What are your expectations?

My main expectation from the Language Bridges Program is to have the learners show up on time and be eager to learn a language that will help them progress in life. I hope that they will treat me with the same respect that I plan to treat them with. I expect the first class to be slightly awkward because we will get to know each other, but I feel like within the first twenty minutes of class that we will have broken the ice, and that we will be comfortable with each other. My hope is that the learners will understand that they can have fun while teaching, and that it does not have to be awkward or strict, I want them to enjoy the class but at the same time ensure that they are learning the material. I expect that the learners will want to talk about their own experiences which they have gained throughout their lifetimes. As a teacher, I want to create a fun and supportive learning environment for the adult learners. Seeing as they are adult and may be shyer to participate; I hope to encourage participation through making it fun to be involved in the class.

                The challenges that I expect to face in the first class is mainly communication, since all the learners will have different literacy levels, I am skeptical as to how I will be able to communicate with those who are unable to speak English. Another challenge that I expect to face is to have the learners take me seriously. Since I will probably be a lot younger than them, I hope that they will understand that I am there to help, and that they will readily listen to what I have to say as opposed to brushing me off because I am much younger than them. One challenge which I feel will be hard to overcome is to have a class that is convincing enough to ensure that the learners come back for the next session until the classes are over. I feel that by making the class interesting and informative, I will have the learners feel like it was a productive use of their time. Knowing that the timings of these classes occur during their free time, I feel like the class also has to be relaxing so that the learners are not stressed for their next day of work.

                One thing that I am distinctively worried about is covering the material in the first class. Since I have no experience in teaching, I have no idea how the class will play out, or how to make sure everyone in the class understands the material I am trying to teach. My hope is that some of the students will have a fairly decent grasp of English, that way I will be able to have them help me translate just enough material so that the learners who speak very little to no English will be able to participate in the activities that are planned in the syllabus.

                In general I hope that the learners will appreciate what I am trying to do for them, and that they will show up to every class eager to learn. By the end of the class I hope that the learners have a better grasp of English and will perform better on the diagnostic test. Even if the learners do not perform better on the diagnostic test due to test anxiety, I hope that there is an improvement in their English levels, and that they will be able to at least communicate the basic things with whoever they need to speak with. 

Why are you here?

Ever since childhood, my parents have always encouraged me to give back to people in a way which would impact their lives. I have always believed that, yes, the less fortunate can always do with some amount of money being donated to them; but I feel that giving them ones’ time is always more valuable. This is the very reason which I went with Habitat for Humanity and built houses in both Thailand and Cambodia. Along with my Habitat for Humanity work, I have also helped build beds in an orphanage in Sri Lanka, from the fascination that the kids showed with the books we brought them, I learned that education is the most important thing that one can give to the needy. Inspired from the joy that I was able to bring the families from Habitat for Humanity and the kids from Sri Lanka using my time and energy solidified my idea that the best kind of charity work is not charity, but to enable the needy to be able to progress their lives forward and out of poverty. With the Language Bridges Program, I feel that it is the perfect opportunity to provide the migrant workers with the tools that are required for them to progress their lives.

After reading both the articles on the situation that the migrant workers are placed in, I have been inspired to help them hoping that my help will allow them to move on from being laborers to having a job which will give their lives more comfort and fewer hardships. The shocking statistics from both articles made me think of how unfair it is that these workers are taken advantage of simply because of the fact that they are unable to defend themselves. I believe that if they knew English, then they would be able to read their contracts and hopefully be able to find solutions to the situation that they are placed in. I hope that with the basic knowledge of basic English, these workers will be able to go out on their own and engage in perfecting their English. This perfection of English should be able to land them in a better situation than they are currently in.

 Knowing that the majority of these workers are from my home country I feel like it will be extremely beneficial for both the workers and my home country that they are educated. Seeing that English is becoming the global language, I hope that by teaching the workers English, they will have the tools required to go back to their homes and improve not only their lives, but the people of their home towns. From the language bridges program I hope to gain the skills required to become an effective teacher. I also want to gain the satisfaction in knowing that my actions are able to have a positive impact on somebody’s life.  My expectation for the Language Bridges Program is that the migrant workers show up to the class eager to learn a language that will benefit them and which could potentially turn their lives around. 

