Overcoming Challenges

The overall experience of this program was an incredible learning experience for me. I learned about living in the old media of Fes, and how different cultures can be. The first week of the experience was orientation in Casablanca, where we learned about the language, customs and some basic teaching skills. I then went four hours by train to Fes to meet with my host family. It unfortunately did not work out with my host family because it was only a couple with no children, and who fought constantly with one another. There were many, many issues with finding another suitable host family that I had to get an apartment and did not have the true experience of being with a host family. My teaching experience was interesting because the program had nothing set up for over a week once I got to Fes. During this time I explored Fes. I then taught children in a juvenile detention center for about three weeks, but then the students went home to be with their families for Ramadan and did not come back to the classroom. I had to wait another week to be set up in a cultural center where I was able to speak with older students and teach them more advanced English. This experience showed me that there are always going to be issues in managing a program like this, but that there is always something to look forward to like teaching various students and exploring the culture.