4th Apr

P.M… Nguyen Dinh Chieu school

      Observe the prep class

Today, I didn’t inform my visit in advance, but I went to Nguyen Dinh Chieu School. I arrived at the school before one o’clock because I thought the afternoon class will start at one. But actually it was from two. As I’ve got unexpected free time, I walked around premise. In the primary school building, all children were sleeping on the desk.

The primary class has started at two. Today I observed the prep class. Prep class is the class which teaches the braille and the basic study skills so that the children catch up with the sighted children in the inclusive class.

The wall of the classroom is cutely painted. It’s just pity that the children cannot see it. Most of the class time was just like the self-study. After the teacher gave the children one task, what she did was just scalding the chat.

During the lesson, the teacher had disappeared around 30 minutes. While she is missing, the children were chatting, playing at flying paper planes or walking around the classroom. I was surprised that the teacher went somewhere during the lesson although I’m observing it.

while the teacher is missing...



After the teacher came back, she took out fruits from the shelf and gave me one despite the lesson time. The lesson had finished 30 minutes earlier than the fixed time. Today the children only learned how to write ‘uon’ in braille for two hours. I felt that the teacher could use time more efficiently.

After the class, I had a chat with the teacher. I felt that it doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have an enthusiasm. She once wrote a long report on the pathways of children in this school. Moreover, her husband is also blind. I used to work for a language school in Vietnam with Vietnamese colleagues. I thought her teaching style is just like the style of my old colleagues. I thought not only teachers but students take that style for granted. I think it’s a matter of culture, not an enthusiasm.

At the end, she talked about the charity drive of the school for the quake in Japan. In this school, all students have to raise money at least 5000VND (≒15p) on it. She said that some students complained that why Vietnam has to help Japan though Vietnam is still poor. She said that she explained to those students that Japan has continued aid to Vietnam for a long period, so now Vietnam has to return a favor. I was thinking about foreign aid that we discussed last month. I argued that government to government aid is inefficient, but now it became a major trigger of the charity drive in many countries and Japan have been saved a lot because of it.