katie in cairo, egypt

I recently joined a student group at AUC, known by most as STAR, or Student Action for Refugees, which is run as an independent organization out of the FMRS, Forced Migration and Refugee Studies program at the university. With so much unrest in many of the surrounding African nations, quite a large refugee population currently resides in Cairo. In the wake of most recent events in Darfur, a huge number of Sudanese have flocked to the city. Additionally, there are thousands of Eritreans, Somalians, Liberians, and many more.

I am teaching an Intermediate English class two days a week for an Intermediate class. There are about 35 students in my class (five are women), ranging in age from probably 20-40. While most of them are from Sudan, there are quite a few from Eritrea and other African nations as well. Everyone in the class is expected to have some level of proficiency in English, but judging from the first class we held last night, their levels of experience vary from "Hi, my name is Abdullah, and I am from Sudan," to being able to have much more complex conversations about their former jobs in Sudan, their families, and their plans for the future.

The first class last night was really crazy. I was literally given no warning about when or where I would be teaching and at 8:30pm I walked into the classroom with Khalil, the other teacher of the course, without even a notebook or a reading packet, just in time to meet 35 eager smiling faces who couldn't wait to learn "the whole English language." While the students for the most part seemed pretty relaxed (many have several brothers in the class or know each other), even taking role was somewhat of an exasperating experience. I won't even begin with what it's like to read 35 African names, but I'll tell you that it's worse than pronouncing the Egyptian names. And to make matters worse, the classes have been divided so that I have all of the names beginning with "A."

Without having had any preparation, Khalil and I decided that in order to assess everyone's level and let everyone relax, we would just have everyone introduce themselves to the class and tell us several things about themselves. The introductions lasted anywhere between 1-8 minutes, depending on their levels, but even though this was kind of a tedious process, it was good to at least learn a little about them. Most speak anywhere from three to five languages, including Arabic, Swahili, some English, and of course their natural tongues, of the many spoken dialects of all of the different tribe groups in their countries.

This class is certainly going to be a challenge. I've taught before, but never English to foreign speakers, let alone 35 of them. And they REALLY want to learn. I just hope I can teach them-- in shah allah

posted by Katie Warren @ 8:42 AM