Practicum!

Last week and the week before were our PST Practicum Weeks. It was like the ultimate test to see how well we could do as a Peace Corps Volunteer. The health sector trainees were assigned to design and implement two health classes in their hosting villages: one in the elementary school and one in the high school. In addition, each of groups in the different villages were assigned to host a health fair for their community. At the beginning of PST, I couldn’t even imagine how I could design, organize, and implement a health fair for a whole community, yet alone teach an entire class about health.

The Planning

In the few weeks leading up to Practicum, my group and I sat down to discuss the topics that we wanted to teach. We decided that we would teach the classes in pairs, so we knew ahead of time that we were going to be designing three lessons. But since we didn’t really know too much about the community yet, we decided to go talk to the teachers and the school directors to see what types of things the students were already learning so we could relate our classes to that. We were so unbelievably lucky with the amount of support we got from our community. All of the teachers and the school directors were so encouraging and helpful when we asked if we could teach some classes. Many of them gave us their opinions on what health topics would be most relevant and effective to teach to each of the classes and even introduced us to the students beforehand so that we could familiarize ourselves with them and have a better understanding of how to design the lessons. 

For the middle-school class, we had spoke to the english teacher who was very excited about helping us communicate with the teachers and the students. She told us that the 8^th grade class had recently been learning about environment health and that it might be a good idea to design a class around that. “Perfect!” I thought. This was exactly what we wanted; to design a class based off what they were already learning. The english teacher showed us the posters the class had made about pollution and recycling (all of which were in English) and we noticed that none of them talked about the health effects caused by pollution. Thus, we decided to design a course that took their knowledge of pollution and related it back to their health and how it impacted them.    

The kindergarden teachers were very open about what topic we could teach to the class. They basically told us that we could do anything that we wanted. A few days before, the health volunteers had talked about how fun it would be to teach kids about germs and how to wash their hands correctly, especially since proper personal hygiene seems to be a major problem here in Albania. Therefore, we had no trouble deciding the Germs and Hand-Washing would be our lesson.

Lastly, for the high school class, when we met with the biology teacher, we was very happy that we wanted to teach a class for her students. She emphasized how little the students knew about STD’s and safe sex practices. She thought that if the “American’s” would talk to them about the subject, it would be more influential than if she or any other teacher would talk about it. At first, we were a little hesitant at teaching Sex Ed to an Albanian high school class. But, we saw how much the biology teacher emphasized the importance of teaching them this, so we decided that that would be the best topic to teach them. 

Designing the classes were so much fun. After deciding on the topics, all we really had to do was to research the topics and then choose activities that would engage the students in the learning. We had no problem coming up with ideas on how to make the class engaging and effective. The real test was seeing how the Albanian students would respond to our teaching styles. 

The Health Classes

The first class we taught was the 8^th grade class. We decided to do this lesson on the first Monday of Practicum because it was Earth Day. How perfect can that be?! Lawrence and Laurel decided to teach this one so Emily took notes about the class whereas I was assigned as the class photographer. (P.S.: Taking photos was absolutely addicting! So much fun!). They started the class off with an ice-breaker activity that we called “The Yarn Game.” Basically what happened was each person took a chance throwing the ball of yarn their peers, and when each of them caught the yarn, they introduced themselves and said one environmental issue they had observed in their community. This was a great success! All the students were actively engaged and very respectful to the person that was talking. Even though all of them said pretty much the same answer to the environmental issue, the activity really seemed to get them excited about the topic and eager to participate in the lesson afterwards. After the warm-up activity, Laurel and Lawrence presented the information while asking the students to reflect about what they had previously learned about the topic. At the end, we played Jeopardy! to test their knowledge in a fun, interactive way. The students didn’t really get the concept of the answering with “What is…” but we improvised and they understood. Overall it was a very successful class. For being our first lesson, I was pleasantly surprised at how well the students responded to the lesson. 

Our second class was with the kindergarden. All four of us were required to teach at least one class to the kindergardeners so we decided to split the class in two and teach the class in pairs again.  For the kindergarden classes, we decided to make cartoon germs and stick them all over the classroom for the students to realize that germs are everywhere, we just can’t see them. Then we showed them how germs spread when we sneeze and cough without covering our faces. We did this by pretending to sneeze/cough and using a Windex spray bottle at a poster-sized drawing of a person, and showing them how much of the germs from the “sneeze” got on the person. The kids absolutely loved this! Next we showed them how to wash their hands properly (which most of them already had a good concept of but was definitely a good refresher). And to demonstrate the amount of time they should watch their hands, we sang “Happy Birthday” twice, once in English and then once in Albanian. The kids loved singing in English (all of them knew it!) and they loved showing us how to sing it in Albanian. At the end, we gave them some coloring sheets, one with germs and the other with a picture of washing their hands. Once again, everything went so well! All the kids were engaged and excited to learn. It was perfect!

