Call to Prayer at Sunset

Last Thursday, on the way to see Rheumatologist, my cab driver dropped me off on the wrong street.  A friendly Arab guy gave me directions to where I needed to be, saying I was only five minutes away.  25 minutes later I reached my destination.  But along the way I was in prime location for the Call to Prayer that resounds 5 times a day everyday, being amplified from mosques all around the country.  So I took out my cell phone, and this is what I got.  I tried my best to not look like a tourist, just walking and pretending I was texting.  But I stop a couple times to catch the mosque on my right.  Enjoy!

(I believe he's singing something along the lines of "God is Great; there's is no God but God, and Mohammed is his messenger..." and so on.)

There's No Place Like Home...but I ain't Home Sick!

A friend of mine here told me last night that he’d soon be turning in his letter of resignation with the American School of kuwait. It was sad to hear the news. In the long two months I’ve been here I’ve considered him a good friend of mine. About a week ago he told me he didn’t know how much longer he would be in Kuwait, that New York/Jersey was where he belonged. I guess it was on the way home today when it kind of hit me, after another of several daily gasps in response to the ruthless Kuwait traffic, that my friend would be going home to America (which I looked at eon a world map recently and for the first time it seemed like a foreign land). And...I felt a slight home sickness come over me.
It was the comfort of home that I imagined he’d be going back to that made me feel so far from home. For my friend: no more language barriers, high-maintenance parents, blocked websites, unpredictable desert traffic (literally-on the sand with no marked lanes!), getting swindled by cab drivers claiming they can’t speak English, and no more absence of cold beer. He’ll be going home to familiarity and newspapers in English, family and trees, and hospitals that check your vitals with each appointment. He’ll have a nightlife and 24-hour diners. He’ll have the “greatest country in the world”.
I really believe in giving myself chances to “test myself”, to not always take the easy way out - not to say resigning and facing a board of admin is an easy thing to do - and to always give myself specifically chosen opportunities to improve in body and mind...hence, Kuwait. (I love to hear children practice reading because I know there is a lot of thinking going on there, a lot of essential growth and learning that’s leading them toward a fuller life. That’s how I feel living here. It’s like I’ve just learned how to read and there are all these unread words and books in front of me with the potential to sculpt my life in a very omniscient way (don’t know if I used that word correctly...I might be mixing it up with omnipotent...)). Yeah, I’ve got to take a cab or bus most everywhere I go and my alarm clock is set anywhere from 4:15 to 5:15 in the A.M. But, f*%#, I’ve got too much of a good thing going on here. I really like to reserve my use of the word “love”, but I’m not far from using it when I think about my job and the people with whom I live and work.
You know how you never realize what the best memories of your life are until a long time has passed since those events actually happened? In the first two months in Kuwait, I can feel some of these memories already scaling there way toward the upper echelon of my remembrances. Sure, the lure of home is there, but maybe I come upon some greener grasses - even if I have to sift through dunes and sandpits.

Updates: UpcomingTrips, Open House, Domestic Helpers, etc.

The weather is beginning to cool down.  Days are still pretty hot, but much more bearable.  Now that Ramadan is over traffic is much worse, malls are a lot more crowded, and the pace of an ordinary day seems faster.  The that we're getting into the "meat" of our calendar days are long but fast.  After-school activities are going to begin soon.  There's every things from Board Games to Ice Skating.  Another teacher and I plan to lead Kid Yoga.  Should be fun, long as I get my Dinar!  

There's a lot of discussion about travel plans for upcoming breaks and such.  I didn't go anywhere for the first Eid, and after hearing about others' trips, I'm itching to go somewhere for the next one.  Originally, a small group of us were to go to Bahrain for it, but changed our date to the end of October because we didn't want to come back to school...exhausted from the travel.  There's a deal for 8KD to fly to select countries in the Mid-east...and it looks like a group of us are going to try Bahrain in the in mid-November.  And for the second Eid were, there's about 5 or 6 of us planning a trip to Sri Lanka.  Finally gonna get some stamps in my passport! 

Last week we had Open House...it went fine.  Let's just say (I'm trying to watch my words...as a few of us were cautioned by the Superintendent in his office (Hi, Dr. Mitchell) to do so.  Getting an email from his secretary to meet him after school, where only my name is in the address box, put me in a...world of confusion for the last couple hours of school that day.)  A couple parents were demanding things that were done by there child's 1st grade teacher.  "That's 'so and so.  And I'm R.J." is how I replied after I could feel my frustration start to build.  I don't want to get too into it (it's been banging around in my head far too much this week), but the discussion got me to thinking of better ways to communicate with parents.  I want to create a classroom website/blog.  (Jeff U. I might be shooting an email your way soon :)  

Open House ended a 14 hour day at school.  And back home, it's usually a cold beer that hits the spot after a week like that.  Here, it's the Shisha.  Several people in the teacher buildings have recently bought a Hooka.  And there are plenty of restaurants to order shisha and have dinner. We went to one last night where we sat outside overlooking the gulf.  

I didn't think I'd get one, but it seemed to darn good to pass up (and a lot teachers get them). For 25KD/month I have a maid come in once a week to do my laundry and ironing, dishes, sweeping and mopping, my bathrooms, dustings, windows, etc.  25KD isn't the best deal, when I begin tutoring (which progress reports just came out, so that will be very soon) I'll be making minimum 15 KD/hour (roughly $50-$55).  Any debate about a maid ends after that...plus, I'll be making a little extra once the Kid Yoga starts next week!

Tomorrow is Sunday.  Right now I need to get ready for two parent conferences requested at Open House.  : )

  

Revisiting (rereading) Textbooks?!?!

I was just reading through a textbook I bought at a literacy conference three years ago (I’m much cooler than that statement might make me out to sound - FYI.)  I quickly had to ask myself: which parts are directly germane to my current classroom and which parts, although interesting, can I skip over?   

For those of you that have gone through most any traditional teacher ed program you know it’s a lot of information thrown at you in a short amount of time.  So, I ask: what have other new teachers done, if anything, to preserve what they’ve been taught in teacher ed and apply it to there current classrooms? I think it would be an interesting study  to survey new teachers and ask them how much of what they learned in teacher ed do they (conciously) apply to there current classroom, and how much of there teaching is adapted from what they learned directly from cooperating teachers and/or current teaching partners and co-workers.

(Above is a look at our class-made rules.  With

the right guidance we narrowed 14 rules into

three over-arching ones. I was very proud of 

them. Not sure where "no licking" came from.

As new teachers we leave one teaching world (Teacher Education) and enter a new one (In-service teaching).  The dream, I think, would be that the teaching practices and pedagogies, the assessments, the management strategies, the curricula, the interpretation and adaptation of curricula, the overall teaching philosophies of higher-order thinking and inquiry classrooms, all those research-backed buzz words we learned in teacher ed would be used and advocated in our current schools.  But, I can only assume that is not always the case.   

         

I guess the point I’m advocating for, or rather the dilemma I’m facing at this very moment is that I don’t want to lose that quality teaching and education I got in Teacher Ed.  I want to apply it the most effective way I can (because it’s something I believed in very much back than as an undergrad (and that’s what I remember telling myself as an undergrad.)  But at some point I have to stop and remind myself how much time I actually have.  (There’s that word again: “TIME”).  Do I have time to thumb through an old text book or xeroxed article searching for focus lessons on introducing literacy blocks?  Or should I save my self the unnecessary stress and utilize the support and knowledge of my teaching partners?  Right now, I’m hoping to find a healthy balance of both.

I come back to old textbooks, articles, handouts, and assignments because...I invested a lot of time into them at WWU; I admired and looked up to my professors, and knew they weren’t giving us some “half-assed teaching advice”.  It was the real deal. (I don’t mean this to sound like I’m sucking up to my old professors, because what would be the point?  I’m graduated!!!) And I wouldn’t feel right dismissing all the work and info I’d saved during those Woodring years just so I could adopt/inherit some teacher short-cuts that would save me time but ultimately be a detriment to, maybe not all, but some students.  And that’s just enough to get me back to an old teaching article covered in yellow hi-lighter and use it, perhaps not in an effort to replace a teaching practice but, at least as another perspective, another voice on the teaching team.

My Flat at "The Dunes"

I meant to post these a few days ago, but stealing wireless is some kind of a crime that doesn't always pay.  So...here are some pics of my flat in Mahboula.  I live in the third teacher building of three.  I don't recall how much I talked about it before, but many of us were originally supposed to live in different, newer, all-around better building.  But one nice thing is that I've had to buy very little furniture most of what you see here is new and was waiting for me when I arrived.    

My bedroom.  Notice the power strip on the floor.  It goes from my lamp to the ONLY outlet (behind my closet) in the entire room!  And the empty water bottles...they are accumulating quickly.  It makes me sad there is so little recycling going on in this country. 

The bedroom has one outlet; the bathroom doesn't have any.  But it does have a bidet (AKA the hose between the toilet and the sink.

The kitchen is at the end of the hallway in the corner of the flat, as if the builders remembered in the end, "Oh, yeah!  We need a kitchen!"  I am about two inches shy of touching opposite walls with my arms extended.  Not pictured: the door that leads into this kitchen and the faucet that sometimes runs brown water : )  

Love the panoramic shots with my cell phone camera!  Here's a look out of my living room.  On the right is the desert our bus drives across everyday and what we walk across if we want to go to Starbucks, McArabia, and other franchises.  The sunrise is pretty nice, showing up directly in the center of this shot.  

The living room.  It looks different now since I've rearranged all the furniture.  The big windows and high ceilings are nice.  And a step up from the bedroom: TWO electrical outlets!  

Here's the ground level shot of the building.  Just to the right is a bakala (a snack store/small grocery store) that is in prime location. There's usually a couple Arab guys (our security guard/super/plumber/etc.) hanging out outside.  Though there english is not very good, they're very friendly, they're very helpful with things like calling cabs, helping carry luggage, unclogging toilets, etc. 

Doogie Howser and Will Smith

Tomorrow begins the third week of school...then Thursday will begin our first (one-week) break from school.  Sounds tough, I know.  The holiday is Eid: a celebration of Ramadan's end. Usually this would be a chance to travel, but most of us new hires have yet to get our civil IDs, and so our passports are still in the custody of the ministry (I think that's right, anyway).  

Let's see...I know some of you have been wanting to see pictures of my living space, but I have purposefully been delaying it for a couple reasons.  The flat is not nearly as nice as the first pictures I showed to friends and family this summer of what I thought I would be moving into. And...well, that's pretty much the main reason.  Next time for sure I'll get some pics up.  Right now my place is littered with water bottles, white walls, and a healthy layer of dust/sand.  

This week last week of teaching wasn't nearly as crazy as the first week.  Each day I was actually able to go home before Iftar, or sunset - the breaking of the fast.  (I think that's what it's called.) As of now my official class roster is at 19.  But two kids have still not shown up and may not show up until after Eid.  So a consistent 17 so far.  Isn't that how it should be?  Here's a little break down of my class's demographics: mostly Arab (Kuwaiti, Lebanese, Egyptian, from what I know for sure), three Americans, one Ethiopian, one Arab with a British accent, one...I think, Nicaraguan (ELL), one African-American, and a couple "half-breeds".  I really like the diversity! 

Let's talk about parents.  I did communicate and chat with parents during my student teaching, but it was always very casual and...they knew I wasn't the classroom teacher, so generally my thoughts and opinions didn't affect there child as much as the actual classroom teacher.  Here, I have people to turn to for answers, but of course I want to try and avoid doing that.  I'm bringing this up because I've gotten this vibe from a few parents like I'm Doogie Howser and I'm too young and/or inexperienced (or too male in one particular case) to be teaching there children.  

