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Lebanon – Day 4 – First Contact

11th October 2013 - By Dan Graham

Yet another amazing day. It started very very early for us – about 4am as Becky’s flight got in at a ridiculous time, but we were up and about and catching up … and firming up plans for the first exposure of our shiny new instructors to the kids!

I will divert for a moment to the writings of German Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, who wrote that “no plan survives first contact with the enemy students“. That probably sums up tonights lesson.

With a range of abilities, ages, and sizes of our students – it was fascinating to see the instructors rise to the challenge of adapting their teaching to suit a group that was different to the group they had imagined when they planned the sessions.

I think the thing I enjoyed most tonight was getting the instructors to reflect upon their own teaching performance, and relating their performance to the typical subject they teach, and extrapolate parallels from that. I don’t know why I enjoy teaching so much, but the compounded effect of teaching people to teach is really great.

Becky was worth her weight in gold in keeping me on the straight and narrow, and an excellent second pair of eyes and hands to keep track of everything that is going on.

It really begins in earnest tomorrow. Today, we had 16 students for three hours. For the next two days, we have 36 for the whole of Saturday & the whole of Sunday. It is going to be brilliant. Time for sleep now.

About Dan Graham

Dan is one of the co-founders and trustees of Nile Swimmers. You can read more about him on the "Who we are" page from the menu above.

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