So this will be an update of sorts, I have been teaching quite a bit. With the Cambridge school.
For any educators that have been reading or those from Camp Augusta, you might recognize some of these.
Comics Drawn by students, pay attention to the one on the left
The first day I was in we made a comic strip in english. I began the class by reading Calvin and Hobbes, which has a considerable amount of adult humor, but the kids seemed to enjoy it.
Students working on their comic strips and asking questions/reading my comic strip
After reading through a few strips of the comics, I asked the kids to imagine what they would write about, and then we began our construction of our own comics. Some wrote about princesses, some about monsters, and some about the occupation. Its so interesting seeing which children are feeling the effects to a larger extent of the occupation. Seeing a comic strip about a boy who throws rocks at the trucks that come through and how he is the hero of the town, really opened my eyes to the diversity of children at this school. Cambridge is one of the best schools in Nablus, it is very expensive, so I had the assumption that the kids here had a somewhat privileged life. Here, regardless of privilege, everyone is affected by the statelessness of Palestine.
The following day we did an exercise on creativity, it is called "The boy and the Red Flower". This exercise is about me as the teacher, restricting the creativity of the students consistently through out the entire exercise while they try to draw. For students in the states that I have done this with it is very frustrating, students get upset the object, they question the teacher. Yet here a sense of resignation was floating in the air. Every time I changed the expectations of the drawing, students looked sad, and tried to fix their drawing best they could. At the end when I held up the flower I had drawn and I said, if you flower does not look like mine, you have done the drawing wrong. I gave a good 30 seconds of wait time. The students sat, in frustration, in silence. The room was somber, I asked if I could read the story of "The boy and the Red Flower" Click on the link to read the story, it talks about a boy that was told to copy the teacher so much that his imagination had been snuffed out. Then we turned the lights off in the room and asked students to close their eyes, and think of a flower, the most beautiful flower they had ever seen. Then we asked students to draw this flower they had imagined. The results were beautiful.
The flowers students drew in comparison to my boring red flower
Yesterday, we worked on singing a song in English, the song I chose to work on was Bill Withers, Lean on Me. It is appropriate and it is about friendship, also the words are not to challenging for a 7 year old. We practiced and we played guitar. Everyone got a chance to hold the guitar, and try to play it. The students are so full of curiosity, it is exciting to see. We will continue this song next week along with more english and arts lesson plans. I would never work with 7 year olds long term but this has been a great learning experience for me.
This post is about the students I am working with and not so much of my outside experiences, I know people donated to the work that I am doing here and I want them to know that their donations are going to a good place, I love Dr.Seus and part of the donations you all made went towards the teacher of the classroom I am in getting quite a few Dr.Seus books to help students learn how to use more conversational english. Along with the supplies to do these projects, and hopefully a painting project coming up next week. So thank you to everyone who supported me financially and in other ways.
-Jliv
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