Sometimes the first few minutes one spends with others determine what may (or may not) follow ... and soon after having been with the children attending the morning class throughout the first hour I realised it would be a tremendous challenge to have them adapt to my learning rhythm.
If I were to be right it would mean having to adapt (almost certainly) the material I had brought with me. Children on the island are used to a fairly different learning approach from the one I have (an issue I had overlooked) not to mention the fact that they were seemingly more into outdoor activities (a few exceptions to be accounted for) and not necessarily into "Art", which I had initially envisaged as being one of the potential interests.
Not only had they never worked with any of the materials I had brought but didn't seem too willing to, so something had to happen in the next two hours otherwise the project could turn out to be a failure.
Youssef, Vasco, Pedro, Leonor and Saulina in the back row (from left to right). Nuno, Bernardo, Rute and Margarida in the front row (from back to right).
I managed to slowly get their attention and then encourage them to try out a few things by using the willingness of a few of the children who were more "adventurous". By the end of the first day I was convinced it might work, or at least I was not so reticent as to using my methodology. I had to get into the "spirit" of the island and take advantage of the potential interest each child seemed to have.
The first artistic work I had them do would strongly determine how far each of them could go in terms of the second one and that in turn implied I had to thoroughly identify their skills.
The second day was a lot easier once we were getting to know each other.I decided therefore not to initiate the preparation of the play texts I had brought along until we had got to know one other a little better even if I risked not having time to prepare it as meticulously as I a used to.
Three of the children managed to finish their artistic works by the end of the morning which naturally fuelled the overall interest of the other class mates, particularly when they saw them being assigned another artistic work.
(To be continued)
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