Planning our first English classes

With Palestine on hold for the 29 days of Ramadan, we took advantage of the lighter workload to participate in an English teaching workshop. Tanja, an education professional from Danish House in Ramallah, ran a seven day workshop for us and three other ICS volunteers. We got some fantastic ideas on how to cross language barriers to teach English. We were encouraged to consider how to tailor a class to suit different learning styles and levels. For both of us this is the first time planning and implementing an English lesson from start to finish: now we are confident we can fill a two hour class with engaging activities and our first class, in the Ramallah office last week, was a roaring success.

Running English classes for employees builds the capacity of the women’s rights sector in Palestine, allowing employees to communicate with English speakers outside of Palestine and raise the international profile of women’s rights in Palestine. Many Palestinian NGOs rely on funding from international bodies, so the language of funding applications and donor updates is often English. The level of English within the class in Hebron is already high and we are planning on doing activities involving specialised vocabulary that is used in discourse on women’s rights in a professional environment.

An important part of the work of women's NGOs here is extending women’s service provision to under-served parts of Palestine through partnering and building the capacity of selected grassroots organisations. To help with that process we’ll be gauging the interest of other Palestinian NGOs, and hope to offer English classes to employees who are working in women’s rights.

Our first class in Hebron will take place next week (inshallah), and we are excited to put what we learnt in the workshop into practice.