Misadventures in Elementary Health Education
I’m standing at the front of a classroom PACKED with children ranging from age 6 to 14. I have two hand-drawn posters behind me and a flimsy “script” about some health topic in my hand. The kids are climbing on desks, leaping from seat to seat, charging toward the front of the classroom, pulling each others’ hair or clothes or stealing pencils or… Allah knows what else. It literally looks like about 60 caged monkeys going nuts. I’m torn between frustration and genuine awe, as well as a considerable amount of amusement at my UTTER failure at being an “authority figure” in this language and in this setting. Just to hammer that last thought home, one of the head teachers walks in to check on the progress of my lesson and the 60 monkey children shoot back into their respective seats as if some massive magnet was just activated. There was a silver lining though, they HAD (somehow?) been listening, because my wrap-up questions on the topic (toothbrushing, that time) were met with satisfactory answers. I guess they are just natural multi-taskers (monkeying around-literally- whilst internalizing health lessons).
So that was week one, about three weeks ago now. I am happy to say that I’ve become more accustomed to how things should be done around here, and though my weekly health lessons are definitely not lacking madness, at least now there is more of a method to it.
The stand-out lesson for such methodical madness would have to be the hand washing/germ transfer lesson. After the general information part of every lesson, I try and come up with a game for us all to play that somehow relates to what we learned that day. On the day of hand washing, I came up with the idea for what I call the “Honey Handwashing Hussle” (the name isn’t an alliteration in Arabic, but whatever). The design of the game was this: A relay where there are two teams of ten at a time. Each kid has a small dollop of honey on their left hand before it starts. Each team has a basin, jug of water and bar of soap. The teams are set up in the school yard, and have to line up. When I say “go!” the first person in line has to wash the honey off their hand then run to the far wall and back. When they pass the line, the next person can start. The object of the game is to get the whole team’s hands washed and everyone back, and the first team to accomplish that and sit down wins!
Sounds fun, and relatively organized, right? Well, in theory. In reality, bars of soap were shooting all over the place, kids were running to the wrong walls, EVERYONE was washing their hands all together when I said “go!” and at least one or two kids were trying to lick the honey off. I’m happy to say that there were no tears though, so that’s a good thing.
In the end, the girls teams won across the board because the boys tended to just skip the honey washing off part and just run for it, making sure to include some dramatic dives and rolls in the line-crossing part, while the girls (perhaps unsurprisingly) were fastidious about washing the honey off their hands, at least. I was surprised by the utter chaos, but like most things here, I was happy to see by the end that people understood why we were playing this game and what I was going for. They also (by around the 5th round) were adhering to more and more of the initial rules.
I really like that I’ve had the opportunity to spend time with the elementary school kids these last few weeks. Health lessons are an interesting way to interact with them. The other topics I have covered include tooth brushing, some nutrition and just this morning a non-smoking lesson.
With the exception of the non-smoking lesson, where I borrowed an idea from my Dad that he used to do for our elementary school classes about smoking (a bottle filled with cotton and a lit cigarette sealed into the top with clay to illustrate how a lung fills with smoke and how it damages lung tissue), I’m definitely making this up as I go along… and the pressure is on to keep coming with the games. Admittedly, this week’s game (a bastardized version of ”pin the tail on the donkey”….being “pin the cigarettes on the trashcan”) was a bit of a stretch… but I’m hesitant to teach these kids “red rover” because I’ve seen their monkey-crazed ways and I’m afraid we’d have some soldiers down by the end of the day.
Overall, however, these kids are really enthusiastic about everything I’ve brought to them so far, and they are very motivated to learn anything new. It has definitely confirmed that my calling in life is not elementary school educator, but I’m having a great time all the same.
three of the toothbrushing drawing competition winners with their artwork
before the handwashing relay started... toward the end when more rules were being adhered to...
toothbrushing poster and the six winning drawings
relay-running, somewhat organized by this time...
the girls actually WASHING the honey off
girls win! showing off their prizes: Ministry of Health stickers... woooo!!
playing "pin the cigarettes on the trashcan"
she got the bullseye
fake lung smoking demonstration, compliments of Papa Connolly
post-non-smoking-lesson mayhem
and the mayhem continues, the guy in front is showing off his prize for being one of the first to hit the "pin the cigarettes on the trashcan" bullseye: an apple.
