Yalla Sawa!
Middle Schoolers Engage beyond Campus BY JOHANNA LEE ’13
T
his year, the Middle School launched a new initiative that takes students off campus to engage in interactive community service projects. Yalla Sawa, meaning “Let’s Go Together,” brings seventh and eighth graders to different sites around Madaba and Amman to volunteer their time and build relationships off campus. “We’ve been trying to spend more time outside campus,” said Dean of the 8
BEYOND KING’S
Middle School Reem Abu Rahmeh. “That’s where students are going to get the best understanding of their broader community and of what Jordan needs from them as citizens and as people who care about others.” Yalla Sawa takes place on the last Monday of each month. Through their advisory groups, students spend the full school day at one of six locations: Our Lady of Peace center in Marj alHamam, which empowers refugees to create and sell products to make a
a living; Tkiyet Um Ali, a food collection and distribution program; three public schools in Madaba, including one for children and young adults with special needs; and Queen Rania Children’s Hospital, where students play and make crafts with both outpatient and inpatient kids. Abu Rahmeh sees Yalla Sawa as an opportunity for students to cultivate meaningful connections and relationships beyond the walls of campus.
“We want to show students we shouldn’t think in terms of us giving to them, or of what we have and what they don’t have,” she said. “We want to focus on how it looks for us to be one community, and how we can engage in a way that is impactful and will benefit our lives and their lives together.” Students are taking Yalla Sawa’s mission to heart. Eighth grader Louisa Koehring has been able to develop bonds with students at a school in Madaba despite not knowing Arabic. “The past couple of trips, I’ve felt like I’ve really been able to engage with the kids without having to have verbal communication with them,” she says. “The kids were also communicating with me without having to use words. I really enjoyed feeling some sort of connection without words, which was an experience you don’t normally get to have with people,” she adds. English teacher Jamison Meader sees Yalla Sawa as a valuable opportunity for King’s students to develop emotional and social skills more directly than they might be able to in the classroom. “For me as a teacher, I love stepping back and watching my students be the adults, because so often I’m the adult in the room,” he says. “So many of the kids don’t get to show their teacher or nurturer side at school.”
We want to show students we shouldn’t think in terms of us giving to them, or of what we have and what they don’t have.
Engaging with oftentimes unfamiliar communities can have its challenges. Arabic teacher Muntaha Milhem brings her advisees to Beit Al Liqa’, a center in Madaba for kids and young adults with disabilities. While her group has enjoyed playing with the students at Beit Al Liqa’, some of her advisees have found the experience to be emotionally trying at times. “One of my students was talking with a young man in his twenties at Beit Al Liqa’,” she says. “My student said it was not easy for him. He said this man should have a family or be in college, not be playing with Play Dough.” But it is through engaging with people of different backgrounds and lived experiences that students can develop empathetic understanding that goes well beyond the walls of King’s. And it is not only King’s students who are changing due to this initiative, as seventh grader Leen Jumah points out. “Going to the hospital was really eye-opening for us because we got to experience things that you might not always experience,” she says. “We got to do different activities with the kids and we got to learn different things about the hospital, like how they treat patients like them, so it felt like they’re learning from us and we’re learning from them.” SPRING 2020
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