Teacher! Teacher!

My English classes kicked off November 1. I’m only teaching eight hours a week on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays; I have four classes, and each meets for two hours. It’s a good mix of classes—one beginner, two intermediate, and one advanced. I’m trying to convince my students to simply call me Layla; I’m still Teacher or Miss. An even greater victory would be if I can get them to raise their hands quietly—when I ask a question, hands fly into the air, and they brandish their pointer figures vigorously, shouting, “Teacher! Teacher!” I try to call on the quiet students. 

On Saturday mornings, I meet with my advanced class for two hours. The first hour we focus on grammar and the second is a skills lesson. Yesterday, they did a bit of creative writing, and I want to share their work with you. There seems to be little opportunity in Moroccan schools for students to use creativity or critical thinking, so I try to integrate these skills into my lessons. In pairs, students had to write a story based on a picture. There were five pictures in rotation, and in the end, we shared the different stories for each image.

I showed my students a photograph of someone I described as very famous and very important, but they didn’t recognize him. When I later told them the young boy was my father, they found the whole situation hysterical.

D.Y.D. (Dear Young Dad)

These are their stories:

Sylvester is an Italian child who lose his family in the Second World War and come to America with his uncle in order to change the bad situation. Sylvester had many problems concerning language, cohabitation with new society, so the first dream of this child is to study hard and change his situation and come back to his origin country that he couldn’t forget.

He is named Said, and he is seven years old. He sit on the stairs. He read a magazine. He loves a football player of that magazine named Lionel Messi. He follows every game of the Barcelona club.

Tom is a lovely kid and has a big mind just like a man. Day in day out, he sits in front of the house, especially on stairs. He reads a newspaper like an old man. He seems clever, serious, and eager. He puts a hat on to protect himself from the sun. His bike is usually in front of him. His mother gives him as a gift for his third anniversary. The bike is precious for him. However, he looks after it.

This was one of my favorite classes so far, and the students actually enjoyed the exercise. I really hope to do more creative writing in the future, so I hope their enthusiasm lasts.  

Published December 3, 2012