First Steps

After a Month and first steps as a teacher in the Movie-Workshop, it is about time to resume for the Aim blog what i experienced so far. Planning and performance of the grand Aim training center opening, which i unfortunately couldn`t attend because of a delate arrival, seems to be accompanied by a lot of work for the aim staff, so they needed to rest from Aim activities, to recover new energy, before preparing us for our workshops.
Time enough for me, to experience the life in Komenda on my own and together with the other volunteers. My first long weekend here, which clashes into the end of school holiday, was shadowed by the annually Komenda-Festival. The whole weekend people were dancing and making music in the streets of Komenda, many faced with colorful costumes. And on Monday everybody went to a big beachparty were dancing in front of big soundspeakers and playing football and volleyball goes hand in hand.
After the longer start-up period that I have mentioned above, one and a half weeks later the internal preparation seminar for Ghana took place. Besides a deeper repetition about dos and dont´s in Ghana, we got further prepared to become a teacher in front of sometimes restless kids. My personal climax was the conception and performance of an self-conceived school-lesson. In the absence of time everybody was granted only 10 minutes to put across their content, but even enough to get a feeling of staying in front of a class. With a lot of fun but also the necessary seriousness, we, the volunteers, faced the task and – what I believe – impressed the Aim People with our performance.
So half a week later the big day had arrived, and my movie-workshop partner Maxim and me were standing our first time in front of a very crowded class with really restless kids. Although the Nervousness took over, we brought the lesson to a good end. Without time for a deeper recap, the next two days, workshop took place at another school, were we filled the lessons with introduction and safety aspects concerning the camera and all the the gears it comes with. The lessons also helped us, and gave us the opportunity to grow in our position of being a teacher, at which a more and more confident manner settles. So already in the following week we decided to take the kids outdoors. After a theoretical introduction into shots, we went outside producing the first moving pictures together. The enthusiasm the kids are showing so far, gives me a good feeling, looking in to the future of the Movie-Workshop.