Lastly, with the high school class, it was mine and Emily’s time to teach the lesson. We didn’t know what to except going in to the lesson. We thought that it might be an awkward topic to teach and that we might hear a lot of giggling like we experienced in our high school sex ed classes, but we didn’t know for sure. This was Albania and who knows what they are comfortable speaking about. So we started the class with an activity. We wanted to show how fast STD’s can spread so we handed all the students a small piece of paper with three lines on it. They were told to go around the room and get three signatures from other people. However, this concept was very difficult for them to understand. What made it a little more difficult was that we didn’t tell our interpreter about the exercise beforehand so the whole signature thing got really, well….lost in translation. After all of them got three signatures (all of which were basically illegible to read), we handed them all another piece of paper with either a X, C, or nothing on it. We then asked everyone with a “X” to stand up (the X represented an STD). Then we asked for everyone who had the signatures of any of the person standing up to stand up too. Then we repeated the process again. Then we told everyone with a “C” (representing a condom) to sit down. Then we told them that everyone standing had got an STD and that the people sitting down didn’t get one because they used safe sex practices. Even thought the beginning of the exercise got a little confusing, all of them understood the point of the exercise by the end. I must say, Emily and I were very good at dealing with misunderstandings and going with the flow. It all turned out great in the end. After giving them same basic information about STD’s, we split the class into 7 smaller groups and had them each make a poster with information about a specific STD and present it to the class. I was surprised how mature all the students were about the topic. There wasn’t any giggling or jokes being made. They were really interactive and engaged in the lesson. And, of course, at the end of the lesson, we handed our free condoms for all the students. A Sex Education class is nothing without the free condoms, huh? And now, I can officially say that I have been a Sex Ed teacher! Who would have ever thought?! I don’t think any ever thinks that they would grow up to be a Sex Ed teacher, but yet thanks to the Peace Corps, I can now say I have, haha. :)

 

The Health Fair

After we were all done teaching the health classes, it was time to focus on our health fair. When we went to the local health center to ask if they would be interested in participating in our fair, they were so eager and excited to work with us. They even suggested the topics they thought were most relevant to the Kuqan community and told us that they would do any medical testing we need to be preformed there. From that moment on, I knew that the health fair was going to be much easier than I thought. We had our topics: Hypertension, Diabetes, and Obesity. Now we just had to organize the information, come up with interactive activities, and to promote it. We made a poster that told all the information about when it was, where it was going to be (we had asked Emily’s host family if we could use their restaurant as the location since it was the only restaurant in town and basically the only communal area in town), what we were going to talk about, and how it was open to everyone. We got the Health Coordinator, Zyri, to translate it into Albanian and then we went around to all the businesses in town and asked them to display it in their store’s window. Now imagine this, four American volunteers, with very little knowledge of the Albanian language, going in and out of stores pointing at a poster for a health fair and asking in very basic Albanian if we could hang (with hand-signals, we hadn’t learned that verb in Albanian yet) in their window. It was quite an odd experience. We couldn’t help but laugh at ourselves after every attempt and seeing the confused looks on the vendors’ faces. But, despite the confused looks, all of them were very supportive and they hung up our posters for all their customers to see. The lady from the ice cream shop (which we didn’t even knew existed until then) even gave us all free ice cream. Everyone was very sweet. 

When the day of the health fair came, I was so nervous about everything going well. I’m a planner. I’m not very good at just winging stuff. But in this case, we had planned our the activities and information for each of the tables, but we hadn’t received any of the supplies, brochures, or medical equipment until a half hour before it started. Plus, we had language course the morning of, so as soon as the lesson was over, we head straight to the restaurant to set up. When we got there, Zyri was already there with all the supplies. I immediately got into set-up mode. I was moving tables, guiding people on where to put things, setting up the activities. I was on a mission to get everything ready by 12:00pm sharp. People started showing up right away. The doctors and nurses didn’t arrive right away so we began by guiding the people to the activities that didn’t require doctors assistance. Basically that meant that everyone could measure their height and weight to calculate their BMI. haha. So Laurel was at the measuring station, I was weighing everyone, and then Emily was using her phone (we didn’t have calculators) to input the information into a BMI calculator. We were constantly busy. Everyone was so excited to know how tall they were and how much they weighed. They didn’t even care if other people saw their numbers. I was surprised how open they were very open about it, even if they were overweight or obese. By the time we got through most of the people, the doctors had showed up and began taking people’s blood sugar levels. Lawrence, who was a nurse in the US, was taking people’s blood pressure as well. And since it was so unbelievably hot outside (like high 80’s, I swear I got a little sunburnt even just after an hour of being in the sun), everyone was trying to gather under the one umbrella that we had for shade. It was pretty funny to see. 

 

I couldn’t believe how successful the whole thing was. Everyone seemed to enjoy learning about their help and ways to adapt healthy habits. And I was so surprised how much support we got from the community. So many people showed up to participate in the event. We had ran out of all the worksheets we had printed out so each person could write down their health information for each of the activities, so we ended up writing them on extra pamphlets. And all the school kids that stuck around after they completed all the activities were helping us promote the fair by handing out pamphlets on different health topics to people passing by. They even jumped on and off of buses that stopped and handed out pamphlets! 

By the time it wall all done, I was so happy at how well all of our projects went. For rookies, we looked like pro’s! It was awesome! So far, this was my favorite part of PST and now I have more confidence in myself that I will be able to make a difference in Bajram Curri when I begin my service. 

Now, I’m only three weeks away from swearing in and moving to site! I’m so excited!!!!!!