Music says more than any words can say." (N. Soederblom, Swedish bishop)
Having a past in law, marketing, tourism, advertising and publishing, I suddenly found myself being an ESRA volunteer teaching English at the Dekel Elementary School in Raanana. And what an experience this has added to my 84 years of rich activities.
There are three reasons why I am so impressed by the school:
*The children are extremely well behaved, helpful and friendly to each other and appreciative of what they learn.
*The students are engrossed in the world of music, playing instruments from an early age. Qualified teachers conduct classes using different methods to introduce the students to the world of music, both classical and popular.
*The children are very open to my various, and perhaps untraditional, ideas of teaching:
I use magic tricks, songs and colorful books with rhymes, as well as playing cards with letters, in which the children have to tell me three English words each starting with the letter on the card they have drawn.
To be a tutor in English-speaking Raanana is a challenge. Several of the children are already English speakers but have great difficulty in reading even the most simple sentences. I try hard to explain the structure with basic words and to show grammatical differences in which English differs from Hebrew, such as the fact that the word IS does not appear in Hebrew.
The school is beautifully decorated with flowers at the entrance, games painted on the schoolyard's asphalt and various exhibitions of handicrafts inside. The teachers, too, are extremely pleasant
I would never have thought that I would establish such a warm contact with 11-12 year olds who express their enjoyment of what they are being taught.
This adds to the special pleasure of volunteering and doing a mitzvah through ESRA at the same time.
Well done ESRA for turning my Thursdays into festive occasions.