AEE: Gambia
- Details
- Category: My Mary I
- Published on Thursday, 01 December 2011 15:53
Stacey Gilroy
B.Ed: 2006 - 2009
AEE Placement: Gambia
In January 2009, as part of my Alternative Educational Experience, I travelled to The Gambia with nine other trainee teachers from Mary I and our wonderful supervisor Anna Dillon.
We spent three weeks in The Gambia and loved every minute of it. We spent our mornings in schools around the Banjul area where we taught the beautiful and very talented Gambian children and learned a great deal from Gambian teachers who work in very different settings to what we’re used of in Ireland. Most classrooms were equipped with only a blackboard for a resource and were bursting at the seams with the very eager children. I remember counting over seventy first graders (1st class) in one Religion lesson.
During the evenings and on our days off, we had many other wonderful experiences with the locals. They invited us into their choir, taught us how to play the jimbay drum, brought us on tours of the area and in general gave us an insight into their lives.
My experiences in the Gambia have certainly contributed to the kind of teacher I aspire to be and in the other members of the group and our supervisor, I made friends for life.
Stacey