An Interesting Session with Two SPACE Students

By -
By Gainya St Clair
ENP Volunteer

Today I went to the boys' school where I am volunteering for the third time. I worked with two 12 year-old kids that I have never met before—David and Shlomo. The boys are actually related- David  is the uncle of Shlomo. They told me they do not like to tell other kids this, though, because they find it strange.

During the session, I had a very hard time engaging David. He was working on a math assignment from a very strict teacher who assigns a lot of homework. I got him to do a few small activities in English, but overall he was uninterested. Shlomo was also working on the math homework, but he was more interested in practicing his English. He is at a much higher level than David; although his grammar is not perfect, Shlomo can fully communicate in English. He quickly zoomed through the lesson and practice exercises I had prepared, so we just spoke in English for the remainder of the time, and I corrected his grammar when necessary.

Shlomo was inspired by his brother to learn English. One day, he was in his room singing an English song. His brother walked by and asked if he even knew what he was saying. He did not, of course, and from then on, he worked on his English.  

Overall, listening to Shlomo and understanding his background has gotten me to think more critically. Considering I am only here for a few months, how I can positively impact these boys in a lasting way?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Roni's Story

By -
     Recently, Roni Akale, the Director-General of ENP enlightened the interns on all he has done to get to where he is today, in Israel, the home for the Ethiopian Israelis where they longed to live for 2500 years. Ron was born in a town near a City called Golda where he grew up in a Jewish family. His childhood was quite different than the average American or Israeli. For example, his school was a village where he would walk 34 kilometers both there and back everyday. When the school day was over and it was time for homework Roni had to depend on the sun for light. He then explained how he worked as a bookkeeper for 3 years. This was his life until his friend convinced him to go to Jerusalem.  At just 20 years old Roni began his trek to Israel. The travelers were unaware of how far away their village was from Sudan which is vital information considering getting to Israel from Ethiopia is done by going through Sudan. Even though this detail caused some panic, no...
Read more

Learning what it means to be an Ethiopian-Israeli

By -
Image
  June 20th - Natanel’s Story On Thursday, June 20th, the other interns and I had the privilege of talking to Natanel, an Ethiopian-Israeli medical student who is a part of the ENP community. Natanel told us about his family’s journey from Ethiopia to Israel as well as his personal experience growing up in Israel. Not only was it eye-opening to hear directly from Natanel about his story, but to see how ENP has made a significant impact on his career and success. Natanel’s family came to Israel in 1984, walking by foot from Ethiopia, through Sudan, to Jerusalem. The journey Natanel’s parents endured took 3 to 4 weeks to complete. Growing up, Natanel would always go with his mom to the doctor’s office to translate for her. Only speaking Amharic, his mom had great difficulty navigating medical appointments, so Natanel would relay information between his mom and the doctors for years. This routine inspired Natanel to go to medical school, as he fell in love with the medical world a...
Read more

Orly’s Story

By -
  Recently, ENP gave all of the interns the fantastic opportunity to hear a Dental student, one of ENP’s scholars, a chance to share her outstanding story with us. She started off by giving us the basic information about her dentistry journey; such as where she goes to school, how long the program is, how she knew she wanted to pursue dentistry, bad experiences in her career, etc. The 26 year old goes to the University of Jerusalem and is in the middle of her 7 year program. She explained how both medicine students and dentistry students have to go through 3 years of medicine school, 3 years in a clinic and one year shadowing a doctor in the field of desire. Orly shared how she always knew she wanted to help people, but didn’t know how she wanted to pursue this. When the art of dentistry got introduced to her she fell in love with it. Her father had diabetes, which caused her to study the facts related to diabetes and the mouth and soon found herself very interested in dentistry ...
Read more