Imatin
An especially rainy day and only a few of the girls arrived at the class. It turned out that in the next two weeks final exams would be held in the school, so our lessons would not take place, and at the end of the month the schools at the Palestinian Authority shall close down for the summer vacation.
During the coming days we shall check whether the girls are interested to continue studying during the vacation, in June. In any case we shall prepare ourselves to hold a graduation party with all of them after the exams.
Finally we shall also meet with the coordinators and activists who organized the the study framework and help in the classes.
Ricky:
About 10 girls arrived at class. I brought a very short text and each read it all, and then we amused ourselves by completing sentences and solved together a crossword puzzle which contained all the new words. As the text was concerned with the trying on and buying of a dress the girls had a good time and laughed with tears when we tried to change the text to masculine gender. Then we talked a bit about the planned Sea Day and it turned out that the girls (aged 12-13) would not participate. They did not give reasons for that although I asked, but it seems that the reasons were religious-traditional ones. N. too pointed out that she would not participate. We talked about this probably being our last lesson together and I raised the possibility to continue during June. As I mentioned already in my last mail all of them wanted to continue, but this has to be checked with the women responsible.
In the next two weeks our pupils have end of the year exams, so our lessons will not be held. We talked with N. to find out whether the girls would like to study during June although they are already on holidays and she said she would find out.
In the meantime we asked the girls and most of them were happy to continue studying during June, but there is a difference between a spontaneous willingness and a commitment, so this has yet to be clarified. We talked amongst ourselves and decided that after their exams (perhaps on the 10th of June) we shall meet with the girls and celebrate the end of the year.
Gabriela:
Only a few girls came to the lesson yesterday, probably due to the rain that was very heavy when we arrived. Even so it always feels worth it. My class is made up of girls of 11 and 12 year old. I am trying to build a story with them based on pictures of two young women I cut out and mounted on card - we build up the story - their names, their age, their professions and where they live. In order to help them decide where the characters live I brought them an illustrated Atlas yesterday and we spent a lot of the lesson looking at it and learning vocabulary connected to places - continents, countries, cities, villages, islands etc
As we left it seemed that this was the last lesson for this year. I would really like us to organize a meeting/party to mark the end of the year if this is so. June 10th as suggested would be good.
Lilka:
To the last lesson only a few girls and a little brother of one of them arrived, but those were the more adult and interesting girls of "my class". The lesson passes pleasantly. We talked about different items, in English and Arabic. We played word games, we sang, we read a not very difficult text in English and they translated it into Arabic, and the from Arabic back into English.
I again realized that they have great difficulty in saying sentences in English, even the most simple ones. On the other hand they write amazingly well in English, in a beautiful handwriting and without spelling mistakes. Interesting!
On the way back the we suddenly realized that this was probably the last lesson. We regretted not having said a proper goodbye. We should think of a nice farewell for this year.
Adam:
When I arrived at Imatin at 15:30 I discovered that R. was in Jerusalem with my students. P. apologized for not having informed me. I stayed on to talk with the young students. They are so radiant that one should draw light from them. At 15:45 two other students from my class appeared, accompanied by a new student who didn't know one single word of English. As this was now a regular class with a closed program, I was not prepared to accept a pupil without any knowledge of English. At 16:00 two other girls appeared. This time we improvised. I told them stories and we worked on a new text. I was very pleasant. This of course isn't a lesson we are used to, but it was fun. I would very much like to finish the year with some kind of summarizing event.
Micky:
At the beginning of the lesson there was only one girl and slowly a little group of girls assembled. I asked them to tell what they eat for breakfast and we wrote down the key words. We also worked with pictures from the book that was recommended to us by Marcy and the girls wrote on the blackboard the dishes they recognized in the pictures. We continued with an exercise of identifying an unusual word among four.
At the end of the lesson M. the matron, asked to talk to me.
She told me about he five year old so who had special needs and asked me if I could help her to refer him to treatment/diagnosis in Israel. She asked to bring me his documents to enable me to pass them on to specialists.
I hope to meet her in the coming weeks. I shall be happy to hear your suggestions about means to help her.