Your Song

I’ve been so busy lately I haven’t had much time for blogging, but this week we’ve got something special – a guest post from Amal, an English teacher who works with teenagers at the UNRWA school in the Khan Younis refugee camp, Gaza. Last week we arranged a live link up between her students and a group of grade 12 students at a secondary school here in the UK. Here’s Amal’s post about what happened…..

For the last three years my colleagues and I have been working on a project that aims to explore different cultures, learning about different countries around the world and creating global citizens.

One of the best ways to achieve this was by bringing an international dimension to everything we do at school. Our students have been introduced to a global dimension in the school curriculum and in their lives, and the entire school has been involved in a variety of activities.

Communicating across cultures is one of the challenges that we need to cope with as it gives students a real access to the world and shows them the fun side of learning English, history, geography etc.

Last Monday Nick arranged an online session in which kids from Gaza and Britain interacted using a video tool called Zoom. Students from totally different backgrounds were engaged in spontaneous conversations about their cities, hobbies, holidays, music and hopes for the future. Furthermore, my students performed Dabke and, in return, students from the other side sang ‘Your Song’ by Elton John brilliantly.

At the end of the session, we had a mixture of emotions, thoughts and feelings. My students walked back home talking joyfully about their new experience with people from the outside. They were recalling some funny moments and sweet memories. I loved how they were trying to imitate the way that the British students were uttering words. They were happy, excited, full of hopes and bright colourful pictures.

A siege of ten years and three cruel wars couldn’t stop those students from interacting and showing the world what cool things they have.