A Riddle

A fun class with Mr. Christopher started with a riddle. The riddle said: A man and his son were driving to watch a movie. Suddenly, they had a car wreck. The father was killed but the son survived. He was in critical condition, so he was taken to the hospital, and he was prepared for an operation. The surgeon entered, looked at the boy, and said: “I cannot do the operation because he is my son.” How is this possible???

Think about it. Focus, and try to solve the riddle!

By Aya T. and Dorsaf

How to Build Self Confidence (from a Lesson in Mr. Harbin's Class)

Self confidence is an important part in our personality because it makes us to keep moving forward in our life and to choose everything or make decisions freely without any doubts or regrets. Many people may lose their confidence sometimes, and they find it hard to get it back. To achieve this, we should follow these steps to change our way of thinking. The first thing is we should keep away from the negative things like failure or disappointment from something that happened previously. Do not listen to the negative people, and do not give up at the first challenge you face. Persist to achieve your dreams without looking back behind you. Think positively about yourself and about things you ought to do. Negative things can lead you to worry and keep you away from success. Finally, just focus on your success and not on your failure and make sure to remember that everyone makes mistakes.

By Ghofrane

Learning with Miss Kirsten

In Miss Kirsten's class, we study a lot of things about America. We believe that the American Revolution is the most remarkable event. Really, it represents the symbol of liberty and the participation of people in the parliament.
By Omar, Rami, and Wael

E-pals

In Mrs. Harbin's class, we each wrote an email to a student in North Carolina, in which we introduced ourselves and our favorite hobbies. Also, we wrote about our best friend and their favorite pastimes. We finished the email by asking the student to tell us about herself or himself and her or his favorite hobbies. It was an amazing email.

By Hassib and Kais

Christopher Columbus

In Miss Kirsten's classes, we study history. For example, we've studied about Jamestown, the first university in America, George Washington, the Mayflower, the Declaration of Independence, and Christopher Columbus.

Columbus was a good person because he discovered America. He gained all the land for Spain. He thought it was the Indies, but he found no spices. Sadly, the Native American civilization was mostly destroyed later.

By Aya J., Aya M., Emna, Omaya J., and Sirine

Answer to the Brain Teaser

Answer: The fireman was the only man in the room. The other three card players were women. John is a man's name, so they arrested the only man in the room! :)

A Brain Teaser

Sometimes Mr. Harbin finds us tired and lazy, so he gives us a brain teaser just to make our brains work better. One of the riddles was: The police once received a call from an unknown number to report that a murderer named John, whom they were looking for was in a certain house. So, they went and forced open the door. There, they found four people playing cards: a lawyer, a teacher, a shop assistant, and a fireman. Without a word, they arrested the fireman.

Why did they arrest the fireman?

By Amina, Farah, and Marwa

Don't Be Calm and Make History

"Don't be calm and make history." We have heard it a lot, but how can we make that come true? The Access Program is one of the best programs that improves our English language and makes us feel special, unique and self-confident. One way has been through speeches about the qualities of good leaders.

We had an interesting class time. All members of our groups had to write speeches. We had to focus on our creativity, being self-confident, expressing seriousness, killing the feeling of fear, helping shy people to be brave and express themselves. For me, that helped me a lot. In the beginning, I was a little shy; feeling so scared...really I needed someone who could put me on the right path; to encourage me that I have a lot of positive things that with confidence and good practise, I can be creative.

I am thankful for our teacher of history. She kept saying to us "You can do it!", "Be brave!" and a lot of phrases like that. It seems simple, but she really made a difference. Through this experience, I have changed. I am self confident; I can defend my personal opinion without being scared. I can face society with bravery.

How could anything be much better?! For me, it's enough!

By Dorsaf

Learning About Giving Speeches

In Miss Kirsten's class, we have learned many things, like about “The Speech”. For us, giving speeches is very important, to know how to speak well with others. Also, to give oral presentations is important. We also have more fun when we give speeches, and we spend the lesson laughing. It is a good lesson when we learn more about giving speeches.

By Khouloud and Moadh

A Little About Our Program

The English Access Microscholarship program provides bright, economically disadvantaged teenagers with after-school English lessons free of charge. The program also aims to help students develop leadership skills and increase their interest in serving their local communities.

More Than Words Consulting runs the Access program in Jendouba. Christopher Harbin is the Northwest Director of More Than Words, and is the program administrator and one of our three teachers. Christopher has been an English professor in Tunisia for the last 16 years. The other two teachers are Miss Kirsten and Mrs. Tami Harbin, both experienced teachers, as well.

Our program mainly consists of Friday and Saturday afternoon sessions of 3 hours each. Our 60 students are divided into 3 groups which rotate classrooms, enabling each group to learn from each teacher. We have also enjoyed an intensive summer session, a service project, holiday celebrations, and an educational field trip. Keep reading our blog to follow along with us throughout the duration of the program, which will be completed in December 2015.

New Blog Reporters

We are pleased to announce a new feature on our blog, entitled "In Our Words".

The posts marked by will be written by our Access students, and will be uniquely from their perspective. We are excited to share this platform with them. It will give them a great opportunity to improve their writing skills, and should better enable our readers to "live" the Access experience with them.

Here are some photos of a few students writing blog articles in class: