Teaching in Gaza now: the We Care drama club by Sahar Salha

Students from Sahar’s club using a borrowed laptop

Being a mother and a teacher is as time-consuming as it is amazing.  How on earth do you manage housework, teaching,  your own children’s school work and keep up with friends and family at the same time?

And that’s just in normal circumstances.  Nowadays, we are living in exceptional times with both students and teachers displaced.

Life in this situation is exhausting.  But it hasn’t stopped me from establishing a community with displaced children of very different ages and a wide range of levels of English - the We Care drama club. We gather in my rented house every Thursday. We sit on a carpet and use simple materials e.g a small board, chalk, felt-tips and paper. If we’re really lucky, we get to borrow a laptop.

I am used to teaching in a classroom full of energy, fun, enthusiasm and good vibes. Here in the house where I live, we sit in a small room with a small space for our sessions and activities.  I try to choose from a range of activities so that the students can move freely around the space, vary interactions by working in groups and pairs, act out scenes from stories, tell their stories physically and have fun in competitions.

The space where the We Care Drama Club meets every Thursday

I pre-plan classes to ensure that  each of the children in the "We Care" community  is fully involved in the sessions and that the sessions reflect their hobbies and interests.

The group I'm currently dealing with is aged between 10-16 with different levels of English. By the end of the class, each of them has drawn, written, acted and practised English.  It really motivates them to come to the next session.

After the class,  I ask the children what they enjoyed (or didn’t!), and how to change the sessions based on their responses.  Moreover, we choose the topic of the next session together.

As a teacher, I feel delighted when I see the smile on their faces, I feel proud when they come out with their drawings and write their chants, I feel happy when they come to me during the week asking " Do we have a session on Thursday?”   I also feel sad because they are displaced and they deserve a better life.

Here, to you, what my darlings say:

Aziz: I'm lucky to have teacher Sahar,even I used to have high marks at English, I start to speak English recently. This leads me to think of learning English in another way after war.

Haya: The sessions are interesting and help us escape from the miserable situation. I'm always waiting for Thursday .Today we had a storytelling class with different activities and finally we have a grammatical rule related to the story. It surprised me the connection between activities .

Rawad: I'm really happy because I haven't stopped my journey with English. Before war,I used to study levels of English in centres and unfortunately I stopped during war,now I'm back and happy. The best thing that teacher Sahar offer a fan sometimes in the scorching weather.

Layan : I like the activities because they are different from activities from the class at school. I like drawing. I feel more confident now and not shy again to stand in front of the camera and talk.

Sally: maybe I'm the oldest in this group and my English is wonderful,but I'm not hesitating in joining the sessions. I like to help the kids who need to practise English. The variety of activities leads to perfection.

Nour: first time for me to join English club. I love the songs and picture dictation,we always have words dictation..

Roa'a: Each session ,we learn new words and enrich my vocabulary. I'm looking forward to speaking very well.