my friend joel and i went to the episcopal training center and taught a 2.5 hour conversational english class each tuesday this semester. we got there the first night and no one told us what we were supposed to be doing so we just made it up as we went along. it actually was quite fun. we had a great group of about 17 people who all happen to be coptic christians and are all very well educated – optometrist, accountants, etc. they all knew some english but some of them not very well. so we did lots of discussion questions and their favorite – idioms! and of course lots of new vocabulary words. we authoritatively gave them homework assignments each week. we also worked in some exciting activities! i also threw in as many simple jokes as possible during the class time. they were so passionate during one holiday week when we weren’t supposed to have class they all want to anyway so we met downtown on our own time!
this english teaching experience was one of the highlights of my time in egypt for sure. joel and i made some friends in the class and even hung out with them a few times outside of class time. we had to be creative in ways to pass the three hour long class… we explained how to have an organized debate one week, and they loved this! we let them choose a debate topic – they chose “men vs. women – which is better?” as you can imagine that was fun. lots of laughs. they are all christian, so that means we can all talk freely about religion in the class. it is interesting to hear the different perspectives on islam from muslims and christians.