The Inspiration

There was one 13-year-old boy who took a liking to us volunteers. I remember the first day sitting at a table and having him ask me questions that were being fed to him by another camper. His enthusiasm, friendliness and good attitude were a blessing. He could just go and go and go and nothing seemed to get him down.

Towards the end of camp he got this great idea that he should make a video of different campers, PCVs, and staff all speaking different languages and talking about their experience at camp. He worked with a PCV who did the recording to produce this little movie but it was his idea, he did all of the interviews, picked out the people to be interviewed and got the ball rolling himself. You don’t see motivation like that among youth here in general. He was an inspiration to all of us and gave us all hope that there are motivated, Moroccan, youth that can change the future of this country.

We hope that we had an equally positive impact on him and that he will start going to the Dar Chebab in his town, where there is a PCV that can maybe help cultivate his talent. He is certainly worth the time.

Clubs

Afternoons were spent in clubs. The students were split up into three groups and they switched clubs everyday. This made it easier on us volunteers because we only needed one lesson plan and could just improve that lesson as went through the week.

I helped out a couple other volunteers to lead a health club. The leader of the club talked about general health and the importance of eating balanced meals and not putting a quarter pound of sugar in your tea every time you make it. That part lasted about 20 minutes and then we brought out different fruits and veggies: Green Peppers, carrots, cucumbers, oranges, bananas, raisons, peanuts and toothpicks and we put the students to work building different sculptures. They did a great job and were more creative than I ever imagined them being. It was rewarding to see them getting into it and building things from little people/faces, to boats and cars to beach scenes etc.

Actually, the creativity and ability of the kids to entertain themselves for hours on end was amazing. They had drums with them at all times and were never short of a song or chant to keep things moving. From breakfast until bed time there seemed to be some sort of “camp sound track” being played. We went on a field trip one day to a place called Ait Benhaddou, where we had to hike around and they still had their drums and were singing the whole time. Other tourists stopped and stared, trying to figure out whom this musically inclined, group of youth was. That was probably one of my favorite parts of the experience, the ability of the children to break into song at any moment.

Spring Camp- English Class 3

For the third class students asked to look at song lyrics, learn them and then sing along. Due to poor planning, short attention spans and a general lack of organization this class failed miserably and while I certainly learned how to improve it next time…I don’t feel it is necessary to elaborate here.

Spring Camp- English Class 2

My second English class went equally as smoothly. I read Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree,” to the students. It is a great story about a relationship between a boy and a tree. We went over the vocabulary and then the students broke up into pairs and read different sections of the story. Next they were required to act out the scene of the story that they had. We put them all together so that the class acted out the entire story and so that everyone would understand.

After acting out the story we took some time to write poetry about trees, nature, really whatever they wanted and then they presented those. This was also a good class, students participated and there was an end product, which is always rewarding for everyone involved.

Spring Camp- English Class 1

About six of us were teaching English and three of us ran clubs. I was responsible for an Intermediate-Mid English class and I helped out in a health club in the afternoon. We also had a SIDA/ART club, and an Environment club, we tried to tag team most classes and clubs because…well…kids are just that scary.

For my first class I decided to talk about gender roles and play a “gender-bender” game. I know, I know, I would incorporate that into my English class on the first day. For the activity I had 27 note cards with different jobs/gender roles on them. Some examples were: Police, cooking, cleaning, teacher, doctor, nurse, airplane pilot…and some harder ones (at least to explain)…determines the sex of a fetus upon conception, prostate cancer, breast feeding and giving birth. I created three categories, Mostly Women, Mostly Men, Both Common. In the first round I asked the students to put the different cards in the category with which they most closely corresponded.

I was working with an extremely helpful environment volunteer and both of us were surprised to see the results. Most of the students in the class were from Rabat. There were just a few from the bled (countryside.) But we still didn’t expect the students to say…Both mom and dad: cook, clean, become teachers, gendarmes and wash laundry. We both said, REALLY? REALLY?

This is interesting because we both live in the countryside and…we’ve never seen a female gendarme, a female doctor, our host dads don’t cook and clean…that is for sure. The Rabatis kind of shrugged it off and re-enforced the, YES GUYS, BOTH MEN AND WOMEN DO THESE THINGS. It was certainly news to me. And I’m pretty sure it was news to the students from the countryside that got extremely quiet at about this time.

The next step of the game, after discussing why certain jobs are more female specific and other jobs are more male specific, was to switch up the categories. The new categories were, Only Women Can (physiologically,) Only Men Can (physiologically,) Both Can (physiologically.) Of course when we did it this way, we found that both men and women are capable of doing just about every job. There were exceptions, Only women give birth and breast feed and only men get prostate cancer and determine the sex of a fetus upon conception but… the majority of all other jobs can be done by either males or females. A small discussion followed about why jobs are gender specific when both males and females are capable of doing them. It was a great class despite the fact that some of the language was a little over the students heads. They seemed receptive and hopefully it made them think at least a little bit.

Spring Camp Overview

I just completed my first Spring Camp! Spring Camp is an English emersion camp for students around the country. There were 22 camps held this year, with collaboration between PCVs and Moroccan staff, to reach approximately 1700 youth.

A typical day started at 7:30-wake up, Moroccan National Anthem, Songs to help everyone wake up. Breakfast at 8:15. English class from 9:00-11:00. Sports/Activities 11:15-1:00. Lunch 1:30. Clubs 3:30-5:15. Break 5:15-5:30. “Activities” 5:30-7:00. Dinner 7:30. Games, Music, fun, talent shows, movies etc 9:00-11:00pm.

This was the general schedule however everything always seemed to be running an hour or two behind. Most of the kids showed up a day late. That meant testing their language levels and getting them into classes instead of actually teaching English the first day.

They had a DJ playing music as the students arrived. Close to a third of them came from Rabat on a bus. As they came into the dining hall where the music was playing, and where we were waiting for new arrivals our jaws dropped one by one, as did the students from the area that had arrived on time. Some girls had short spunky haircuts, almost no one had their hair covered, and girls were wearing short-sleeved shirts, skirts, and heels. And, Man, did they know how to dance… This was like nothing I have ever seen here…and something I would expect to see at a bar at home. I’m pretty sure all of the kids from the bled(countryside) felt the same way. They were literally drooling as these girls took to the dance floor. The boys from Rabat came in with their baggy shorts, hats, popped collars and drama. What were we in for?