African week in ISB Aesch Basel, Switzerland
Percussions, dance, drama,
storytelling, african village and market
scene. For many years we are working with ISB grade 5. We really
work with them on the african field. We teach them traditional songs and its
dances. This year we were four teachers working with 85 children.
As we do it every year in the beginning we take away the
shyness and bring them the motiviation to participate. You will see them
realizing their improve and every day it goes further and further. The reason
why we like to work with ISB grade 5 is, the children always knew the group of
last year grade 5 and make a competition out of it to perform better and show
it to the grade 4 and the whole school. That’s how we do the workshop every
year. This give us, the teachers also the possibility to work with them without
hesitating.
This year I was teaching them a story about a boy from
Eguafo, who has difficulties in his family. But he always tries to solve the
problem by himself and support the family additional. Their farm was not
functioning well and the parents have problems to feed their children. He always
went to the city to shine shoes and bring the money to the parents. Additional
he had to go to school. He did that for many years with the help of the
teachers. He studied good in the school and that helped him not to do much
homework, so he had enough time to go and work. He always gave appreciation and
thanks to his teachers.
I saw that this story touched the teachers in the ISB very
much. Additional they performed a drama about elders in Eguafo. How they take
care of the community, how to solve problems and how to organize them to do the
community work. They have the youth, who voted themselves to help the children
for homework and other activities.
All these dramas is to show that everything you do in this
life, you need a support and help and then you can work as a team and achieve
it. And this is where our motto came in: no stress, no panic, freedom but
concentration. Music brings energy, energy brings happyness.
This year the teachers of ISB wanted to take part of the
show. We worked with them for 90 minutes and you can see that they are looking
forward to stand infront of their pupils to show them how much interest and
talent they also have in music and dance. We tried to push them a bit harder
and they did their best and we had a nice dance together. The pupils didn’t
know about the teachers show. So it was a big surprise. It was thrilling and
with our support they gave all.
Every year we the teachers performed, but only the grade 5
teachers and sometimes the director of the school as well. This year almost all
the teachers took part in the workshop and the performance. It was so beautyful
and we are looking forward to meet them next year.
This is unit work.