Summer School for Boarding Children

In order to help children of our boarding department improve their English, we organized a summer-school program.

Samuel Moodey, son of Jeremy Moodey CEO of Embrace the Middle East (formerly BibleLands) volunteered to come and teach our children.
We thought Samuel would not come because of the political tensions in our region, yet Samuel insisted on coming, and he arrived on Tuesday 21 August 2012.

The summer-school program this year was kindly sponsored by our Swiss partners SVS (Schweizer Verein für die Schneller schulen im Nahen Osten).

The program included morning hours and afternoon activities. The morning hours were structured into three parts. During the first part Samuel used the textbooks of the previous academic year to make a comprehensive revision for each individual child of last year's lessons. The children watched part of a children's cartoon or movie in the second part, and after that Samuel engaged them with conversation about that movie to assess and assist their comprehension. The last part was for arts and crafts, and the children were delighted with what Samuel had in store for them.

Samuel was assisted by educators from our boarding department. The educators would take full charge of the children in the afternoons and evenings and organize additional activities for them.
Samuel and the children also went on a trip to nearby lake Qaroun.

The program continued until Friday 31 August including the weekend in-between. On Sunday 26 August Samuel lead a Sunday-school program for the children.

The summer-school program was so good that some of our students who did not need extra lessons in English asked and were allowed to attend. The parents highly appreciated the program to the extent that one of the mothers asked the director to organize a similar program that will include her daughters who are now at university and need some lessons in English.

On Saturday 1 September Samuel was taken to visit the Shouf area starting with the beautiful Shouf Cedar Reserve where he enjoyed a walk for two hours. He later visited Beit Eddine palace of Prince Bachir Chahabi (1767-1850). He was then driven to Beirut to the Al-Kafaat University where he had a program for the following week.

We thank Samuel Moodey for the wonderful summer program he organized; his creative music, arts, and crafts activities; his wonderful kindness and patience with our children; and above all, his courage and commitment to come to Lebanon at this difficult and insecure period.

We also thank our Swiss partners SVS for sponsoring our summer-school program this year, and for their kind support of our school.