Dear potential readers,
Our previous week in Atolye has been a very creative one. It was the week that our efforts were finally paid off. The children, Ioanna and I worked mostly on music and editing lessons and since Ioanna covered the part of transmitting our music lessons experience, I will go on analyzing a little bit more of our editing effort.
Sometimes, it is hard to work with children, not because it is difficult to communicate and make them learn what you have to share, but because it is difficult to include them all during the educational procedure, so that no one will feel that he or she is left behind. So, there is this thin line that we really need to give attention to, because children can easily get disappointed in case you give privileged attention to one child instead of another. Also, there is this case that they could feel intimated by the rest of the children they work with. For this reason, every time there is an issue like this that come up to my attention, I try to let children know that in every case, during our lessons, everyone is equal with one another. In the end, our goal is not to prove that someone is clever than the others, but our goal is to leave this room and know that every each of us has learned and has enjoyed the procedure. In the end of day, and after three months with the kids, I clearly know that there is no kid who is more stupid than the other, but it is just that children tend to be good in different things or even they tend to be good only in those things that they are interested in. Consequently, it is unfair and illogical to be harsh on one another, in case someone doesn’t try too much or even if she or he doesn’t really manage to catch things as fast as the others. Because, as I mentioned above, we don’t care if one gets things faster than another, but to feel that everyone is learning and that our Atolye group is moving towards knowledge collectively. I hope that by the end of this project children will be able to understand this belief of mine and learn to creatively judge and avoid competitiveness among their groups and friendships.
But let me return to our editing project. Last week, on Thursday and Friday the kids really walked under the sun for hours, trying to shoot videos of Izmir letting us know how Izmir really looks like in a glance. They started from Karsiyaka, they took the vapor to alsancak, konak, basmane and came again in Atolye on Monday to start editing all those videos that they had shoot. After two days of editing, they came up with this lovely video of Izmir!!!
I have to admit that I am really proud of these kids, because they try to learn as much as they can and they are always willing to hear when I have something to tell. While other kids stay at their house the whole summer, in order not to get sweaty and tired from getting the buses and the izbahns and walk to Atolye, these children are coming here every morning and try and try and try to become something more that this world expects from them to be.
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