By: Emily Zanieski 12/2/23
Peer Reviewed by REAL Members
“Miss Emily…Miss Emily,” I heard as I started my journey into Nablus’ Old City after spending my day creating lesson plans for my upcoming week of English classes. From the hill adjacent to my path came two 7-year-olds running down to greet me with hugs and high-fives before introducing me to their family who worked in a local shop across the street. Two weeks later, I would run into the same children. This time, when taking me to their family, I was met with tea and we exchanged stories about our lives, each using each other’s native language. This was just one of the many experiences I had while teaching in Palestine this past summer.
Prior to arriving in Palestine, I had no experience teaching children, making lesson plans, working with co-teachers, or leading a classroom. What I did have was a strong passion for making education more equitable in emergency contexts and an open heart. Having just finished my first year at George Washington University, I was eager to have the opportunity to take what I had learned about working in education in emergency situations and apply it in my work as a teacher. That being said…I was extremely nervous. While I had talked about the importance of social emotional learning (SEL) for refugees during my Education in Emergencies course in the spring, I was unsure if I was the right person for this job. Although I speak Arabic and have been engaged with Middle Eastern studies since my undergraduate career, I also knew I was coming to Nablus as a white American who did not have any experience with displacement or conflict. As a firm believer of participatory processes in education, I knew that although I would be teaching students my native language, I would be learning from them, my other teachers, and locals what Palestinians in Nablus experience daily. Luckily, at Tomorrow’s Youth Organization (TYO), I worked alongside local Nablusi teachers, learning what SEL meant for their students both inside and outside the classroom.
TYO is an American non-profit organization based in Nablus that supports refugees and marginalized communities through holistic approaches to education, focusing not only on academic goals but addressing the physical, social, and emotional needs of their students. By hiring local staff, TYO has successfully fostered relationships, built rapport and gained credibility across Nablus as a leader in education. During the summer, TYO runs two summer camps focused on developing students’ English-language abilities and SEL skills. To achieve their goals in developing students’ English, TYO brings native English speakers from around the world to lead daily English lessons, among other activities. In implementing SEL in the classroom, TYO utilizes the World Bank’s Step-by-Step toolkit to promote skills in self-awareness, self-regulation, social awareness, positive communication, determination, and responsible decision making. Prior to the first summer camp, TYO’s teachers participated in a localization training so they could adjust the World Bank’s toolkit to fit the needs of students in their classrooms. Going through my program orientation and meeting weekly with my 2nd grade teacher helped me get a better understanding of what locals believe should be taught, and we worked together to make lesson plans that would promote our educational goals while ensuring students had fun.
Believing that education for children must go beyond academic solutions, I worked to incorporate daily SEL goals into my lessons. One of my students’ favorite lessons was the day we focused on self-awareness and love through the creation of a “I love myself” mirror. At the beginning of the lesson, we practiced the body parts vocabulary through dancing along to “head, shoulders, knees, and toes”. Afterwards, we worked on crafting a mirror so students could see themselves and begin identifying things they liked about themselves. On the handle of the mirror, students were encouraged to write their names and practice writing the phrase “I love me” in order to promote the idea of self-love and self-esteem. As students came up to me, showed me their mirror, and pointed to themselves while saying “I love me,” I couldn’t help myself from smiling and making sure that they knew they were loved by their family, friends, and teachers as well.
Besides seeing firsthand the positive impact SEL can have for refugee students, the biggest takeaway from my time in Palestine, both in planning my lessons and in teaching, was learning how to be flexible.
Throughout the West Bank and Gaza, prolonged school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, compounded with “widespread security constraints and teachers’ strikes” (UNICEF, 2023) has resulted in Palestinian students receiving disrupted education, and in many cases, no education at all. For many of my 7 and 8-year-olds, they had not been in a classroom for three years. Because of this, my expectations on what I believed students ‘should’ know coming into class drastically changed in the first 30 minutes of my first class. In my first lesson, this meant changing my lesson in the middle of class, adjusting to have students introduce themselves and their favorite color instead of their favorite activity. By the end of my summer, this meant spending multiple days on 1 topic and introducing it in new ways to test if students understood the concepts I was teaching.
I also had to learn how to be flexible purely because of the situation in Nablus. City-wide closures and randomly occurring raids in refugee camps meant that at best, some students were not in class, but oftentimes meant that students were not coming in for the day. The clearest example of this was when Israeli airstrikes and ground operations in Jenin–a city roughly one hour away from Nablus–prevented students from coming to TYO for an entire week due to safety concerns. The 14 days of summer camp students were promised turned into 9. Disruption to children’s education must inspire us to seek out new and innovative ways to increase educational opportunities for students affected by crisis and conflict.
My summer in Nablus was truly an unforgettable experience. It is one thing to sit in Washington DC and talk about refugee education; it’s another thing to be in the classroom teaching students who have experienced life as a refugee. For people looking to work in the field of international education, especially for those interested in education in emergencies, I would encourage seeking out opportunities that allow you to learn from local communities. I believe that by working alongside and listening to the locals about the support they need from the international community, I have become a better advocate for education, not only in Palestine, but across the world.