A Lesson In Hygiene

I’ve begun teaching several weekly clubs for the students in my village. This week was my fourth week of lessons. The club’s theme is “fun”, each week we learn a little English then we do some sort of activity. Thus far we have covered a little geography, played some games, learned about abstract art then created our own, and this week we talked about hygiene.
Now I’m sure some of you are thinking, wow, that sounds fun…
This week’s lesson began with the regular English lesson where we covered the alphabet, some phonics, reviewed hello, my name is___, how are you?, where are you from?, and then learned I am a student.
I then read two short stories that I wrote in Turkmen and illustrated (I am not an artist). The first is about a girl named Gülşat who goes to the outhouse but doesn’t wash her hands directly after. She then is very considerate and helps her mother to make dinner, eats dinner with her family, goes to bed and wakes up the next morning. When she wakes up her entire family is ill.
The group and I discuss what went wrong in the story and what things that Gülşat did well, then we talk about germs and where they are located and how they make us sick and how to prevent getting sick.
The second story is about a brother and sister (Begenç and Günça) who live in my village. Each step of the way Günça obeys and does what she is supposed to while Begenç is not a good boy. All of the general hygiene issues are covered in the story as well as things like listening to your parents, and helping around the house. The story ends with Günça enjoying playing in the yard while Begenç must sit because he has cut his foot, he also has swarms of flies, fleas, and lice swarming him and looks generally miserable.
Again we disucss what each person did well and not so well, what we should do differently and how we can apply this to our lives.
Then I introduce each of the following terms in English: Wash your hands! Brush your teeth! Wash your clothes! Take a shower! And wear your shoes outside!
Then for each of the phrases we add an action. Washing your hands you rub your hands together. Brushing your teeth you smile really big and pretend to brush your teeth. Washing your clothes we mock hand washing (which is how the majority of people here wash clothes myself included, and we don’t have wash boards). Take a shower we mock dumping a bucket of water over ourselves and then scrub our arms (again very typical of a normal shower here myself not included – my family has a shower head with running water). Wear your shoes outside we walk with really high steps.
The end purpose is playing musical chairs. There are a few differences between our version of musical chairs and what you may be used to. First: there are not nearly enough chairs, so we use pieces of paper on the floor. Second: the music is not music, rather a student or myself yelling out the phrases in English that they have just learned while the rest of the students walk in a circle doing the actions we just learned. Finally: my students, just like many other students around the world, like to find ways to make themselves win. They resorted to dragging the pieces of paper around the floor with them, or even two pieces with them. Several students would not move off their piece of paper until the one in front of them was deserted, then they all caught on and no one moved.
Overall it was a very fun and entertaining lesson.
This coming week I’m planning on teaching about the U.S. I realize I’m a health teacher here, but there are 3 Peace Corps Goals that all volunteers are always striving to achieve.
“The mission of the Peace Corps is to promote world peace and friendship by:
Helping people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women
Helping promote better understanding of Americans on the part of people served
Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans”
Therefore, teaching my students about the diversity of life in the United States is implicit in my role as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Turkmenistan. I’m very excited to start sharing some of this information with them.
On a final note, if anyone has any great lesson plans or activities for students that cover any area but specifically health related feel free to pass them on to me! I currently have many ideas for these groups of students, but know that my bank of ideas will run out at some point.