ARSIS Filoxeneio

Supporting refugee and immigrant children and their

families

Mecaj Klisjo

American College of Thessaloniki

Social Science 399: Service Learning Practicum - FALL 2018
December 2018

Reflection Journal
 My placement at the s p e c i f i c a l l y N o r t h e r n G r e e c e R e f u g e e
Reception Center has been a unique experience even from the
very first day. My role there was to teach the refugees
English but I initially met them, talked to them, and came to
know them better through games since the verbal
communication was very poor. My mentor asked if I would
like to dine with them before I start my lessons. Therefore, I
witnessed and realized a few everyday problems of the
adolescences, anyone would get motivated to provide as much
of help as he possibly can to a person in need, since no
matter the person, people will always be in need and
solidarity is very positive to exist.
My role was to teach the students the basics of English, even
though not all of them were neither hyped about studying nor
interested to pay attention throughout the whole class. Every
Tuesday and Friday I visited the refugee center for two hours and
introduced them different material. My first day of class was on
Tuesday, it was after their Greek lesson and it was tiring to have two
classes in a row. I had three students one of them was at a very low
level. On Friday I had different students there were two young men
from New Guinea, and I reviewed what I had done the previous time
with them and some parts of my new lesson plan. The next weeks
went according to my outline and with the same students, but then
my pupils changed again and some new boys from Syria came they
were pretty energetic and at a decent level in terms of their English.
At that time I had five students, and they were cooperating smoothly
and the class was progressing as well. In the end, fifteen students
joined the class and since the classroom was a normal room we did
not have enough space for all of them and it took a while until we
started. From that point on the number of students that came varied
from two- five. What I taught them was vocabulary, tenses,
greetings, interrogative/negative/affirmative, enhanced their reading
and writing skills with exercises etc.
My contribution as a teacher definitely had an impact whether
that a small one or a bigger, but the timeline was very short and the
students were not that attentive, at least in my class, which was a
major issue. The staff in the refugee center was friendly but they all
seemed to be busy with their activities and responsibilities, which
led to minimum interaction between us. Despite that, I tried to
encourage students to participate and not to be afraid of making
mistakes, which worked in plenty of cases and there were times that
they were about to give up but they changed their minds as they
started to actually try. Nevertheless, the fact that we did not have
books that could aid me since I have no experience in teaching and
the fact that I have also plenty of other duties besides creating
lesson plans for the students were very challenging. Despite this, I
had a more lenient rather than strict relationship with the students
and there were plenty of times open to ask their questions or tell me
what tasks were hard or easy for them to complete. It was quite
interesting how open they were about teaching me their cultural
norms and words from their language that were synonyms to what I
was teaching them and they looked satisfied if I noted down what
they said and remember it. There were time though,that they made
noise to show that they know what I was asking them or complaining
about their pair in cases that he was slowing them down.
To sum up, the Northern Greece Refugee Reception Center was a
very positive and productive experience that enhanced my ability to
talk to a lot of people and keep order in class. It gave me a feeling
of satisfaction that I am actually helping real people in need and not
just writing papers and learning theory and a lot of cultural
exchange, that occurred by meeting those boys that were from
different countries so far than Greece.