'Dear Mr Obama'

Jambo! Habari zenu?

My name is Martin Sand and I’m not a teacher and I do not speak English as a first language, since I’m from Sweden. So when I got the mission to teach a Standard 8 class about the American president Barack Obama, honestly, I was scared. Was I supposed to teach all this kids about Obama? But since I’ve come all the way from northern Europe, I thought I would try to be the best teacher I can; otherwise I would have been seen as a dork my an expectant class. After hours of planning and preparing, when I finally was standing in front of 20 students, eager to learn, I had one of the greatest hours of my life.

-- Dear Mr Obama --

So during the lesson, first of all we were talking about facts of Obama. Like that his favorite sport is basketball and that his father is from Kenya, which they are really proud of. And since the class is a “creative writing class” they finished the lesson, writing a letter each to the American President. Since we have a lot of American volunteers here in Shimoni, they will bring the letters back to the States, and post them to the White House.

-- The class standing proudly with their letters --

Hopefully we will get a response back from him, which would be a huge inspiration to these kids.
After the lesson, I now see teaching as something really fun, and all the energy that I gave to the students, came back 10 times stronger.

'Dear Mr Obama'