Phew! I apologize that it has been so long since I last posted! I can’t
believe it’s already been two months since my last update. After spending a
lovely week visiting another YAGM’s family in Belgium and exploring Belgium, I
have returned to work at Hope School. This semester is looking to be even busier
than last semester at school. Here are some highlights from the past 5 weeks at school.
On May 5th, each of the four ELCJHL schools will send 8th,
9th and 10th grade representatives of their schools to
compete in the English Bowl! The bowl consists a spelling bee and two-minute
speeches. In preparation for the event and in order to determine which students
will represent their school, each school is having its own two-part bowl.
Winning the bowl is a matter of pride and each school really wants to win. Therefore we are feverishly preparing for the bowl! I didn’t realize how big of a deal it was until we
started preparing for it. I will be acting as one of the “Native-English
speaking judges” at my school and I’m pumped!
The Tawjeehee students are SUPER stressed. They are the 12th
graders and they are in the midst of preparing for the enormous tawjeehee exam they take at the
end of the year which determines whether they get a degree or not, college
entrance, etc. The tawjeehee students can be recognized at breaks by the
textbooks permanently poised 8 inches from their faces, the sweat beads forming
on their brow and the silently-moving lips as they try to memorize everything.
They are also hilarious. On Tuesday they rolled out their class sweatshirts
which are white with bright blue trim and say, “No, the world is not ending. We
are just taking it over” in English on the front. I love it. I also kind of
want one…
The kindergartners are as cute as ever. The younger ones are really
starting to grow into their own. They’re called “bustan” because they aren’t
actually 5 years old yet so for them it is more like daycare as opposed to the five
year olds who are in “rowda”, which is kindergarten as we know it in the US.
The bustan kids spent most of first semester being absolutely terrified. It was
a couple months into fall before we had a day free from anyone crying for
“Mama” or “Baba”. Now they are beginning to flourish. One little bustan guy, I call
him little buddy, is small for his age and used to be totally
overwhelmed at recess. I don’t blame him; the rowda kids are rather terrifying,
especially when equipped with rubber balls. In any case, little buddy is a
little shy and had trouble making friends so the first few months he used to
hang out with me at recess. He’d stand by me, we’d admire planes on the
infrequent times they went overhead, sometimes we pretended to be planes, but
mostly we just hung out. I would chat with him, in English he surely couldn’t
understand, about my concerns, “You know little buddy, it’s hard that there are
so many kids and so few rubber balls and no one seems willing to share. I
should really learn the word for ‘share’ in Arabic”. He would nod knowingly.
Later he would tell me something in Arabic and I would say, “ah”
sympathetically without really being sure what he said.
However, recently little buddy has started feeling more comfortable at
recess, has made some friends and therefore no longer needs to hang out by me. For
a while he fell in with a bad crowd, the boys who try to sneak back into the
building during recess or who kick the rubber balls away from the other kids.
But now he’s made friends with Little Red’s Bro (Little Red is a bustan
girl with red hair. Her brother actually has red hair too, but the fairy tale
is about a girl so in my head she is Little Red and he is Little Red’s Bro. I
promise I don’t actually call the children these names…) Little Buddy and Little Red’s Bro get along swimmingly. I’m really proud of Little Buddy for
making friends and growing into his own, but I do sometimes miss his
companionship on the playground. I suppose that’s how parents feel all the
time, eh? Glad your kids are developing well but a little sad for the good
parts of the phases gone by.
On a side note, I met Little Buddy’s Baba when we came to pick him up one
day after school, and he is enormous! Probably 6 foot 4 or 5, which is especially
tall for a Palestinian. This makes me realize that if I come back in ten to
fifteen years, Little Buddy will likely be taller than me… weird.
The eleventh graders just started reading Animal Farm by George Orwell
and I get to lead these classes! The first day I was very excited, had created all these
discussion questions and plans for how the 40-minute class would go. Then I got
to class and quickly realized that 1. Three quarters of the class had not even
opened the book to do the reading they were assigned and 2. This is a foreign
language book for them, so the questions I had written about the themes and symbolism
were a bit far reaching when what they really needed was questions about basic
reading comprehension. Sigh. The teacher and I talked after class and we’re
likely going to have to read each chapter in
class since the students won’t read outside of class. This plan makes me
sad; not only is it incredibly boring for the students and myself, but also because it is accommodating bad habits. Shouldn’t we encourage everyone up to the level of
the hard-working students rather than bringing everyone down?
I actually think I would love teaching students who actually want to be
there, are interested in the topic and did the reading. If the kids aren’t
already interested and intrinsically motivated to learn (not just to get good
grades, but to actually learn) I
honestly don’t understand how we’re supposed to reach them. Please don’t
misunderstand me; a lot of these students are hard working and motivated, but
mostly in math and science classes. They see those as the route to good jobs
and successful futures. How can I teach them what I have seen? That, for lots
of complicated reasons, English is a language of considerable power. That if
they want to publish academic articles some day or go to a prestigious graduate
school, they are going to need good English language skills. I’m not saying
that it is morally right that English is so favored in the global economy, but
it is the reality right now. I have come to realize over and over again how
powerful a native knowledge of English is right now. It is for this very
reason that so many spoiled Americans find it unnecessary to learn any other
language. Our language is on top, so everyone else should have to learn it.
Again, I don’t think this attitude is morally right, but I totally understand
where it comes from.
Last week the student counsel planned and threw a big party for the older grades. It was all the buzz! Unfortunately I did not get to chaperone so I am still in the dark as to what a Palestinian high school party actually looks like... When I've asked, everyone just says it was a party. Duh. Hopefully they'll throw another one so I can find out more!
In Peace
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