Teaching

I'm really enjoying the teaching, and it helps that everyone wants to learn. I've ended up teaching 8 hours a week at the biggest school in Nablus, two hours with the teachers, and six hours with three classes of young boys, aged from 10-13.

The Headmaster and the Principal sat in on the teachers' lesson last week, and we went through some idioms. He was at a disadvantage immediately, as the other teachers are fluent, and his English is patchy, but he was filled with good humour, and laughed when he didn't know the answer. Today we went over phrasal verbs, and they guessed them all!

This is one of the plum jobs in Nablus, and these teachers are le creme de la creme, achieving more than 90% in their University exams. We chat about all sorts, and I'm impressed by their breadth of knowledge of the language. Many of them have two passports, Palestinian and Jordanian, and they can travel, whereas many other locals cannot. With the children I've been going over the present continuous this week, moving on to the simple past next week. They're lively but nice boys: 35 to a class.

Other lessons include a new one, three times a week at one of the Refugee camps, 'New Askar', which I'll be starting on Saturday afternoon. I still travel out to Tulkarm during the day on a Saturday, to a Community Centre, and there are the two lessons a week at the local Womens' Centre. Finally there's my 'private' student, three times a week where I go to his home, and try to make English into more of a living language, rather than the dry texts he has in his school books. His mother is a Social Worker, and the family are very nice. I've been invited to the country with them on Friday.