Practicum Week Pt. 1

Last week was all about "fake it till you make it." It was our first practicum week, which meant we went to a drop-in center—a place that runs after-school programs for kids—and tried to dive into our Peace Corps work.

On Monday, we met with the caregivers at the center and discussed the various programs they run. They serve around a hundred kids, offering a wide range of support. They help with homework, wash uniforms, provide meals, ensure the kids have beds and school supplies, and run programs focused on empowerment and creating an AIDS-free generation. The caregivers were incredibly kind and helpful, giving us a much better understanding of what we were stepping into.

Tuesday was our first real interaction with the kids. We set up two different stations—one where we taught the kids the Cupid Shuffle and another where they could score a goal to ask us a question. I was at the question station, which was a lot of fun. We started with the younger kids (under 10 years old), who were adorable and asked questions like, "How do you do your hair?" "How many kids do you have?" and "Do you have fun in America?" The older kids tested our knowledge with questions like, "What's the biggest desert in America?" "What's the biggest river in America?" and, of course, "How many kids do you have?" They all loved learning the Cupid Shuffle, and we returned to it whenever we needed to stall for a few minutes.

The kids also tried to teach us the rules of netball. I didn’t completely understand but I’m excited to learn more!

On Wednesday, we focused on building closer relationships with the kids we’ll be working with during our actual practicums. Since this was only week one, much of our time was spent identifying needs and building rapport. Week two, which will be about a month from now, will involve us returning to work with the same 30 or so kids we identified this week and running three days of programming with them. We chose to work with a group of 10-13-year-olds because they likely already have a baseline understanding of some of the health topics we want to discuss, and many of them speak pretty good English.

Building relationships on Wednesday involved playing games to help us get to know the kids and some fun activities to build trust. We played a lot of "This or That," where one side of the classroom represented, for example, ice cream, and the other side was pizza, and everyone had to run to their preferred side. The kids also taught us a game called River/Bank, which is similar to Simon Says.

Payton and I playing River/Bank with the kids. I was already eliminated but Payton was still going strong!

Thursday was a bit more challenging. We tried (and mostly failed) to talk about healthy habits and food. We had everyone write down examples of healthy and unhealthy foods on sticky notes, which turned out to be our biggest mistake. We didn’t fully grasp how difficult it would be to explain exactly what we meant, and many of the kids simply copied their neighbors. We also didn’t realize the varying levels of understanding in the classroom because the most vocal kids were the ones who fully understood. Still, we gathered some information about the kids' background knowledge on health, and I think we learned a lot about how to structure a similar activity in the future.

On Friday, we took a step back. Two team members had a more in-depth conversation with the caregivers to give us a firmer foundation for our program. We then split the kids by gender and talked about hygiene and sexual health to gauge their knowledge. This approach worked much better than the day before, but I think even smaller groups would have been more effective so we could engage with each person individually. We ended the week with a fun session of freeze dance, netball, and one last test of how well they remembered the Cupid Shuffle.

I learned so much last week, especially about the different ways things are done here. Everything moved at a slower pace and with less organization than I’m used to. The way the kids are taught to answer questions is also different from what I’ve seen in the U.S. But despite the challenges, it was incredibly rewarding to start working on programs and figuring out how to troubleshoot along the way.