Reflection on Saturday Class

I spent most of this morning before class ignoring how nervous I was to teach my first English class at 9:30 am. Looking back, I know that there was no need to be nervous! By the time Haroun and I got coffee, my Saturday morning energy had set in; I am glad that we are teaching a morning class, be
cause I am not exhausted by

classes before needing to teach! The learners

came together on a bus from their residences nearby, so we got to meet everyone at once and get started soon after they arrived. English conversation bounced around the room as Haroun and I prepared to distribute the pre-test, as many of the students had a wonderful grasp of the language. One student claimed to know "zero English," but even he performed admirably on the pre-test with little assistance. The other learners were ready for a chance to get into some more complex conversation, and to show off their extensive vocabularies.

We began by having the students introduce themselves, then we played a picture identification game after the pre-test. Haroun left room for creativity in the challenge: "Come up with any word, describing anything in the picture, and come write it on the board." A picture of the West Bay area of Doha brought nearly the entire class to the white board, writing so many words that the board was completely filled! After a bit of spelling correction, all the learners could describe the picture more extensively than I would have ever thought.

After the break, we played hangman with some of the many words the learners wro

te in their notebooks during the picture identification game. They struggled a bit to match the partially completed word with a word in the notes they took, but the caught on as we played more rounds. This gave us a chance to teach vowels as well, as guessing a vowel is often a good place to start in hangman. All of the students were familiar with the letters of the alphabet, though sometimes they misidentified a particular letter.

The class ended with Uno, a card game that is popular in the United States. An Uno card is one of four colors and has one of ten numbers on the back, giving us a chance to teach the numbers and the colors red, blue, green and yellow. This was a really fun opportunity, because we

were able to play as entire class together (our class is only 8 people!) and you could see the learners identifying the numbers and colors correctly more and more as the game went on. And, best of all, the game got everyone laughing and smiling before the end!

The two hours went by quickly, and it feels wonderful knowing that the learners have a larger vocabulary and better conversational skills already! The best part, though, was watching the learners have fun while gaining the skills they came to gain. Our next class is already presenting us with challenge- what should we do to push the learners to a new level of conversation skills?

~Natalie

Aisha Al Thani's Reflection

Ahmed and I taught last Sunday. When we first arrived at the camp, we were quite nervous. We didn't know what to expect or how serious the students were about learning English. Our class was comprised of mostly security guards who were smartly dressed in suits. We started the class by taking the attendance. Then, we used the booklet as a guide and we started doing some of the activities. A lot of the students were very shy to start with so we assumed that it was because they really didn't know how to speak English but when we randomly chose some of them to participate, they proved us wrong. Furthermore, I felt that they were most comfortable when they started talking about their countries and families. From that point, we decided to use the activities in the booklet as a basis but customized them until we believed that the students were excited enough to participate. For example, instead of asking them what other words do you know in English, we got them to talk about their favorite animals. In my opinion, this was the best part of the class as their answers were very entertaining and unexpected. During the second half of the class, we conducted the pre-test. We found that the main problem was that the students didn't really understand what the question was asking them to do. However, when we explained to them a bit further, most of them seemed to have answered the questions fairly well. Towards, the end of the class, we played a game of hangman.

Personally speaking, I really enjoyed the class and I think the group of students we had was very cooperative and eager to learn. The only problem we're facing right now is that most of class is at an intermediate level and only a few are at a basic level so we have to come up with a solution in order for every single student to get the maximum benefit out of the course. 

What are your expectations?

