By: An Jimenez
Today was my first day at Amman Academy: a private co‐educational, bilingual school in West Amman enrolling students from preschool through 12th grade. The students are currently on winter break, but there are still thirty-something 9th and 11th graders who come to the school and learn about math and science from us. Bravo to them.
The weather this morning was beautiful - sun was out, light breeze, not too chilly, not too warm. Reminds me of the Canary Islands or California in the summertime. Our apartment is atop of a hill on a peaceful street, so we get a nice view of the city right from our front door - I could get used to living here. The drive to the school is about 15 minutes by car, and today, we taught from 10am to 2pm. I was greeted at the school by three of the coordinators - Ms. Abla, Ms. Dareen, and Ms. Reema - and they were all very friendly and offered us tea or coffee before our classes started.
The thirty-something students are split up into two groups, and each group goes to one lesson for the first hour and 50 minutes and the other lesson for the second hour and 50 minutes. The lessons are all taught in English. Today, Sheila and I were in one room teaching discrete mathematics, and Srimayi and Lucy were in the other teaching programming in Python. Out of the two MIT students in the room, one is typically the leader of the lesson and the other guides the students through activities and problems and answers any questions.
The rest of our teaching schedule for the next two weeks is as follows:
In discrete mathematics, we learned what discrete math actually is and why it is important, mathematical statements, binary numbers, and an interesting topic: cryptography. I wasn't sure how fast the students would grasp the material, so I prepared 80 slides worth of content. Lo and behold, we covered all 80 slides today in both classes, and I'm not too surprised. The students are incredibly smart and eager to learn about STEM, and they pick up new information at an impressive speed. Moreover, the students were very collaborative, explaining the more difficult concepts to one another if someone didn't understand (minus when we had races and competitions against teams; then they got riled up).
I'm really looking forward to the upcoming days of teaching. Trying to get all their names down by tomorrow!