OK, Yesterday was my first real teaching. In the morning I taught a lesson on Javascript (and this morning I did the first lab session since then). I did a lot of question asking trying to find out what they knew and also to get them used to answering questions with me. We spent two hours doing that and didn’t get to the very humble learning objective I had set for the session. Not a good start, you might say. But I was happy with it. We covered a lot of what I think is important background conceptual stuff which they had not covered before. We differentiated between server-side javascript and client-side javascript and they figured it out for themselves from the information I had given them. That was the best part of the whole day for me…
… even better, in fact, than in the afternoon when, during ‘games’ lesson, I taught about 60 Kenyan girls the Charleston stroll! Yes, Sister Pauline invited me to do a dance lesson. I thought of doing the Jitterbug Stroll, but I don’t have the music with me. The shim-sham isn’t very physical and makes more sense to dancers, I think, so it had to the the only other stroll I know (most of); the one with “ooh, ah!, ooh, ah! in it (which did not cause as much embarrasement as I feared, either for the girls, or for sister). I will be interested to see how many are keen to do something else next time. I did, however, hear one of the girls humming the Squirrel Nut Zippers, Put A Lid On It as she walked away from the games field.
Its bloody hot here. That lesson nearly made me pass out. I joked that someone should bring me a soda, and sister brought me a warm Fanta that was very welcome. I dehydrated severely none the less. I drank lots when I got back to my house, and sat on the sofa for about an hour with a headache. Next time I will take more water to drink during the lesson. And that was for a lesson at 4pm when the sun is way past its zenith.
Hot is also the name of an album by the aforementioned Squirrel Nut Zippers.
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