Harold blogs about his placement

              I have finally put in a full week of teaching, having spent the first week mostly observing the former CCS volunteer finish off her 9 weeks of instruction. The students threw her a wonderful celebration party on the last day. The range of food and drinks was incredible. They clearly wanted to show their appreciation for her time there.

                The primary mission of the East West Foundation (La Fondation Orient-Occident) is to help migrant Sub-Saharan Africans with language skills and job training so they can emigrate to places like Western Europe and enter the job force.  But, the Foundation accepts anyone who wants to attend. As far as I can tell it is free. I actually have more Moroccan students than those from Sub-Sahara.

Most days I have 20-25 adults in class. The skill level ranges from struggling to quite proficient, but mostly in grammar. Speaking skills, as usual, lag behind. Like Carol, I try to mix up the day with formal grammar, some exercises, reading and listening skills, vocabulary building, some games like hangman and word jumbles, a little touch of idioms, irregularities (nonsensical spellings or sentence constructions) and then anything that comes up in the moment that seems like a worthwhile or interesting diversion. New people arrive every couple of days or so and some others get jobs and have to leave or just stop coming for a variety of reasons. It’s all voluntary on their part and I just try to go with the flow.

                I’d have to say I haven’t thought about the rules of English grammar this extensively in my life. How many of us remember the situations for the use of the past perfect progressive? Not me! But they want the full Monty and I’m here to please. When I am stuck explaining something, I trot out my 45 year old high school French. This is followed by a cacophony of French, Moroccan Arabic, Berber, and broken English and in a minute or two we get to nods and smiles by almost all. After two hours I am exhausted but happy and I head home to learn about future perfect progressive one small step ahead of my students.

                Tuesdays through Fridays are pretty much the same. Monday is a nice change of pace. The Foundation is closed. We have established a Plan B where we meet a local café, sip a café noir, and just have conversations. I have lots of Mohameds (in all variations of spelling), two Malikas, two Mohcines, two Karims, two Amines, Ismail, ElKhannssa, Fatima, Naima, Habiba, Jamil, Najate, Lahoucine,and on and on. I also have a couple of Benjamins, one Jack, and one Emmanuel. My mind swirls with strange sounds and strange names and it makes my head ache, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything right now.