NEWSLETTER 5 - RSTP AT THE FRENCH SCHOOL

The French School in Sharm El Sheikh was the first to host an educational activity in cooperation with the Red Sea Turtle Project.

Everything started at the party we held at La Favola, on October 24th.

During my speech, that night, I explained that one of our aims was to involve the local schools as part of our awareness and education activity. During the same evening I met Samantha Nier, the teacher of mathematics and science at the French School, who expressed interest in developing some activities for the kids of her classes.

In the next 6 weeks, Samantha worked very hard and with great enthusiasm to raise the kids’ awareness on the subject and to involve them in practical work on sea turtles.

The result has been an incredible participation and interest from everyone at the school, including the parents, in the form of drawings, plaster models, cut outs, and paintings.

Eric Keller, the director of the school, has assigned one of the walls to showcase these works, which depict the life cycle of sea turtles.

Samantha also suggested that I could speak to the kids about sea turtles during one of their classes. So on December 9th, I went to the school for a surprise turtle day, and (needless to say) all the kids were very happy to miss science, mathematics, Arabic and French to listen to some amazing stories on some of the most mysterious creatures in the world. Samantha and I had prepared badges with the kids’ names, a plan for the lesson supported by different media and a final quiz. The 18 kids were divided in six teams named after the main turtle species (Hawksbill, Green, Loggerhead, Ridley, Flatback, and Leatherback) and asked to work together as much as possible. The expected one and a half hour lesson ended up lasting for more than four hours, mainly fuelled by the kids’ questions and the lesson had to be interrupted because we ran out of time.

On December 16th the school staged the annual year-end play, at the presence of all the teachers, kids and parents, to which I was kindly invited. I had prepared, for the occasion, certificates of award for all the kids that worked on the project that read: “Award of excellence for outstanding contribution to conservation of sea turtles in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt”.

The overall activity has been a great success, and (on teachers’ and parents’ demand) will be adapted and extended to the younger kids attending the school.

I personally would like to thank Samantha for all the passion she put in developing the program in the school and to Eric Keller for letting us develop all this.

On the wave of the success at the French School, I will look into proposing this initiative to other schools in Sharm, with the hope of repeating the experience.