Here I was, thinking that all I had to do was to finish up what I'm currently doing and then go exploring. But I've learned that "plans" don't quite work that way here. One of the things that I was supposed to do here was to hold a small seminar on some human rights issues, which I also really wanted to do (converting academic studies into practical experience, awesome), but for various reasons this never seemed to happen - and I couldn't force it, because the women at Imedi the ones with the contacts and with the ideas of what they want. So I resigned myself to simply introducing some human rights stuff to the English learners. More on that later.
In any case, today I was asked if I could hold that little seminar to some IDP English teachers. Next week. So now I have one week to prepare that, in addition to finishing putting together the exams. On top of that, they also want me to talk about women's rights, which was probably the thing I studied the least (along with children's rights) in Nottingham. So now I have to come up with some sort of session on that and I have no idea how to approach it. Can't draw on my own experiences here, since I think that academic teaching isn't exactly what they're after... I guess a swift introduction of the UDHR and then CEDAW until their ears bleed? Aaaah. Challenge. More than a week would've been nice.
But of course, knowing myself, I would've given myself about a week to complete the work even if I had known a month in advance when it would take place. And at least they'll get some coffee and cookies out of it, if nothing else.
I'm going to need my beach holiday. It better not rain!
The human rights angle to my English classes was a bit easier to find. First a radio programme from the BBC, complete with script, and then some discussion questions for them to prepare at home. Today was the first class for discussion (another group will do the same thing on Monday), and there were some interesting outcomes. Most agreed that everyone was equal and should have the same rights, and everyone had the same ideas of what human rights were - except for the one slightly older (middle-aged) woman in the class (the rest of them are in their late teens or early 20s). She said that as someone who had grown up in the Soviet Union, she found it much more difficult to understand the concept of human rights, she wasn't really used to it being an issue, or to thinking of it as something that affects her.
Another question was which country they thought had the worst human rights record and why, and the unanimous answer was: Russia. Because of Abkhazia, Ossetia and the wars. So I asked them which country they would prefer to live in, Saudi Arabia or Russia and the choice was - Saudi Arabia. They explained that they like a lot of Russian things, and Russian people in general, and they obviously have a lot of things in common - but Russian politics was enough to make them prefer Saudi Arabia.
Finally, when answering the question of if they like reading about human rights issues in the news, the woman who grew up during Soviet times answered that before, she didn't think it was particularly interesting. But after reading the material I gave them she had changed her mind. Human rights weren't so boring as she thought. So she wanted to thank me for introducing her to to the topic! I will live on that this weekend!
But now it's Friday night and I'm going to read some plays by Oscar Wilde (borrowed from the office) before passing out early (this heat makes me tired all the time) and think of everything else tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment