Rejected

After my first class, I was taken to meet with a man I had never meant before, by a woman I thought I had never met before.  It wasn't until about half-way through the meeting that it dawned on me that this was the same woman who had told me about the students complaints the other day.  When I met her, we were in the women's section so she had been uncovered.  But since this meeting was with a man, I only had her eyes to recognize her by, since the rest of her face was covered with a niqab. Ever try to recognize someone you only met one time without the benefit of hair, facial features, clothing.... it's pretty nearly impossible to tell from eyes alone.

Anyway, they had called me in to tell me that the complaints from the students had gotten worse.  Basically, the students were very used to getting their way, so when they complained, and I didn't instantly become a teacher who let them get away with everything and only teach for 1 hour, they now felt insulted on top of the initial injustices.  Also, the complaints mattered more now, because they were getting phone calls from their fathers and husbands as well as students, mainly over the whatsapp goup.  Now, remember, this whatsapp group was completely optional, with other ways of earning bonus points / doing the speaking and listening task for homework if they chose not to participate.  It is also worth noting that probably only about 1/4 to 1/3 of the messages sent in the group had anything to do with the English class, let alone were in English, and that most of what went on there was just the girls chatting with each other in Arabic.  He told me that one husband had threatened to destroy his wife's phone because she spent so much time on the Whatsapp group that she was neglecting her children.

I was flabbergasted. Saudi is like this:  you sort of go along, getting used to the small superficial differences like wearing the "ninja uniform" and you get caught up in getting to know your students and co-workers as people instead of stereotypes, and you don't exactly forget that you are living in one of the most oppressive societies for women in the world, but you do kind of get accustomed to it in the same way you get used to it when you sit for a long time in a place with flies constantly buzzing around you.  Then all of the sudden, you get stung by something like this.  A man, who is ostensibly liberal enough to let his wife attend medical school is angry that when she comes home she has the audacity to actually study, and that she spends too much time on her phone, and declares that the problem is clearly this English teacher who is forcing her (through an optional activity) to neglect her children.  Something this ridiculous and absurd, and unfair and just plain crazy happens and you think to yourself,  Where am I? When am I?

I was in 2014, in the office of a Saudi man, who was apparently in charge of something important, though I had no idea what his position was, with a woman who was covered and never said a single word.  He was saying, in stilted English, that while they value their teachers, and especially admire me as a teacher, they also value their students (or at least the money they earn from the students.)  Some of the fathers and husbands had threatened to pull their girls out of the school unless their girls were given another teacher. He showed me a paper which about 20 girls had signed, and which he said was a list of students who wanted to change classes to another teacher who was less strict.  This list bothered me more than anything else, because we had just finished a unit on writing complaint letters, and the girls hadn't even bothered to use this new knowledge to write a legitimate complaint letter, instead, they took the lazy way out again and just wrote their names.  There wasn't even any title or anything at the top of the page of signatures.  It might have all been worth it if only they had written a complaint letter.  At least then I would have known that I had managed to teach them something.

He told me they can't afford to loose any tuition payments, so for now, they would prefer it if I didn't teach any classes until further notice.  There was only a week before revision for exams, and then there would be two weeks for study with no formal classes and only presentations anyway, so they wouldn't be missing much.  I asked him if they had someone to cover the class or if the girls would just not have class, he told me not to worry about it, and I suspected that there wouldn't be any substitute.  What a world, when students who are paying for the privilege of learning, would rather not have a teacher at all than be forced to follow the rules and work hard.  I've never seen any group of people work so hard at not having to work in my life.  I was hurt and felt betrayed by my students, who regularly told me they loved having me as a teacher, that they loved that we played games in class, and how they wish all their teachers were like me.  Apparently the didn't love it enough to give up the luxury of shorter classes and someone who would look the other way when they came late.  I also suspected that there was peer pressure at work here, that one or two girls were more upset than the others (probably the ones who were habitually late) and that they had made the complaints and urged the other girls to follow suit.

I suppose I should have taken the first meeting with the woman who was in charge of the English Department more seriously.  I should have picked up on the cues from her, that if the school didn't care, I shouldn't care.  I should have given up then, and not even bothered to take attendance, and taught only for an hour.  I shouldn't have bothered to spend hours everyday working on lesson plans that were dynamic and engaging since the students didn't care about learning English, only about checking the boxes to get a mark and ultimately a Diploma.  I should have taken it as a sign when I asked them why they wanted to be a doctor and the most common response was "So I can be rich, and not have to work very much." that no one was here to actually learn anything, and that I shouldn't waste my time or energy to try to actually teach them.  I should have let go of my expectations that I could change the system from within and that the girls would rise to the challenge if they were presented with one.  I should have understood from the beginning that reasonable expectations everywhere else in the world are unreasonable here.  I should have, by now, after 8 months of living and teaching here, known enough to let go.

But here is the thing.  Even though I know our expectations are different, even though I know our cultures are different, even though I know that we often value different things, and that I have to respect these differences; I have some fundamental beliefs and values as a teacher, as a person, that I just can't let go of.    If I accept the premise that students are only there to get a diploma, If I accept that the grades are padded, that the rules are only half-halfheartedly applied, and that the goal is not to educate, challenge, and inspire these women, but rather to keep them happy and quiet, then it means that I'm not doing anything at all.  It means that my profession, what a work so hard at every day, doesn't mean anything.  Giving up on trying to reach these girls, using any thing that might inspire them, just a little, to practice more, to work harder, to think smarter, would mean giving up on the whole idea that education can be more than just spoon feeding knowledge to empty receptacles.

I'm not ready to give up.

Crazy Drunk Man with a Gun

So, tonight I was the last to leave the school after my evening class.  Usually there are a few girls still waiting for their drivers, but tonight, they had all left before me.  I was trying to remember how to say "I'm the last one" in Arabic to the guard to let him no it was safe for him to go in the women's section and lock up, so I was deep in concentration and didn't notice the crowds at first.  Then, one of my students who was already outside grabbed me and pulled me over into the crowd.  I saw a bunch of men gathered around one car, it looked like they were trying to calm someone down, but it was mostly just chaos so it is hard to tell.  I could see there was a broken back seat window and glass everywhere, and I thought, oh, big surprise it must have been an accident.

I asked one of my students (I think she was one of mine, it's hard to tell when they are wearing the niqab) if it was a car accident, and she said, no teacher - a gun!  I was so surprised.  For one thing, guns - apart from the ak-47s the guards have in front of compounds - are pretty much unheard of here.  For another, if someone has a gun, why on earth are we all crowded around trying to get closer?!  I didn't get the chance to follow up on that because I was being pulled further into the crowd by what I hoped was another one of my students.  I was close enough now to see that there were no bodies on the ground, so that was a good sign.  Just broken glass and some men shouting.  A woman turned around and asked me what was up in Arabic, and I half panicked.  I thought for a minute they were looking to me as the teacher and supposed authority figure here to do or say something.  I was completely unprepared to react, especially since I really didn't have any idea what was going on.  So I just stood there like an idiot, speechless.

As it turned out, it was just the mother of one of my students.   I can only assume she was in the car with the driver waiting to pick up her daughter when everything happened, and like everyone else, she had gotten out to take a look.  My student must have wanted her to meet me, so when she saw me, she just pulled me in.  It was an odd time to be meeting the parent of one of my students.   On the one hand, I felt I should be professional and friendly, on the other hand, there may or may not be someone with a gun less than ten feet away from me.  It's hard to make small talk in these circumstances.  We shook hands and I said it was a pleasure to meet her, which she didn't hear over the shouting going on around us.  I said it again a little louder and she nodded this time and gave my hand a little extra squeeze.  She may have been about to ask me something or say something else, but I will never know because we were being herded by some men in suits back into the building.  I had to wonder why our security guard, who from what I could tell wasn't doing anything but grandiosely narrating events like a sports caster, hadn't thought it smart to move all the women inside before now.

Inside again I asked the girls what had happened.  From the broken English and confusion, I was able to piece together the following scenario.  There was a small accident.  One of the drivers or a passenger of one of the drivers was drunk (this detail, even more than the gun, was the piece of information my students seemed to relish most in the retelling).  So there was an argument about whose fault the accident was, and suddenly the drunk man had a gun and was waving it around.  So some people who were watching called the police, and when the man heard the police were coming, he locked himself in the car, but oddly enough didn't drive away, he just sat in the back seat with his gun.  When the police came, he refused to get out, so they broke the glass on the window in the back seat and pulled him out and took him away.  This is where I came in.  I saw the broken window, and what I now assume were the other guys in the car with him yelling, and people all around trying to calm them down.  Eventually they all drove off, but I have no idea where they took the man or anything. I thought it was strange that I hadn't seen any police outside, so I asked the students about this.  They said that they weren't real police, just kind of like security guards.  This might help explain why on earth they would break a window and physically grab a guy who had a gun and could have easily shot anyone of them at any time.  I was trying to imagine a scenario where someone would say;
"Hey, that drunk man locked in the car has a gun!"
"Really?  Let's see if we can get the gun from him in the most violent and dangerous way possible!"   "Ok, hmmm.... I know, let's break a window and yank him out!"
"Yeah! He definitely won't try to shoot us if we do that!"
The only thing crazier than this would have to be the inner monologue of the guy with the gun:
"Wow, I really screwed up, I'm drunk, and I have a gun, and it's Saudi Arabia.  I guess I'll just lock myself in this car.  Yup, I'll curl up in the back seat of this car here, and have a good cry.  No point in trying to leave.  I'll just stay here.  In this car.  In the middle of the street.  While tons of people gather to watch these men break in my window... hey..."
I don't know, it doesn't make a ton of sense to me.  And maybe I haven't got all the details quite right, in fact, I'm sure I don't have all the details right.  Still it was an eventful night, and not just because of all the excitement about this man.  It was eventful for me because I could see how far the girls had come in just one month of classes. While we were all gathered in the front entrance of the school, waiting for our drivers to finally make their way to us from this chaos, the girls were all speaking English.  In their rush to be the first one to tell me what happened, they were throwing words around they never even knew they had learned.  They were spouting out irregular past tense verbs like champs.  The same group of women who four weeks ago couldn't even tell me that they had forgotten their book at home without a translator were suddenly giving me a blow by blow breakdown of what happened, and asking me what I thought of the whole thing.  It was amazing.  Sure, they weren't perfect, and sure, I didn't understand all of what they said, but tonight, these girls made the giant leap forward from learning English, to using English.  I couldn't be more proud.
So thank you crazy drunk man with a gun! You made my day.

Someone's in Charge?!

Nearly a month and a half after starting work at the college, I finally met the head of the English Department.  To be fair, this person didn't actually have the title of Head of the English Department until a few days before I met her, but the fact remains that up until we met, I was under the impression that Dr. Doha, who didn't speak much English was in charge, and that I had already met all of the English teachers.  Turns out, there is a whole other staff room with about 5 more English teachers that I had been blissfully unaware of, stuck as I was in the reject staff room, with the part timers and teachers who taught other subjects in  Arabic.

From the beginning, our meeting was a rocky one.  One of the security guards knocked on my door during class and told me that so-and-so wanted to see me.  I had no idea who so-and-so was, and couldn't imagine anything so serious as it would be necessary to leave my class for, so I told her thank you and that I would see her after class in about 45 minutes.  About 10 minutes later there was another knock on my door.  This time it was so and so herself.  I need to see you she said.  I told her to please wait 5 minutes while I gave the girls something to do in my absence and then stepped out into the hallway with her.  She was incensed.  "Do you know who I am?" she said.  "No." I said.  She seemed shocked.  This seems to be a common reaction.  As the only American on staff, absolutely everyone seems to know who I am, and for some reason, in return, they seem to think that I should know who they are. I do not.  Furthermore, even the ones I have been introduced to, I don't remember their names, and barely recognize their faces.

She explained that she was the Head of the English Department and demanded to know why I didn't come to her as soon as she had asked.  I pointed out that I was in the middle of a lecture, and that I would be happy to meet with her as soon as the class was over.  She seemed surprised to hear that I as teaching, which is a strange thing to not know when you come looking for someone in a classroom.   She asked if she could come in and watch.  I said sure.  She came in and stood in the front for about a minute and a half.  I was getting their attention back after the group activity I had given before I went into the hallway to speak with her, When she interrupted to yell in Arabic at a girl in the back. I wasn't quit sure what the girl had done, but from the voracity of the yelling, it seemed like she must have murdered someone's child or something.  She turned to me to ask If I knew the girls name.  Since I had about 80 names to learn and this was only the second week of classes, I did not.

She made the girls say her name, and then told her to leave, and told me to mark her absent for the day.  Then she stormed out behind the girl and left me to it, telling me to find her when class was over.  The girls and I looked at each other sort of bewildered, and I was glad to see I wasn't the only one caught off guard by what had just happened.

After class, I made inquiries of the other staff, and eventually found her office.  She told me to sit and she gave me a new schedule, which meant that instead of teaching 10 classes a week I was now only going to be teaching 7 because they had hired some new teachers.  This was good news for me.  Then she told me that the girls had been complaining that the classes were too long.  I told her that the classes were supposed to be 2 hours, but that I had already cut off 15 minutes to make them 1 hour and 45 minutes.  She suggested that I give them a break in the middle, and I explained how I had given the students this choice and that they chose not to have a break.  She told me that the students were complaining that I was marking them late.  She told me I should give them 10 minutes leeway at the beginning of class.  I told here I was already doing that.  She told me the students were complaining that they had too much homework and that I shouldn't give them more than three workbook pages per class.  I told her that I usually only gave a page and half.  She told me that I should only use the workbook and not give homework over Whatsapp, and I explained that the whatsapp was optional, for extra points, except for the weekly listening and speaking question, which they could do in person anytime before or after class.  She shrugged and said, well, I'm just telling you what the girls are complaining about.

She called me her sister and assured me that she was very happy with my teaching and she knew I was doing a lot of activities and things with the girls and that they liked this, but they just wanted me to change those few things.  I stuck to my guns.  These girls are going to be doctors.  They need to learn now the importance of being on time, not when they are 30 minutes late for a surgery and the anesthesia is wearing off.  I explained that most of the girls were very behind in terms of language skills, and catering to their weakness by having shorter classes or not giving them homework would only make the problem worse not better.  I stood by my addition of listening and speaking homework to the reading and writing workbook homework by pointing out they would need English to communicate with the mostly foreign nurses and doctors they would someday be working with.  She listened and nodded along with everything I was saying.  "You are right," she said, "but, you know, the girls are paying to attend, so we have to do what they want, which reminds me.  The mid-term scores were all too low.  So we need you to give them a very easy 4 -point quiz, and we will add that score to their mid-term."  She and I looked at each other, and we both silently recognized the absurdity and immorality of arbitrarily adding 4 points to everyone's scores, but neither of us said anything about it. I thanked her for her suggestions, and for finally letting me know that someone was in charge, since I had no idea before.  She told me that she had just been given the role that week or the week before, and to come see her if I ever needed anything and she wished me great success.

Sadly, I'm feeling more and more that success is less and less possible in this environment.

Excuses, Excuses

Well, the first week of classes are behind me, and I have to say, these girls work hard at finding ways not to work hard.  I've dedicated this blog posting to all of the excuses I got in the first week alone.

On being late:

•  "Teacher, my driver was late!" (this excuse was used even during the final period of the day, when the students had already been at school since 8am).
• "Teacher, I had to go to the bathroom." (and didn't have time to do it during the 30 minute break)
• "Teacher, I was with another teacher." (later consultation with said teacher proved this to be false)
• "Teacher, I was eating." (I allow them to eat in the classroom provided they clean up after themselves - but after I made one girl throw away an empty bag of chips she had thrown on the floor, even after she insisted that that was what the maids were for, very few girls brought food in the class).
• "Teacher, I was doing my homework."
• "Teacher, I had to go to my locker."
• "Teacher, I had to get my wifi/phone/charger/book back from my friend."
• "Teacher, I didn't know what time it was."
• "Teacher, I'm only 5 minutes late." (and by this she means 5 minutes late after the 10 min. grace period)
• "Teacher, we were just talking in the hallway, we were just outside class, only 5 meters away! We were almost in the room!"

And by far the most common response when I told a girl she had arrived late:

• "Teacher? Why, teacher?"  followed by; "Please, teacher?" in a pouty voice.

The obsession with not being late (on paper, but not in practice) stems from the requirement that they have a 90% attendance rate or they automatically fail.  Lates = half an absence.  Most girls have this down to a science and are absent /late twice exactly 6 times in a semester (because 7 = automatic fail).  Now, don't be misled, they are actually absent much more frequently, but so long as they provide a doctors note, the absence doesn't count.  These doctors notes are probably only legit about 10 percent of the time, and since they are all in Arabic, and usually use Hijri dates, are basically impossible for me to decipher, so I usually just accept them all regardless.  Occasionally, I will get a doctor's note in English, and my all time favorite excused a girl from three days of classes for "Dizziness & Giddiness."  I wish I could have kept it.  I would have framed it.

