Welcome to our first English lesson

Wednesday, November 13th

7:15 am. It's always on important days that you oversleep. Today, Sophia and I have our first official English lesson at Tarabot, and we agreed to be there half an hour earlier, so at 8 o'clock. At the time when I should actually leave to be on time, I only wake up because Sophia calls me. After a quick wash-up, which has to be enough for today, I hurry on my way.

A quarter of an hour before our lesson starts, I arrive at Tarabot and I'm relieved to see that Samer has already prepared everything: tables are set up in a U shape in one of the workshop rooms, a large whiteboard with magnets and markers in front, blocks and pens on the table next to it for the students to use. Sophia and I prepare a few cards about the topic "Families", and then it starts: the children arrive.

The only information we received in advance about the group is that there are about 20 children, between the ages of 13 and 16, and we shouldn't expect them to have any English basic knowledge. The eyes of 18 children now look at us curiously, 6 girls in front, the boys behind. Sophia starts with our introduction and says in English what we have planned for today. No reaction. Samer is still with us in case we need translation help. "They didn't understand.", his comment. So now we're actually glad that he's here. He explains our introduction game with a ball to the children in Arabic, which we planned, and at least some of the children show their agreement.

We now realize that Amina wasn't entirely wrong when she told us not to expect any basic knowledge from the children. The standard sentences and phrases that we teach them already require quite a bit of effort. In addition, the kids are energetically charged as expected, and their attention and concentration often wander. While the girls in front are extremely shy and reserved, and copy everything we write on the board onto their notebooks with great effort, the boys in the back keep us pretty busy. But again, Samer is a help here, as he can clearly keep the group in check better in Arabic.

And together we really are a good team: after 2.5 hours, we have only accomplished about half of what we had planned for today. But we are still proud when the children can remember almost all of the questions and answers we went through today. What works well: ball games, writing on the board, reading self-written sentences and words. This can be built upon. At the end, we distribute Smarties with the task of looking at everything we covered today at home. We'll see next week how much of it they have absorbed. Since I didn't have time to have breakfast this morning, I'm now slightly hypoglycemic and very grateful when Samer brings us sandwiches and drink boxes after class, and we can take a short break.

After the lunch break, today again Dabke with Kemo, then another new workshop: a young man in a white coat who looks like a mad scientist has brought virtual reality goggles. So now Sophia and I are sitting among about a dozen older children who have come specifically for this workshop, and we teleport ourselves from Warsaw to Pisa and Paris to London with our goggles. There are truly many beautiful places in this world.

But our next destination is the university. Today we have a workshop on the topic 'Prejudices'. And it's running differently than I could have expected in any way. But maybe more about that at a later time. I have to process this evening myself first.