Messima

Messima literally means mission, but it refers to the community service projects that we do here on our program. There are many different projects all in education, among them working with students on welfare lists or working with last chance high school students. My project involves teaching English in Arab towns in the surrounding area of Karmiel. We run activities which teach English, but we also convey our values (especially peace) with our students.

I work three days a week, and in two different places. On Sundays I work in Tamra for the day. I (with one other person) teach in a high school for four class periods. Our first class is very good at English and is a small group of about 15 people, mostly girls. We can run actual lessons for them because they have a strong English foundation and don't need to be taught the basics. Last week we had them write dialogues that demonstrated scenerios in which the register of speaking would be very different. For example, we had two friends talking and of course their dialogue looked like a plain conversation that was informal and full of slang. The conversation between a felon and a police officer, however, was very formal and linguistically rigid. All of the students performed their dialogues and it was really fun. We spend a lot of time trying to get them to loosen up and just practice their English, because in the Arab villages they have no native speakers to talk to, not even their teachers. In fact, the teacher in that school isn't fluent in English and often asks me to translate things into English.

We actually have that same class twice, and for the second class we like to do something more fun and easy going. This past week we made a slideshow of famous Americans and landmarks, and had them (in teams) guess who or what the thing was. They had a pretty easy time figuring out the basics - Barack Obama, the White House, the Statue of Liberty but were completely stumped on Martin Luther King Jr. (they said Obama's father) and quite a few influential places. I'm not suggesting that they should know everyone and everything (suggesting that it's superior to understand our culture to their own), but it surprised me a bit that they couldn't figure out George Washington. I mean, hey, I would have gotten David Ben-Gurion!

Actually, a teacher told me afterwards (in a different school where we ran the same activity) that most of the students wouldn't know who Binyamin Netanyahu is, even though they could recognize Hillary Clinton.

In Tamra we have to more classes (after the initial one). One class is extremely rowdy and the other one is huge (about 40 students) so we haven't quite gotten a grasp on how we can run serious activities with so many of them when they are so difficult. So far we have been running active English activities like giving them a category and two minutes and telling them (in groups) to write down all of that category that they can think of. We did colors for one of them and got some impressive answers, like turquoise and beige. In an effort to dig deeper and see what else we could pull out of the kids, we had them say world politicians, and they mostly named Arab leaders (especially the ones in the news right now) and Americans. They did have a pretty long list of Jewish Israeli leaders, though, including Olmert, Ehud Barak, and Golda Meir (this group also managed to name Netanyahu).

On Tuesdays we work in Kfar Manda, a pretty small village nestled in the side of a hill. Our students there are 12 and 13 and they are really angels. We like to run fun English activities, but we also have had a few serious conversations with them already. In our class last week we had a discussion about differences and similarities between Arabs and Americans and which are more important. Most of the students agreed that in order to understand what is the same, you need to first reconcile and understand what is different. It is really hard to run a conversation for them because you have to go very slow, but it was productive and interesting to have it. In the afternoons in Kfar Manda we run another activity for a group of 15 girls and 1 or 2 boys. So far it has been heavy to playing basketball, making bracelets, and just hanging out (since it's for two hours after school), but we've started the process of talking about America and cultural reflection. Part of what we're trying to do is teach about American culture and acceptance while helping the students refine their own cultural identity through self reflection. For example, we might talk about American schools, but then we always talk about what they do in their schools, too. Also, since that group is so heavy to girls, we're thinking of dividing them up and having conversations separately about growing up and becoming men or women. There are a lot of opportunities for the group in Kfar Manda.

On Wednesdays we, in the mornings, meet with our project coordinator and spend the morning with him. We discuss issues in the classroom, learn Arabic, and eat lunch. It's an interesting chance to try and talk about how we can be better teachers and what things aren't appropriate in Arab society. In the afternoon we return to Tamra and run a two hour activity for 14 year olds. This past week we had them make cookie batter, but they had to earn every ingredient by doing group tasks, like making a team name and cheer. At the end we brought out a batch of cookies that we had premade for them. It was pretty funny though because it turns out that Arabs don't like chocolate chip cookies that much. They each had one and then said no thanks to any more. It was a pretty stark contrast to American kids who would have been vultures on the plate of cookies.

So far messima has been really rewarding and a lot of fun, too. I'm excited to go through a process with the students, both teaching them English and also getting to know them and understand them better.