On not doing homework:

• "Teacher, I left my book at school."
• "Teacher, I didn't know we had to."
• "Teacher, my book is different." (which is actually true, but only some pages have minor changes - like names, or not mentioning things like bacon or dating)
• "Teacher, the other class didn't have to do it."
• "Teacher, I was late yesterday." (nevermind the homework is written on the board all through class for those who finish classwork early, mentioned allowed at the end of class, and sent to the "whatsapp" group each day.)
• "Teacher, I forgot."
• "Teacher, it was too much." (usually about a workbook page and a half.)
• "Teacher, it was too hard." (completely legit for some of the weaker students, but those were not the ones who used this excuse, and I'm always available by whatsapp for help.
• "Teacher, it was too boring."
• "Teacher, I didn't have a pen."
• "Teacher, there was a good movie on TV last night."
• "Teacher, we had a big project for another class."

The funny thing about homework is, it only counts for 5 percent of their total grade.  Which means students could potentially never even do the homework and still have an A.    Even though the students know this, they are obsessed with points and will go through great lengths to try to hid the fact that they didn't do the homework, such as passing workbooks up or to the side, after I pass by a row, or covering the page with their hand or elbow so that only the one completed exercise shows.  Since some students only have photocopied versions of the book and workbook sometimes they will just photocopy another student's completed workbook page, thinking I won't notice that the answers aren't written in ink or pencil.  Once they got wise to the fact that I was looking that closely, some of them tried the same trick, but traced over the photocopied answers with pen.  This was obvious, but I let them go on thinking I didn't notice because at least then they were tracing English words, which means they were getting some kind of practice in anyway.

On not doing classwork:

• "Teacher, we know it already." (then when given a pop quiz, everyone fails).
• "Teacher, why?"
• "Teacher, we don't want to move." (a favorite excuse for group work)
• "Teacher, let me work with her  / I can't work with her." (usually this is just a very flagrant version of mean girls, but sometimes it has deeper roots, with tribal rivalries or shia / suni conflicts.)
• "Teacher, I'm too tired."
• "Teacher, I don't have a pen / paper / book."
• "Teacher, can I go to the bathroom / cafe / hallway?"
• "Teacher, can I call my mother/father/driver?"
• "Teacher, I'm on my period, I can't."
• "Teacher, I have a headache/backache/toothache."
• "Teacher, I didn't sleep last night."
• "Teacher, It's not in the book."
• "Teacher, class is almost over." (usually when we still have 30 minutes left.)
• "Teacher, I hate this."
• "Teacher, can you do it for me?"
• "Teacher, can we play a game instead? (and then when we play a game - usually if they are on the loosing team...) "Teacher, can we do exercises from the book instead?"

Funny that in all these excuses, I never heard the one that was probably most often true, which was that they didn't understand.  Saudis are very reluctant to admit that they don't know everything, and are not fond of making mistakes, particularly in public.  Since learning a language in a classroom setting pretty much means making mistakes a lot in front of your friends, very few girls enjoy the process, and most say they hate English class. 

I'm doing what I can to make it more fun, and I hope that they will eventually come around and start liking English just a little more...  it's certainly been entertaining for me listening to all their excuses.

WhatsApp

A hilarious, but sadly accurate sample of a Whatsapp conversation.

The most common app in the Kingdom is WhatsApp, a phone app that lets you send free text messages to anyone else with the app.  You can send private messages, or you can establish group chats.  Since my students were more or less constantly using this app in class anyway, I decided to harness the power of this social media for language learning.

I sent around a paper and told the girls I would create a Whatsapp group, and if they wanted to join, they could put their numbers down on the paper.  I told them it was optional, but that I would post the homework assignment each day, so if they were absent or forgot to write it down, they could find it, and that there would be an optional discussion question related to the topics we were discussing in class.  I explained that if they did the optional discussion question, they would get bonus points.  There was only one student who didn't add her whatsapp number to the list.

The group was pretty popular.  I nearly regretted starting when the first night there were over 50 messages.  The first 10 or so were legitimate answers to the discussion question, which asked which area they felt the weakest in in English, speaking, listening, reading, or writing (most said speaking). However it quickly devolved into chatting in Arabic.  Everyday was a battle, I'd remind them that they could chat privately in Arabic, but that this was a place to practice English.  They would speak in English for a while, and then, especially if I wasn't online (the app is sort of creepy in that it shows you when people are online, and when they are reading your messages), they would revert back to Arabic.  I thought about threatening to kick those who used Arabic out of the group, but since I posted the homework there, I didn't want to them to loose access to that information, since it would be just another excuse for them not to do it.  And anyway, there were still some discussions in English happening, so that was good, and any English is better than no English.

A student's version of old and new

A studen't picturing of old and young

The nice thing about the app was that a lot of the students who didn't talk in class were very active and responsive on the app.  They were very curious and liked to ask me questions, some of which I answered, and others which I declined to answer because of the sensitive nature of the topic (remember; dating, politics, religion, music, movies, really anything of interest at all is still technically forbidden).  The most successful questions were those where I asked students to find pictures that illustrated new vocab words, or involved pictures in some way.  I asked them to find pictures of opposites, and some of them were very creative in their choices.  Another time I asked them to find mistakes in Grammar on printed English signs around town.  Most just did an internet search and pulled up mis-spelled road signs, but a few actually found some signs in town and took photos of them.  The daily discussion was going so well on a volunteer basis, that I decided I could make it an actual assignment.

Mistakes in English: Sometimes they seem too good to be true.

When I discovered that there was a voice recording feature on Whatsapp, I figured it was a perfect way to get in some speaking and listening practice.  I told the girls that every Thursday, the daily discussion would be an oral question that I would tell them in class, and also post as a recording to Whatsapp.  They would have until Sunday to respond with an audio recording of their own, which would count as a homework grade.  There was a colossal uproar.  It was haram to record their voices.  I knew it was haram to take pictures of them or video tape them (even though they constantly run around taking selfies), but I figured just audio would be ok.  I had intended for all of them to listen and respond to each others answers, but I could see that would never work.  So I offered two alternatives.  I would still post my audio question and tell them in class what the question was, and they could either send me a private whatsapp audio recording with there answer, which I wold listen to, mark in the grade book and then immediately delete, or they could simply come to me before or after class, or during my office hours, and tell me their answer in person.  This seem to calm everyone's fears.

