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