style

I hated school from kindergarten through third grade. I genuinely thought I might have to drop out when we started learning fractions in Grade 2.I also hated reading until The Hunger Games came out in the fourth grade. Before that, I either read books by looking at the pictures or didn’t read them at all.

Thankfully, my mother is incredibly intelligent—and an even better parent. She paid for tutors, bought workbooks every summer, and made my sister and I complete them before each new school year. She bought math games, reading games, and when I finally started showing interest in books, she got me a Kindle. I played educational games constantly.

Don’t get me wrong—if you looked at my grades or test scores, you wouldn’t know how much I struggled. I always passed. But my mother and I both know how impossible school felt at times.

I share that story because sometimes kids struggle not because they’re lazy or unintelligent, but because their brains don’t connect with the teaching style being used.

My teaching style is interactive. It’s games. It’s movement. It’s fun.

Students here are not familiar with that style. They’re not used to being asked “why” or being given choices in academic work. When I ask them to think outside of the box, the silence can be deafening. To them, the answer can only be exactly what I say and nothing more or less.

So my teaching style didn’t immediately produce the results I hoped for. I’ve had to step a little closer to traditional methods and slowly work my way back toward interactive learning. My goal is that by the end of my first year, I’ll have successfully done at least one engaging, game-based lesson in each grade.

---

Discipline

I cannot imagine physically harming a student.

And the kids sense that.

As someone raised in the South, I did grow up in schools where corporal punishment still existed. I do believe children should be respectful, and by nature, I have a no-nonsense personality when it comes to the children. However, because the kids know I would never hit them, they constantly test my boundaries and classroom rules.

After a particularly rough day, when the boys were riling each other up, I sat them down and asked them to explain themselves.

They told me they didn’t have to listen to me—or like me—because I am an American woman.

I won’t lie. That hurt my feelings.

I’ve traveled almost 10,000 miles from home. I left a good job. I sold the first car I ever bought. I paused my comfortable American life to be part of something bigger, and this is how they view me?

I told my supervisor and counterpart, and they spoke with the students. All of my students later came to apologize to me.

I have a small suspicion that these opinions may come from things they’ve overheard at home, but my supervisor believes the thoughts originated with the students themselves. I guess we’ll never know.

Regardless, I am enjoying the school and the students. Moments like this are part of the experience. The best thing I can do is let it roll off my back—and keep showing up.

---

One month in, and I’m already learning that teaching here isn’t just about lesson plans. It’s about language, culture, expectations, and patience—both with my students and with myself.

Some days I feel like I’m doing everything wrong. Other days, a student understands a word they didn’t know before, or laughs at one of my games, and I feel renewed.

It hasn’t been easy. But it’s been eye-opening.

Month one down. Many more lessons to go, on both sides of the classroom.

Dress like a student day!!