This week has again been a very positive experience for me on a leadership and on a personal level.

I have continued to develop and improve in my teaching abilities, style, and confidence, and have a very good teaching relationship with the students. I have a very casual, and conversational tone with the girls in a classroom setting, but also manage to maintain control and I have respect and am listened to when I need the class to be quiet and listen, which is something I feel very pleased with. The blend of being down-to-earth and friendly, while also having an established authority as the adult and teacher is what I had hoped to attain, and I feel I am striking this balance very well. 

This was very visible for me when watching the world cup semi-final between Spain and France with the girls, where many students felt passionately for one side or the other in the game, which ended after their lights-out time conventionally is. I was sat, chatting with some students about football and being taught different phrases in their native language during the game, but at half-time and full-time (after some wild celebrations), some control had to be shown to encourage the girls to get ready for, and then head to bed. It was quite a fun experience using a booming teacher voice to get people's attention and to make them quiet to listen to another volunteer who was trying to give out some instructions, and this demonstrated to me that I am able to play both sides as friendly, and as authority where required. This is a skill that I can now recognise in myself to be adaptable in my leadership style depending on what the situation needs. 

Football and cricket training sessions have been very fun, and for these I have been able to take a more passive approach to leadership - the teams have well-respected team captains, who are incredibly impressive and look to run proceedings themselves, which I am more than happy to enable. However, these team captains have come to me with questions of how best to proceed in certain situations, and I have been able to advise accordingly. For cricket, I have been tasked as being the bowler, which is a challenging job, as we are playing a form of kwik cricket where everyone has a turn of batting solo, but are constrained by time. This means I am constantly micro-adjusting the speed and placement of deliveries, looking to allow the girls some easier deliveries at the start so they manage to have an opportunity to bat, and then ramping up the difficulty if they stay in a long time, and taking a more active role in fielding and claiming catches when wickets had to be taken, to speed up the process. This has been a fun challenge for me, as while the warmups, teams, and choice of game are co-ordinated by team captains, I have had to focus on the logistical challenges of enabling everyone to have fun, while getting back in time for dinner.

When playing football, there are some formal football sessions where we travel to the pitches together, and I am chatting to the girls on the walk there, while playing a safeguarding role as we are out on the street, looking to halt traffic on crossings and make sure they are all sensibly crossing the road etc. Again this is where I have to take a more authoritative role, making unpopular decisions such as not letting them carry the football, after they have demonstrated that they are going to be silly with it near the roads. In the games, I am a good player, and have had to again adjust my levels of effort and input so that the matches being played aren't focussed on me - looking to not run at full speed, or score for myself, always passing to a teammate. In informal football, for example at lunchtime or in the evenings, the games are more chaotic with less clearly defined goals and rules when the ball runs off the small patch of grass. Here, I am sometimes more needed to step in to give a ruling which is respected, so that the flow of the game can continue. 

My resilience has been challenged further with the difficulties of quitting an addiction, but I have been doing myself a justice with that, and feel proud of the progress I have made, as this becomes easier by the day. There has also been some printer-related adversity, whereby I have struggled to print worksheets for my students, but I have been focussing on adaptability, to continue delivering meaningful lessons, even when I cannot deliver exactly what I had planned. Personally, I have again faced some challenges with news from home, but I have sought to communicate with other volunteers that I have made good friends with, and have managed to seek and accept help where I have needed that. That is a new development for me, as I had always been a 'take it on the chin' person. I continue to be strong when dealing with challenges, and able to push through, but I am no longer too proud to ask for and embrace offers of support, which is something I am very proud of. 

I continue to feel proud of the man I am while here, feeling purposeful and impactful in my daily life, loving every second of my time, and already feel quite strongly that I would like to return to the school, either as a volunteer again next summer, or potentially to spend some time working throughout the year after I graduate. The students are just brilliant and provide me with so much inspiration, as I do the same to many of them in response. 

Next week will be rather hectic, as the school is beginning to pack for an institutional relocation to a new site, but I am excited to see what it brings!