What Have I Had to Do to Prepare?

Preparation for the trip has been ongoing over the past 4 months ever since I first decided to go. Aside from the standard visa application and purchasing of plane tickets, I have had to get a whole slew of vaccines and immunizations, as well as anti-malarial medicine to take with me.

Curriculum development has taken about 2 months, I was given guidelines for what they need to know for their entry level exams for each grade, so some of the curriculum is based off that. Nearly the entire literacy program of what I will be doing had been adopted and modified to fit the needs of ESL learners from the literacy program we developed and used in my student teaching placement.

Student teaching in and of itself was a huge preparation in making this trip possible, I gained so much priceless knowledge about literacy and how to teach kids to read that I will be able to pass on to the staff at the orphanage.

I have also spent countless hours at home surrounded by multicolored paper and matte board creating games that the kids will be able to play at their level for literacy and math while I am teaching other leveled groups. Since I have very little money to spend on what I was taking I have to be highly creative with all of the resources I already had, which was actually quite fun to make everything myself!