Teaching Tolerance through FUN

I’m a traveling English teacher. Japan, New York City, Kosovo and now I have the opportunity to work with the best of the best from Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo, and Romania at the Teaching Tolerance Through English camp in the lake-side town of Balatonlelle, Hungary. Using language to guide students through discovery of themselves and other kids of the world is about as rewarding of a job as it comes . . . HOWEVER . . . learning a new language in the mind of its students often means concentration, studying and work making motivation a challenge at times. Too often they forget that the verbal part communication can be supplemented quite easily by a good laugh.

The sun had fallen so volleyball was difficult. Ping-pong had become old and the kids were looking a bit bored. So came the perfect opportunity to introduce one of the best night-time games to come out of the United States. Kick-the-can has simple rules. It’s basically tag and hide-and-seek tied up into one game. Mix in a little bit of team-work and covert strategies and you’ve got hours of fun in the dark. Two-minutes of explaining and one round of figuring it out was all it took to get a group of about 12 kids, and three adults to chase a plastic bottle around the camp grounds trying to free themselves from being tagged IT. When a new player joined they kids fought to be the ones to communicate the basic rules so they new playmate could have a laugh with us. Language and laughter . . . not always as easy as it sounds, but definitely effective when it happens.

Using a second language to communicate and get to know someone might not always be a barrel of laughs, but I do believe that one can always be found eventually. Whether in a classroom, at the breakfast table, around the campfire or on the field, laughs and language make an ideal recipe for communication. Molly Staeheli

Class Photos 1

Here are two of our classes at camp. We meet with our teachers every afternoon.

Class Photos

Here are more of the teachers and students at Camp Teaching Tolerance Through English. We're having a great time!

A Teacher's View

Monday, August 6, 2007

The day, having a topic called WHO ARE WE? Included a great variety of learning experiences meant to help students request information and introduce themselves to the others in a very original and interesting way.
Teachers were trained to use several types of teaching activities which they practiced with their group of students in the afternoon classes.
Developed in a completely relaxing atmosphere, the first activity consisted of lining students up according to different criteria like: date of birth, alphabetically by country of origin, etc. The second activity involved students in a game where they told the others their name, an adjective beginning with the same letter as their name, and a particular movement/gesture.
After these two activities, suitable mainly for the warm-up section of a lesson, students were told how to make an index card about the history of their lives, in which they should express their ideas especially by drawings. This strategy was particularly appreciated by students, who saw in it a wonderful opportunity to intermingle drawing and speaking English together with information sharing and expressing appreciation.
Another type of learning activity, enthusiastically received by the students, was the acrostic of their names, seen as an unexpected way of speaking about their feelings, desires, and hopes.
The brainstorm connected to an ideal classroom was meant to prepare students for a final poster in which they should express ground rules and other ideas about human relationships, personal involvement, creativity, inspiration and encouragement.
The song, “What a Wonderful World,” which students listened to and then sang together with the tape appealed to their sensitive part and, besides, was a starting point for further reflection about the beauty of the world as it is. Students were also invited to get the main idea and comment upon the message of the song.
In the feedback they got, teachers realized that, by integrating the skills of listening and speaking in an appropriate way, and by employing these teaching techniques and procedures students interested more easily and felt delighted about it. N
The idea of teachers working simultaneously with the same group was quite challenging and contributed to higher degree of dynamism, originality and understanding for the class.
Daniela Petrescu, Bacau, Romania

The Sculpture Game

My name is Petar Roca. I come from Herceg Novi, Montenegro. Last night we were making sculptures about a word the counselors gave us. The word for the sculpture in the picture was “exclusion.” Exclusion means when someone is not accepted in a group because of his looks or something else about him. The rules of the sculpture game were that everything must be done in silence, and that only one person could add to the sculpture at a time. And the sculpture could be changed many times. We made the sculpture out of all kinds of stuff, but the chair was in the middle of the sculpture. The chair represented one of the kids who has been excluded but then taken in again. On the chair, we put a yellow T-shirt, and a tennis racket. On the tennis racket, we used paper to make it look like a face. There was a smile on the face because that represented the kid who was excluded but is now accepted and that would make him happy. The activity was pretty fun and I think all enjoyed it.

About Teaching Tolerance through English Camp 2002

Teaching Tolerance through English is a project of the US Embassy in Budapest, now in it’s second year, working with Embassies from Croatia, Hungary, Kosovo, Montenegro, Romania and Serbia and DIA - the Foundation for Democratic Youth in Budapest. Teachers and teenage students from Croatia, Hungary, Kosovo, Montenegro, Romania and Serbia have come together in Ballatonlelle, Hungary, on lovely Lake Ballaton, for two weeks during August 2007 to learn about multicultural understanding and tolerance, human rights, and conflict resolution while they develop their English language proficiency. Teachers work with English language/ tolerance specialists from the US in the mornings while counselors conduct recreation activities with the teens. In the afternoon, teachers, in pairs from different countries, conduct lessons and activities on the theme for multicultural class groups.

On our blog, we will share photos and messages from campers, teachers, counselors, specialists, the camp director, and perhaps even a few visitors. We hope to hear back from our readers!

August 4

It's arrival day. Some of our teachers and campers had to travel 12 hours to get here. They're tired, but excited to find out what will happen at camp.

Our talented teachers come from all over central Europe and work in cross-cultural teaching teams with groups of students who also include members from many countries. They are adding strategies for teaching tolerance with English, using materials contributed by the US Embassy, the Teaching Tolerance project, and Thomson Heinle Publishers.

August 6

Today there was a very interesting discussion in one class after the teacher read aloud a selection from. You Can't Say You Can't Play, a book by Vivian Paley. Paley told about how it changed her classroom when the students and teacher made a rule that no one could say that someone couldn't play with them. Two students in the TTTE class tnen spoke about their school, where classes are segregated by ethnic groups. Serbian students were in some classes and Croatian students were others, but the two groups were never together. Some of the teachers at their school told their students never to interact with members of the other group. Students also reported that if they tried to play with students from another ethnic group, they were called "traitors" by their friends. They expressed frustration about the situation and wondered what they could do to change things – or if they could do anything at all. The students learned that this very situation is what our camp is created to address, and that we would work to learn many ways to promote tolerance and resolve conflicts, and that they could work on action plans with their teachers while they were here to take back to their schools.

August 6

My name is Peter Revisnyei. I come from Budapest, Hungary. This is my Index Card from the Index Card Introductions activity. It shows my town symbol, my family, my hobbies (watching TV, listening to music, and playing on the computer), and my future plans. I will go to another planet. I will grow up, and I will drive a car. I liked the activity.