Practice makes Perfect

A month and a half into training and everything is still going well. This past week we started teaching at our community youth center, or dar shbab. I’ve given two lessons, one to a very advanced group and one to a beginner group. My first lesson went very well. We listened to a story and talked about the moral. Then we did a popcorn story together. One where I gave a sentence, then a student gave another one, then another student gave another one and so on. It went very well and they were able to create a moral for the story. To close, I had them each write their own story and the other students in the class had to come up with what the moral was. Overall, it went very well and I think the students got a lot of it.
My beginner class did not go as well. I decided to teach them animals. To start, I had them do a race to name as many animals in English as they could in 3 minutes. Between the two teams, they named 15 animals. One team had no idea and wrote down the name of members of the group; partially to be funny and partially because they did not understand the exercise. Next, we went over animal vocab. That they got. I tried to challenge them by making similes but that did not go so well. I got answers like “you look like a cat” and “donkey like camel”. Not quite what I was going for but I thought I would try. After that we played animal bingo which went pretty well. I wanted to play a game after where everyone had a piece of paper with an animal on it either in darija (Moroccan Arabic) or English. They would need to find their match but everyone showed their cards instead of keeping it a secret. We did charades instead which did work. The kids were getting into it at the end. Overall, it has been a positive experience up till now and I know some things I will need to work on for my final site.
The dar shbab in general has been great. They have been very helpful for us during our training and making it so that we get the experience needed to be successful volunteers. The kids are also great. The ones we have been working with are very excited to learn English and are actively participating in all our activities. I feel bad that they only have us for a few more weeks. We’re basically a tease to them. They get to work with Americans for two months and then we leave them to find a new way to meet a growing demand for English. Hopefully they can get a volunteer in a year or so.
Other things to mention, this coming Saturday I will find out my permanent site. I’m excited to find out where I will be for the duration of my time here in Morocco and even more excited to start! Going through PST again hasn’t been so bad but it gets frustrating some days hearing the same things that have already been drilled into my head over the past two and a half years. It’s hard going from independent to having every move watched like I’m a teenager again. Next year, I’ll have my independence back and then everything will be wonderful. Just have to keep pushing myself through it. Well, hope everyone is doing well and stay posted for more updates!