I thought there would be a rush of girls at the end of class to give me their answers in person, but actually, about 60% of the girls did send me private whatsapp audio messages over the weekend - which was about on par with the general homework completion rate.  No girls ever found me to answer the question in person, and I wasn't about to chase them down, so they just didn't get points for the assignment.

In the group whatsapp, there continued to be some participation in the daily discussion, and the daily battle to stem the tide of constant Arabic chatter in the group.  I had asked one of the other teachers to translate the conversations for me, just because I was curious to know if perhaps they were helping each other understand grammar or something helpful like that.  She told me that most of it was typical teenage girls stuff.  They commented on each others hair, and told silly jokes, and in general said nothing at all of importance.  It was so annoying to be constantly getting notifications of posts in the app, only to find a long discussion in Arabic about nail polish colors (or about something to do with colors, I know the color words now...).  

I suggested they start their own separate group without me in it where they could talk together as a class, but no one volunteered to start the group, so the battle for English in the English class Whatsapp group continues.

 

Students (Finally)

After mid-terms were all over, I finally got a schedule.  It very clearly told me when I would teach, and which groups I would be teaching, but it neglected to say what books I would be teaching and where in the books the students were (or should have been) at this point in the semester.

I was taking over the classes of a woman who had a heart attack, and it was unclear when she would return, so I couldn't ask her.  I asked Dr. Doha, the woman who had given me the schedule and didn't speak much English, but she just told me to ask the other English teachers.  They couldn't tell me much, but I was able to narrow down the books I was using at least.  Finally, after asking three different people, someone finally told me what unit they were on, in the last 5 minutes of the day before the weekend when I was supposed to start teaching on Sunday.

So over the weekend, I carefully planed an opening lesson with ice-breakers and lots of activities for that unit.  I showed up ready to go with markers and an eraser. I had to buy my own since after asking around it became clear that the college did not provide those - but did somehow have it in their budgets to give everyone pleather bound desk calendars and notepads - never-mind that most of the teachers didn't even have desks. (Actually those calendars came in really handy since they included both Gregorian and Hijri dates).  I went to the classroom and wrote my name and some rules on the board, and I waited for students to show up.

I waited for 10 minutes past the start of class, and then thought perhaps they all went to the lab instead of the classroom.  So I went to the lab.  No students.  I wrote a note on the board for them to come to the classroom just in case, and went back to the classroom to wait some more.  After 30 minutes and not a single student.  I gave up and went back to the teachers lounge.

I told Dr. Doha that there were no students and she didn't seem surprised.  The students probably just assumed their teacher was still sick and so they didn't have class. She also told me I probably should have waited a little longer since it was the first class of the morning, and students often came that late to class, but usually not all of them.  I went back to the classroom and sat there for the whole 2 hour class period, just in case.  No students.

They must have gotten the word out to the students somehow that they had classes now because the next day my students did in fact, show up.  One small problem.  The attendance sheet was in Arabic.  Although I can read Arabic, I read it the way a kindergartner reads, sounding out each letter, and just taking a stab at the vowels, since they didn't use any vowel markers in this font.  The girls thought this was hilarious.  The worst was when there were girls with the same first name, because then I also had to sound out the father's name, the family name, and the tribe name.  I think it took about 20 minutes to take attendance that day, which as it turns out was fine with the girls, since many of them were still strolling casually into class at half past.

Anticipating a problem, I told them from the start that anyone coming more than 10 minutes late would be marked late, giving them a 10 minute grace period, and that anyone missing more than half of the class would be considered absent for that day. I also told the girls that class was scheduled for 2 hours, but that actual teaching time would only be 1 hour and 45 minutes. I gave them the choice to either end class 15 minutes before the next hour with no break, or 10 minutes before the next hour with a 5 minute break in the middle.  They unanimously chose to end class 15 minutes before the next hour with no breaks.  I was surprised, but grateful, since I was sure they would be late coming back from break too, which would ultimately make class time even shorter.

This all took much longer than anticipated, and since we had already lost a day, I decided to skip the ice-breakers and go straight on into the material.  This might have been a mistake.  It's always nice to develop a good rapport with your students right away, and ice-breakers or a fun little game in the beginning is a nice way to do that.  Instead, my students first impressions of me were bumbling through the roll, a list of rules, and then straight on into some grammar.  Granted, we did play a few games that class, but the students seemed more confused by it than anything else.  Teacher, you want us to move? We can move the chairs?  We should work in groups?  What do you want us to do teacher, you didn't tell us what page?

When I clarified that what I was asking them to do wasn't from the book, several students looked shocked.  These were the same students that I would realize later had old books from the previous semester's students already filled out.  So when we did exercises in class, mysteriously, many of the girls with the worst English would volunteer to give answers, and usually gave correct ones, since they were simply reading someone else's work.  No wonder they were terrified that first day when I was asking them to use English for communication rather than  copying.

Overall, the students seemed friendly and respectful, I didn't have to shout to get their attention, and they didn't talk over me.  I hope this isn't just first day nervousness and excitement putting them on their best behavior... but we will see.

Proctering Exams

After two weeks of doing basically nothing at work, it was nice to be assigned to proctor exams.  The trouble was the exam schedule was completely in Arabic, so I wasn't really clear where I was supposed to be or when.  I asked for help to find out where I needed to be, and when, which was good, since it turned out I was reading the schedule backwards.  Since it is all right to left, the morning shift is where I though the afternoon shift was.  I would have shown up in the right place at the wrong time, that is if I could have found the place.  None of the lecture halls are labeled, but since everyone else who works here seems to know where they all are, it didn't appear to be a problem for them.  I asked someone where the Al Farabi hall was, and they looked at me like I was crazy for not knowing.  Then they just vaguely mentioned downstairs and gestured off to the left.

