First Day of Class

I had my first official day of classes today, which went quite well. The first class was "comics," which I put in quotations only because whether it is an art course, or writing one, or an English one, is never fully clear. But the objective for me is for the students to be introduced to the medium, and creatively express themselves. We are exceptionally fortunate to have translators in the form of local (Palestitinan) volunteers. Mine is the wonderful Raed, who translated Rebecca's class, as well as being accompinied by Hiba, who is the coordinator for the programs that are not language lessons. Despite some small hiccups - students being 8-10 not 11-14 as planned, the power going out mid-class, and students arriving late - the class went really well. I had people explain the concept of comics, and then gave them a few to read. After that, it was a small exercise drawing a single panel, about something from their life. Talent and how well the students grapsed the material ranged tremendously, form one student turning the single panel handout into a three panel comic, completiting it 10 minutes, and then finishing two more exercises I gave her, while another student needed to be taught how to draw stick figures and said he didn't like me and wouldn't be coming back.

This shows one of the great difficulties of teaching - how to balance the needs of different students. One of them is so so good, and I don't want her to get bored and leave her behind. But if I give her extra treatment, I take away from the other students. Even giving her other activities means that the students sometimes do not want to finish the one she has completed. By contrast, the difficult student obviously has some trauma. He was quite aggressive, but said he didn't like any violence when I tried to engage him with Spiderman. So I sat down to teach him how draw stick figures, hoping he would feel better knowing how to draw. I tried to reassure the class that they could all draw better than me, but he said I could draw. Obviously he feels he can't. Boy do I sympathize. I really hope he comes back though.

The english class was somewhat more conventional, but it too had its quirks. Again, I had much help with the English coordinator Tharwa, my local translator Yasmeen, and another international, Elena from Spain. All were a great help, and though Tharwa will not be in the classes any,ore, Elena will co-teach with me with Yasmeen's translation. I had about 12 students who ranged from 6-12! This means that their levels were all over too. How do I possibly engage all the different students? I've somewhat abandonded using comics to teach them, as it requires some comibination of a more experinced teacher and greater english to get the full effect. Instead, I did fun exercises, going over numbers and expressions (happy/sad/angry) in games. The basic objective in this class is to get them really familiar with very basic conversational sentences, so they can engage foriegners. This will hopefully reinforce lessons they have already (in theory) learned, and make English seem fun.

The rest of the day consisted of finalizing projects for tommorow, a wonderful chat with Tharwa about the mechanisms of comics (someone please remind to write more about this!) and some chilling out.

One final thing: the students produced some great work. I will be sure to post some of their stuff when I have a chance to scan it.