Sand Travelers: Surviving Summer School

With a month and a half between us and the end of Summer School, I'm just now thinking I might be prepared to share some remarks about it. Seriously, in our department evaluation meeting a few weeks ago, I almost burst into tears; and the director looked close himself.

All in all, it was a success: no one died; no one was majorly injured; the school wasn't completely destroyed; school lasted the whole six weeks; and there were no major complaints from parents.

In other ways, however, it was a real challenge.

The first day I had two classes of 20 kids, each with a mix of 4-8 year olds. [Note: we were meant to start at 5 years old, but half my group was 4, as I discovered when I asked them in Arabic how old they were.] Eventually I was able to split my classes by age - and to reduce the number. However, 14 4-5 year olds is a handful with no aide. Furthermore, most of them spoke not one word of English. Not even the proverbial, "Hello, How are you - Fine, thank you."

When the books arrived at the end of the second week of school, I noted with dismay that they presume you must teach bilingually at that age. The activities were far to complicated for both their pre-deductive minds, and my Arabic.

No need to rehearse all the horrors here. But I finally saw a real turn-around by week 5 (of 6!). By then my Arabic had progressed enough to be able to give them all the routine instructions: sit down, clean up, where is your bag, it's not time for swimming, be careful or I'm going to call your mother... [Note: our langauge teacher also taught "I know how to hit you until you cry," but I chose not to use that one!]
One of the best moments was early on when I was trying to get a student to repeat a phrase. I was motioning toward my ear in an effort to get the idea across nonverbally. Slightly confused, the little boy came up and kissed me on the cheek. Nonverbal signals aren't universal!

To be honest - I do miss them! I love being here because you can kiss their little cheeks with abandon. No rules about that.

Jared taught the oldest kids - 12-16 year olds. His main problem was that one family just back from Canada sent their [fluent] kids to English Summer School [here read "Day Care"]. He used my room on the top floor. I don't want to make any guesses about what happened during the activity sessions led by teaching assistants, but there are still colorful balls of clay on my ceiling, and all down the hallway. It makes me laugh every time I look up. Apparently we missed the most fun on the last day when a kid jumped in the pool fully clothed to escape the Director who was chasing him; chaos escalated to pizza and anything within reach also being tossed in. What a summer!