“Hi, my name is ____.”
Lots of little faces stare up at us. We return their gaze and take a deep breath and say, “Hi, my name is…”
Then we dive into our “lesson” - a quickly improvised version of what we saw on Sesame Street growing up. Teaching kids English at two Refugee Schools in Mae Sot was more difficult than it seems, especially when a language barrier is present. But, in the end, I believe that the language problem didn’t matter in the least bit.
As teachers for the day, we hope that they remember the numbers 1 through 20, and the ABC’s, and short expressions. We hope they can wake up tomorrow and remember how to spell “cat” and “shirt” and “jump.” We hope they remember the words to “If you’re happy and you know it.”
But, in the end I think the experience they had learning from us and the experience we had teaching them was far more important than o-r-a-n-g-e spells orange.
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