Usually when I start new experience, I try to put all my expectations aside, because I feel these expectations makes me bias. From my previous experiences as a college student, I had much greater time and experience if I put my expectations aside. This does not mean I do not have expectations at all. I have expectations but these expectations are always positive and can change very easily to fit the current situation. I believe this experience will be great if I want to make it great. Personally I see that the program provide all the necessary things to create an amazing experience for us and for the learners. However, having this strong ground for the program, the program is full of challenges that we should account for like the age difference. Age difference raises so many challenges, such as expectations and style of learning. Our adult learners have certain expectations of how the class will go, the kind of interactions that will happen between us and the content they learn. One of the learners without any previous might expect that he will be reading, writing and speaking English fluently after this program. For us this quite challenging, and for them as learners the same case, but we should try our best to meet these expectations. In order to reach these expectations we should develop on what we have, yes certain things are provided for us, but there also a personal component that we need to create. For instance, we should create a comfortable environment in the class where everyone have the ability to participate share what we have. This environment should also enable the learners to make mistakes without being embraced in front of everyone. In addition to that, the class environment should have mutual respect between the two parties. This is not everything we have, it is some, but we should be flexible and ready for the changes that will happen to our plans especially after the first day. It is easy sometimes to talk about something before trying it; we still did not try, so we should be ready for almost anything. Taking our personal expectations aside will help us adapt to the new coming challenge.

Why I am here ?

I believe life is too short to do everything we want. The time passes by really fast and we have to use our time effectively. I think being a live is an opportunity to make a difference. We are here today, alive, to make a difference and develop our society and community. Personally I believe in this and try to find the best opportunities to improve the community. I think this class fulfills this goal and it is an interesting opportunity to learn. Now I am college student in my senior year and this is time where I should learn and try to do new things. In college I have done so many things I would not expect at all. One of these things is teaching, where I thought young kids programming in Rwanda. Personally this experience changed my life; it changed my perspective of teaching. For this class I can see it as a new valuable experience, where I am going to teach on a whole different level. The age group is different, the material we are teaching is also different and the duration of teaching. For this class I am going teach for few months, where in Rwanda I was only teaching for a week. So with these unique attributes to this experience, it is a chance to learn something new, have a new challenge and acquire new skills and experiences. I do not believe this would be an experience, like so many other experiences I had in my university life. It will be one of my most memory experiences from university. Because the impact of the work I am doing here will last for long and it can really improve people’s lives. I think this class will be amazing because it will show me that not everyone is on the same level especially when I look at less privileged people and also makes me appreciate what I have.

Simply the class is a way for me to use all my resources and skills to help the community and invoke change. It is a way for me to leave a positive mark in these people lives. I want to do something amazing and what we are doing in this class is amazing for me.

Ready after my first class

The first day was really interesting. I went there and I did not really know what to expect. My professor made it even worse for me; she scared me that our adult learners will not understand anything of what we say. To accommodate that I was really prepared for explaining whatever I say with drawings and pictures. However, the situation was not that bad, it was much better than what we have expected. The learners understood almost everything we were saying. They were so out spoken. I really liked how they are so keen to learn and how they understand the value of what we are doing. They were so active in class. They broke so many communication barriers between us. They really made our life easier. I did not feel that they were adult learners at all; they were just normal students, just like us. We were almost at the same level although the age group was quite diverse. The adult learner’s age group ranged from 53 to 20 years. Their passion for learning motives us to give them more and put more effort.

The first class helped us so much recognize what could work for the leaners and what could not. It also helped us recognize what areas of improvement we need to work on for ourselves and for the learners as well. For instance, we thought that we will be coordinating between ourselves really well. However this was not the case in the class, we were stepping on each other foot most of the time. To solve this issue we met as a group and agreed on a new strategy to avoid this problem from happening again. In addition to that improvement, we are also changing the level of our teaching dramatically. We are going to teach much harder stuff and will give our learners more content. This problem rose because we were prepared to teach something really basic, but the class level turn out to be much higher than what we expected. This means that we should teach them something they are interested in, some new for them, not something they already know and this part is kind of tricky for us. Because the level of knowledge is pretty diverse among our group of learners. If we teach something hard the less knowledgeable people will not understand anything and will be lost. On the other hand, if teach something easy the more knowledgeable people will be bored and try to do something else or they might even leave the class, because they are not learning anything. This, tricky, part is not easy to deal with, so we are still considering various solutions to this problem such as switching students between different classes or putting them in balanced mixed groups so that they can learn for each other’s and no one gets bored or lost.

I believe that there is no secret recipe or easiest shortcut to solve this kind of problems. If the secret recipe exists then all of our teachers should be good teachers. However, it does not exist, each teacher creates his own recipe according to his students and that is what we are trying to do. It is not easy, actually it is quite challenging, but we are up for it. We should always put this in mind, they are the best learners ever, but are we the best teachers ever?

My expectations ...

What are your expectations?

From past experiences and past community work I have done here and there, back then, I had expectations. Expectations of how things are going to run, is it going to run smoothly? Difficult in some cases? Maybe scary at times? However, for this experience  I've decided to through myself right in, with no preconceptions, assumptions, and judgments. A plain open mind, absorbing what’s being thrown at me with utter joy and complete ease.

    an unforgettable memory...

I have no expectations what so ever; all I have in mind is the outcome of this experience. The benefits the labor workers will hopefully gain to achieve their goals. Therefore my experience i think would be, me being more knowledgeable and aware of my surroundings. Whether it becomes a negative or positive experience relays on the challenges I will encounter and how I handle them.

            Teaching is a profession I value greatly, and having the opportunity to teach is a blessing. However, I have this concern of not being at the level of expectations, or the thought of being not well equipped or good enough for such valuable role. This is a great responsibility, and I hope I could pay forward the good values and academic skills I gathered from my international teachers. If I would resemble any of my teachers, I would probably do education justice to those labor workers in need. All I am sure of, is that this rich experience would play a very strong role in being a character builder.

Regards,

AL Hanouf AL Muhannadi

Interesting Materials for Intermediate Students - Stories

Check out this eBook, it provides excellent stories for intermediate students who are able to read and write.

Esl eBook Worksheets Credit: www.elcivics.com

Pre & Post-Class Blogs

Pre-Class Blog:

I’m so excited! I can’t wait for this to start. Aisha and I are so prepared and ready to take this on this challenge. I’m not nervous at all but Aisha looked a bit nervous today she gets moody when she’s nervous and she just attacked me for no reason so I’m guessing she’s nervous. I have a lot in store for those workers and I’m excited. 

Post-Class Blog:

This was so much fun today but God was it a lot of work! We started by asking them their names, I could not understand one syllable, in fact the only person from my class that I remember is John, because the other names were so long and complicated but I started to read them off the register just to create nicknames and familiarize the faces.

My class was a total of sixteen but twelve showed up, however the twelve that showed up were so eager to learn I was very impressed. The problem was we have so many intermediate students that the poor or low level students feel shy and try to be unseen but we helped them come out of their uncomfortable feeling by letting them introduce themselves in front of the whole class and we applauded them and encouraged them. 

I’m so disappointed that I only learnt one person’s name but they were very helpful to me they helped me pronounce their names correctly. We encouraged the students that have a Facebook to change the language into English and help all the other students to create a Facebook account so that we can be connected and it will also help me to remember their names.

Ahmed Al Duwek, Language Bridges Volunteer Teacher

First week lesson

This Sunday was the first day that I taught with the language bridges program and my first reaction for the past few days has been basically like this : OH MY GOD THIS IS THE BEST FEELING EVER. I never expected them to be so excited. I expected them to be excited I mean but they are so eager I can't believe it. I even feel a little selfish now for getting so bored in some classes. This has also been an incredible new experience for me, since first of all I never thought I would be teaching ever, but this feels great. I now understand what it is like when you have a class full of eager students and can imagine what it would be like to have a class of students who are not as eager to learn as well. So the first week was pretty amazing, but not only for the feeling of happiness I got for being able to teach such eager people but also for where this was taught. The place these people work is so far away and just from the surroundings you can tell that they must work so hard throughout the day it just struck me how tired they must be but also how they can be so eager at the same time, I mean this fact really struck me with awe. The classes themselves were also awesome as it is just so much fun the activities that we are doing with the students in the class, and I think this is because of how eager they are to learn. I must also thank my two co-teachers of the first class as Raji and Alisher were both amazing and very calm and relaxed as we took turns in teaching the class, but especially Raji who was always able to come up with a fun and interesting way to teach the workers something new and check later on if they had learned what we were trying to teach them, and even when I got a little nervous and couldn't think of something else to teach. Again I just want to thank my two team mates Raji and Alisher again, and until next time good bye for now.

Reflection 1: January 24, 2012

Why am I here?

Why am I here? This is a question I have been asking myself over and over again, thinking there could be one solid and practical answer for being in a community service course. As greater time passes by attending the class, I realized that this country has a lot more to offer. To me, the matter of attending is not only on a personal level, it’s regional.

Qatar, In terms of the Qatari public it’s doing the nationals a great deal of justice that’s indicated by providing the Qatari’s of their needs but their wants as well. However, this is not happening so much for the Asian labor workers, who have migrated from their countries for better-paid jobs. In the opinions of the majority, not even their dignities are maintained. These are the people who are building the majority of what Qatar is proud of today, its skyscrapers bare hand.

From the readings and class discussions, I have realized that the mass if not all the labor workers have this assumption or dream of great job opportunities, better accommodations, easier life conditions and being paid, not just “enough” but more than enough to support their families. An illusion they had and once they arrive they realize “the horrible pit,” it sure is as Douglas described the situation it to be.

Having the opportunity to teach those labor workers and get through to them, gives me pride and is a great honor to try and do something beneficial for these workers who have contributed intensely to this country. As a Qatari, I think it's my duty to change the things I’m capable of changing.

Furthermore, I would like to pay it forward even though it’s a small gesture to these hard-working souls, hoping that they gain Douglass’s attitude by taking ‘the ~inch, ~’ we give, and “no precaution could prevent” them from taking the ‘~ell. ~’.

Regards,
AL Hanouf

Tweet in!

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Training Slides

LB Training Session Spring 2012

Reminder

As we mentioned previously, Mashael and I are here for any assistance don't hesitate to reach out! Let us know how your first day went, I'm sure it turned it was an exciting experience, and perhaps tell us what you managed to learn from your students.

Don't forget to share a photo or two of your students, we'd love to get a sense of the class and the learning environment. If you haven't taught your first class, this is a good reminder to take photos and record attendance.

Enjoy teaching and learning from your students!

- Fatma

We're Ready!

Our student volunteers finally completed their week of training with the aid of Professor Silvia and many of the organizers and previous volunteers, and we're finally prepared to take over the classrooms and meet our students!

The training took place in CMU-Q and each volunteer was given an opportunity to practice teaching us something new! A lot of great advice was passed along to the volunteers from experienced teachers throughout the training sessions.

Our volunteers have now progressed into becoming teachers and they're ready to take over the classrooms and meet their students!

Wish them luck!

Fatma Fikree
Language Bridges, Educational Consultant

An Insight

I am thrilled to be a part of Language Bridges again and can't wait to hear all about your experiences. Before that, I thought I'd share a few things with you!

As we all know, a horrible challenge is thrown on these men upon their arrival into the Middle East as they try to adapt to the new environment they aren’t conversant with, in search of better living conditions. With Silvia, we’ve continuously learned the struggles of migrant workers in the Middle East and have always been eager to make a change and now we have finally brought this change to life. Evidently, teaching them English goes beyond just giving them the confidence, now they can fight for their rights, understand the contracts they’re signing and make a change in their lives.

United Development company(UDC), a property development company that hires all sorts of nationalities and skill sets, is a great working ground for these migrant workers as they provided them with shelter, English courses and outdoor activities such as basketball which is heavily appreciated by most of the migrant men at UDC. Which is why we love working with UDC!

Learning about our students only made us further appreciate what we do and by being Educational Consultants we hope to promote the literacy program in order to further prosper our migrant workers.

Together, we hope to make their stay in Qatar delightful and meaningful.  I wish you all the best of luck and don’t hesitate to ask for help when you need it.

Best,

Mashael Al Misnad

Language Bridges, Educational Consultant