Never one to pass up an adventure, I went off to find it.  Going downstairs is more of an ordeal then it sounds.  There is a staircase that leads directly down, but since a section of that floor is used by the men in the management offices, if you want to go downstairs without your Abaya on, you first have to go upstairs to the third floor to by-pass that section of the second floor with men on it, and then down on the other side all the way to the first floor.  So after all that, I ended up downstairs but still lost.  I followed the girls rushing around looking panicked, and sure enough, they led me to a large lecture hall, and sure enough, there was a familiar English teacher who welcomed me, so I figured I was in the right place.

There were over 100 chairs all in neat rows.  The girls were instructed to leave their bags and cell phones at the front of the room and take only a pen or pencil.  Most were good about following this rule, but some had to be asked more than once to put their phones or bags away.  The first exam was two hours long, and even though most of them finished in 30 minutes, they had to stay put until an hour and 15 minutes in.  I imagine it was as much torture for them as it was for me to be pacing up and down.  There were about 10 teachers assigned to watch the students and be sure there was no cheating, and make sure the ID's matched the number the students wrote on the exams.  Since there are no pictures on the ID's for modesty reasons, one assumes that the student is who she says she is.

The first day of proctoring, was sort of exciting, but, after two weeks of it, including Saturdays, I was pretty much over it. I think I only survived the boredom because I got smart after the fist day, and started wearing my hijab so that I could have in earphones and no one would notice.  I was able to finish the whole audiobook of "Stranger in a Strange Land" and got about half-way through Peter Pan.

Which isn't to say there weren't some exciting moments.  During one session, someone forgot to turn the ringer off on their phone, but it kept ringing and ringing and ringing, so we teachers had to search through the pile of bags to try to find the offending phone so it wouldn't keep distracting everyone.  Another time, a girl got ill, and we had to rush her off to the bathroom.  Even though she had nearly finished, because she left the room early, her test was disqualified and she had to take the whole thing again later.  Interestingly, there is nothing to stop you from arriving to the test late.  Many girls didn't bother showing up until 30 or even 45 minutes into the testing period.  Which is all well and good if they don't need the whole time to finish the test.  But at the end of one test (in fact, 5 min. after the end of one test) I literally got into a tug of war with a girl who had arrived late, and didn't finish, and was now in tears, trying to tear her paper out of my hands when I tried to collect it.  I might have had more sympathy for her if I hadn't seen her chatting in the hallway before the test, so I knew she wasn't late because of her driver or anything truly unavoidable.

The most frustrating part about the whole deal for me though was the contradictions inherent in the whole system.  They seem to go out of their way to make the exams appear to be fair and make it impossible to cheat, but in the end, they find ways to cheat themselves.  Here is an example.  The students did extremely poorly on the English Exams, and by extremely important, I mean, less than half of the students received a passing mark.  Since the mid-term exam is 20% of the final grade, and the final exam is 60%, that didn't leave much hope that many of them would pass.  The solution?  Well, we certainly can't offer extra tutoring or more classes, or anything as sensible and educationally sound as all that.  No, instead, we had to give them all another "very very easy" test, to boost their scores.  Yup, lower the standards.  That's definitely how we should be training the women who will someday be doing root canals and open heart surgery.

First Day at the Dental & Nursing School

I felt pretty good about my decision after I had made it, until I showed up to work.  Then I started second guessing my decision.  It wasn’t that anything went wrong exactly; it was just the realization of what my daily reality would be. 

My first stop was to finalize the contract.  Of course, being in administration, and being a Saudi man, he wouldn’t be at work until 10am at the earliest.  So I went on upstairs to the women’s section and presented myself to the head of the English department for women.  She is clearly an intelligent and well organized woman, but she also clearly dislikes talking in English.  She can speak English, as we have had conversations in English together, but she tries to get away with not speaking it whenever possible.  Every conversation we have begins in Arabic.  She only switches to English when it becomes clear that I don’t understand.  Then, once she has made herself clear, she reverts back to Arabic until my face shows that I’m clearly lost again.  As you can imagine, this makes for some interesting conversations.

Her: Something in Arabic

Me: uhh….. Yes?

Her: Something cheerful in Arabic

Me:  hmm…. Thank you?

Her: A question in Arabic

Me: ah… five?

Her: Ok.  English.  Will you start today?

I told her the story of how I would start conditionally, and that if they didn’t give me my iqama by Tuesday, I would leave and go home.  She decided that it would be best then to leave me as a cover teacher for now, so that if I did leave, it wouldn’t disrupt the schedules.  There was a mid-term coming up, so she would make the changes after the mid-term if I was still here.  This made good sense to me, and as an added bonus, meant I would sort of be sitting around waiting most of the time unless someone was sick.   She then told me something in Arabic, and I smiled politely and answered, “Tuesday.”  From her quizzical look, I’m guessing she didn’t ask me anything related to the days of the week.

The teachers’ room is a typical room, sort of dingy walls, tiles on the ceiling that are stained and broken.  But it is furnished with these very fancy wood and leather desks that look like they belong in an executive’s office.   Not surprisingly, there are not enough desks for all the teachers, so the part time teachers share one between them.  There is a copy machine that actually works, and even a water dispenser that also works.  It will put out hot and cold water.  I see a lot of tea drinking in my future.

I had only brought one book with me, and I had finished it before the end of the first hour.  I was so bored I picked up a book called “Guidelines for Raising Children” which was a manual for Muslim parents about raising their child to be Islamic.  Here are some of the highlights:

·         Every infant is naturally born as a Muslim, but it is his parents who turn him into a Jew, a Christian, or a Magian.