I can't wait for the Open House so I can tell them directly, "Hey, it doesn't help any of us trying to knit-pick, or find flaws (or type-o's) and blowing up little things to paint my picture.  Give me the benefit of the doubt.  Pick your battles.  Going against me, or doubting me, will not help your child; it will not help me teach your child.  My teaching will be better if I have your trust, as opposed to offering up unnecessary frustrations via brash emails or condescending remarks about my format choice for the September Calendar."  Not those exact words, but somewhere along those lines (If you have some ideas or advice on the matter, I'd love to hear it.).  I bring this up because I've had a couple parents get a little...assertive with me, as if I'm doing something wrong because I'm not doing something there child's 1st grade teacher used to do. Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff may have said best back in the '80's: "Parents just don't understand!"

  

First 2 Days Down! But Where are the Kids?!

(The pictures are from the first day.  Check out the girl at recess with the surgical mask.  I guess the bottles of hand sanitizer all over the school isn't enough to keep her from getting swine flu.) 

Oh, goodness!  Where do I begin?  So...my class roster shows 18 kids (yeah, I know) but...today a Saudi parent didn't want his daughter in a class with a male teacher, so now I have 17 (yeah, I know).  17 kids!  It's inevitable I'll get more, but there have only been 13 kids show up each of the first two days!  It makes management easy, but it's frustrating when we need to...get stuff done - rules, routines, community building, etc.  Three things: parents fearful of Swine Flu (there is hand sanitizer all over the school!), Ramadan: some parents neglect taking there kids to school during this time partly because of nights are very festive and families often stay up till after midnight, and some families just might not be back from summer travels since many of our students are in ex-pat families.  Effin' ridiculous how many kids have been gone! One second grade class had nine kids come the first day! Nine!  Why would parents do that if there pretty much paying a college tuition for there son/daughter to be here?

The kids that did show up are amazing!  Most of them are Arab.  A couple from the states.  One Latino, and one sweet Arab girl with a British accent.  It's been three days in a row I've stayed at school after 7:00.  And 3 days in a row I've gotten Chinese take out.  Don't know if I'll do it again today.  My washing machine is broken and I need to find a laundry mat.  Teachers learn early on that with all the time in the world we'll still never get to where we really want to be.  But it still surprises me every time I relearn that fact.  It does so mostly because I've got an amazing IA who has done much classroom set up (bulletin boards, cubbies, name labels, consolidating student supplies, etc. And she put everything in the kids' h.w. folders everyday, so I don't have to worry about student mailboxes or anything like that!! (aside: I accidentally walked in on her praying in the workroom - oops!) And we've got two guys that do all our copying for us (not always when we need it, though.)  So yeah, those things are amazing, and I know it'll be hard to lose it once I "move on", but...I still feel behind!  I think organization has been the biggest thing for me.  So much info coming from so many different directions, combine that with "settling in" (finding maintenance for my apt., not having a car and trying my best to learn the taxi system here, finding a good doctor, etc.) and any lack in organization skills quickly comes up and slaps you in the face.  Last night I asked the cab driver if he knew where "the teacher building in Mahboula" are.  Yes, he said.  We get to Mahboula (25 minute drive) and...he asks me where to turn.  Several broken-english phrases back and forth and I made it back fine...but it was a little scary, especially when all the desert-brown buildings look the same.  Only 2KD (7 or 8 US dollars, though.)

But, yeah...organization.  In the states we have what for specialists?  P.E., Music...maybe Art once a month.  Here we have Arabic/Spanish (everyday), PE, Music, PE, Life Lab (counselor), Computer, Art, Library, Drama, and Religion for Muslim students.  That's a lot of walking around each day!!! And a lot of other teachers with whom to communicate effectively.  Especially during Ramadan, in comparison to what I'm used to, this does limit the time the time we have with the kids.  But the extra planning times leaves more time for teacher collaboration, and more opportunities to tighten learning activities so less classroom time is wasted.  Which...there are teachers I've seen out there who sadly waste a lot of class time.  

I guess I have to go back to work.  But tomorrow is Thursday! (which is actually Friday)