Blog 29: William

English classes: A tangible, non-physical impact

Language. Simply a collection of words. Words a collection of sounds and sounds a collection of pressure changes in the air. And yet it’s arguably the most powerful thing on the earth. It can act as the great connector or the great divider. For each, its meaning is different– words such as paroxysmal, effulgent, lattice, William. For some, just another assemblance of noise but for others endless amounts of meaning, stories, and value. This is part of what has always fascinated me– the vast spectrum of value language carries.


Take me for example. On day one with my host family, the Darija they spoke, to my ears was one long sound, devoid of any meaning and even lacking emotional subtleties. But now during dinner listening in I hear individual words, subtle inflections, and I can grasp upon the occasional word that has meaning to my ears.


When thinking about this my mind goes to one of the main service projects we are focusing on which is running and teaching English classes to many of the children here and how that tires into a large questions we’ve been asking this whole trip: How do we know we are leaving a positive impact? If we were doing something physical it might be easy to measure our impact, but with teaching something as arbitrary as a language, how do you know if you’re leaving an impact at all, let alone a positive one? For me I see our impact when I compare the first few days of the trip to now. The first English class for example was an hour of Natalie, Sonya, and me awkwardly trying to encourage the kids to talk and use the grammar rules and vocab words we had put on the board. By the time it ended we realized 3 things: 1) They didn’t seem to have very much fun. 2) They didn’t really seem to “get” anything we were saying/teaching and 3) That specific grammar rules really aren’t gonna be that helpful. With some help and guidance from Melissa and Jaouad, we worked to reframe the classes to an emphasis on conversation skills and having fun. And to contrast the first class, I’ll give a brief description of yesterday’s. After greeting people as they walk in, we moved into playing a heads-up-esque vocab game that proceeded to fill the hours with laughter, banter, and an environment that felt like a group of friends working together to try and unravel the organized chaos that language is. And by one measure of the word, we have been very successful. Kids are now finding joy in practicing their newfound English words, phrases, and even conversation skills with us in the streets, at the dinner table, on the roof stargazing or before and after class. To me, this huge increase in joy and confidence is the tangible, non-physical impact we are having and I only wish I could stay longer to see how all these beautiful kids begin to grow in the world.



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