·         Slaughter two lambs for a boy and one for a girl.

·         The rights of nature are 5; circumcision, shaving off pubic hair, trimming mustaches, clipping fingernails, and plucking armpit hairs.

·         No human infant is born, but is goaded by Satan and screams as a result - except Mary and her son, Jesus.

·         A woman is sought for marriage for four reasons: for her wealth, lineage, beauty and faith.  Win the woman of faith, may poverty be your lot.

·         O young people, whoever of you can afford it, let him get married.  It helps restrain the eyes and preserve the private parts.  But if he cannot afford it, let him fast, for it works as a preventative.

·         Order your children to perform salat (prayer) when they are 7 years old, and beat them for it when they are 10 years old, and separate them in beds.

·         He who protects what is between his jaws and what is in between his thighs, I guarantee Jannah (heaven) for him.

·         He who has three daughters and three sisters, or two daughters and two sisters and teaches them good manners and treats them kindly and gives them in marriage, his reward will be heaven. (only 2 or 3, huh?)

·         When you hear the rooster’s crow, ask Allah to grant from His bounty, for they have seen an angel.  But when you hear a donkey’s braying, then ask Allah’s protection for it has seen Satan.

·         When man dies, no good dead will be added on his record except for three: continuous charity, beneficial knowledge, or a pious son who supplicates for him.

·         The profit cursed men who copy women and women who copy men.

·         The sound of Satan is music and singing.

Don’t get me wrong, there was some good stuff in there too; teach your children manners, education is important, be fair and treat them equally, turn the other cheek, stay away from bad influences and all of that.  I would say that it was a pretty entertaining use of about an hour.  But I still had about 6 hours to go.

I went down to sign the final contract, and this time, thankfully, everything was correct.  I had some more Arabic tea with the man, and we chatted for a while about various things; which city in the US is best, the problem with London (expensive, too many Saudi’s), and the stress of running a college.  He needed to have the contracts signed by the owner of the company, so he couldn’t give them to me now.

I went back upstairs and sat around some more.  I borrowed the books from one of the teachers, just to have something to look over while I was here.  After about a half hour, the head of the woman’s English department came to tell me that Dr. Sala wanted to see me.  I had no idea who Dr. Sala was but I thought it might be the same guy I had signed the contract with.  I knew his name started with an S, though I had never quit gotten it the few times I had heard him or other people say it.  She told me to go downstairs, which is where his office was, so I figured that was the one.  I went to his office, and he told me the contract wasn’t ready yet, and seemed surprised to see me.  I asked if he had sent for me.  He told me no.  I figured maybe she had wanted me to go see him about the contract but since I had already gone down to him earlier, she may have just gotten the message earlier and only just now given it to me so I went back upstairs.

About 10 minutes later she came to get me again and I told her I just went down and he didn’t ask for me.  It turns out, I had gone to Dr. Salam, not Dr. Sala (easy mistake – especially since I didn’t know anyone’s name).  So, she took me to the right person and he took me to Dr. Sala, and all three of us left in Dr. Sala’s brand new car (I didn’t feel as sympathetic about the stresses of running a college after seeing his car) to go meet the owner of the college.  We literally drove one block over to a walled and gated home.  It’s comical how adamant Saudi’s are about not walking anywhere.  Anyway, we arrived at our destination after about 30 seconds in the car and waited for the gate to open.  Inside there was a green area, and workers constructing an outdoor tent area, and to the right were two smaller buildings.  I was told to wait in the car a moment.  I felt a little like I was being prepared to meet the Godfather or something.  The two men went in first, and then a little later they called me over.  The owner extended his hand to greet me and I was glad because I wouldn’t have known if it was okay to shake his hand or not until then.  He invited us inside, and I followed the men’s lead and took off my shoes.  Inside was a 52 inch TV screen and really nice carpets and several couches.  In one corner, a man was giving an enthusiastic presentation in English about an architectural design to an older gentleman who looked like he was struggling to keep up with the English.  He was looking intently at the pictures and occasionally would nod or look over at the other man, who might have been the translator.  There was Arabic coffee and dates everywhere, but no one offered me any. 

The owner joined us a few minutes later and gave me the welcome speech, followed by the plea to forward the resumes of any friends I had that might want to work here.   He also told me that there was a separate language institute next door to the college and he told me I would be welcome to earn extra money by working there in the afternoons.  I thanked him, and told him I would consider it, depending on how much extra money they were offering.  He talked with the other two for a while in Arabic, then asked a driver to take me back to the college and the other two stayed I suppose for a discussion.

When I got back to the college I was surprised to find that the whole meeting hadn’t eaten up more than 30 minutes.  I felt like 3:00 would never come.  I spent another hour trying to entertain myself by borrowing some of the text books to flip through.  Since I didn’t know what level I would be teaching, it seemed a little pointless to get too involved in covering any one book.  So I skimmed them all, which was about as exciting as watching paint dry.  On several occasions I may have fell asleep a little bit.  Toward the end of the day, only three teachers were left.  They all came over to sit near me, and I knew my napping was over for the day.  Even though they were all English teachers, they spoke only in Arabic.  I tried to jump in a few times, and for about a minute they would switch to English for me, but they always fell back into Arabic before too long.  Yup, if I wanted to get better at Arabic, at least I was in the right place for it.

They offered me dates and some sweets that were white chocolate hearts with sesame seeds in honey on top.  It was pretty good, but I think I preferred the date encrusted with sesame.  They were doing such a good job distracting me with candy that I forgot I was supposed to go back to Dr. Sala to get the signed contract, and to ask if they would give me transportation back to the hotel, since, technically they were supposed to provide transportation.  By the time I realized what time it was it was already 2:15.  I went downstairs, but Dr. Sala had already left for the day, being a Saudi man in administration and all.  Dang.  That meant I would be paying for two more taxi rides, one home, and another back the next morning.  At least by now, I knew how to get there.  This was good since I had left the business card of the hotel at home.

Overall, not a bad first day. If signing with this company ends up being a mistake, it probably won’t be the worst mistake I have ever made.

The Straw Tower

One of the classes I was most excited about teaching was one called "Project Based Learning".  The idea behind it is that you learn best when what you are learning can be used immediately on a real world problem.  For example, you may not really spend that much time learning how to introduce yourself if it is just a chapter out of the book you are reading.   If, however, I tell you you will have to introduce yourself to, let's just say, an admissions officer at a college in the UK via skype - well, chances are you will be a lot more motivated to practice this particular language skill.

In training we had been told that the curriculum and lesson plans for this had already been created.  However, as with most things so far with this new company, we discovered that this was only sort of true.  On the shared drive, we found the project based learning curriculum file, but it was incomplete.  There was a general outline of the first project - to build a tower out of straws, but the timeline was unclear.  Was this something we were supposed to spend one 2 hour class on, or was this assignment supposed to last all week?  Initially, I think they had only planned on having project based learning once a week, instead of every day, so that might explain why in the project outline, it was supposed to take place over two weeks, and then later, it was supposed to be finished within the first week.  I opened the first lesson plan, which was written for students who had much more advanced language than my girls, so it would need major re-working.  Out of curiosity, I opened the lesson plan for the second day, and discovered that it was actually exactly the same as Day 1.  Apparently, no one had gotten around to writing any other plans beyond the first day, because every lesson plan for the week was identically to day 1's plan.

I realized I would need to really bulk out the lesson plan if I was going to make building this straw tower project last all week.  Besides, we hadn't even been given the straws and other supplies yet.  So I decided that we would do a lot of team building exercises to bulk out the plan.  The original plan called for group discussions of team work, but without the language necessary to talk about it, I figured why not demonstrate through activity some of the keys to teamwork (communication, roll definition, leadership, cooperation etc...).  Since most of the teambuilding activities I knew about required lots of movement, and because it was getting colder by the day in the classrooms, we went outside.  My girls and I were deep in an activity where they had to call out directions to a blindfolded teammate to get them from one side of the courtyard to the other without running into any other girls or trees or benches.  We had covered all of the commands in English, "go, stop, forward, back, step up, step down, left, right etc.."  but with about 40 students, it was hard to make sure they were all in fact using English and not peeking, but I was doing my best.

The vice principal happened to come around and wanted to know what I was doing.  I explained the team building activity to her.  She told me she didn't remember seeing this particular activity on the syllabus, by which, she meant, she hadn't seen any other teachers doing this particular activity.  I explained that the project based learning lesson plan only included one lesson plan, Which I had already done of the first day, so we needed to fill it out with other activities.   Besides, we can't do the straw tower activity until we get straws.  She informed me that there would be straws the next day, and that in the future, I should stick with what is in the syllabus.  I asked her if that meant she wanted me to deliver that same lesson everyday this week, since strictly speaking, that is exactly what was in the syllabus.  She stared me down for a minute. We both knew that she had never bothered to look at the lesson plans herself, or she would have realized how incomplete they were.  Finally she said, "You know what I mean.  Get these girls inside."

I gathered up my girls, and for the first time was truly disappointed in the new company.  I could understand and forgive all of the delays, and logistical problems of not having everything needed right away or completely ready, after all, this is Saudi.  This was different.  In the interview, the new company had talked a lot about wanting to change the existing model.  They pushed dynamic interactive teaching as a must, and made it clear that they weren't interested in lecture style teachers.  Now here I was, being chastised for exactly the kind of teaching they had claimed to want.  Suddenly, what I had begun to suspect from all the training focused on attendance numbers, and the haphazard way the books were chosen and curriculum developed (or not), became crystal clear.  All the talk of building a new model for Saudi women, of revolutionizing how English is taught in the region, was lip service.  They weren't committed to real change after all, only to profits.  Doing what was best for the students was fine, only so long as it was convenient for management.

The first attempts at Straw Towers, each group had 10 straws and 2 feet of tape.

Sure enough, the next day, the vice principal made a point of bringing me straws and tape.  I was the first to receive them, and as it turns out, one of the few who did.  Whoever had purchased the straws hadn't bought enough, so only about half the teachers got them.  The other half either bought their own or asked the students to bring them.  It was chaos to say the least.  Some of the students had towers with glitter and spray paint and used 50+ straws (which is what our syllabus recommended).  Other students had only 10 straws per group.  Every teacher had a different take on the assignment, and different ways of filling the rest of the time, though none were quite as visible as my courtyard teamwork activity.  One teacher had them design a dream home instead since there were no straws.  Another had them research towers around the world first so they could plan more structurally sound towers.  Another had them pre-design the towers and present their ideas and then vote as a group on a final design before building it. We made our towers on the third day of the week.  I was impressed with what the girls had created, but not exactly sure what I would do with the class for the rest of the week.  After all, according to the syllabus, we were doing straw towers all week.  I decided that we would spend the next days talking about what went well, what didn't and giving them the opportunity to design a second improved tower.  Partially because about 10 students had  joined the class who hadn't done any tower yet at all, and partially because I was afraid to really do anything else after my little run in with the Vice Principal.  This time, I told them they would also need to give a presentation to their class, explaining what materials they used, why they chose the design, and giving the tower a name.  Most wanted to do a powerpoint, and I encouraged them to try using a stop motion video app while they were building their second towers to add to their presentation.  I wanted to introduce them to new kinds of technology so they didn't always jump to powerpoint as the best or only means of presenting something (and because it would take a lot more time to build the tower that way).

Second Towers, each group had 50 straws, plus poster board, construction paper and 2 feet of tape.

I just so happened that the Vice Principal had come to my class while they were in the middle of this group work to try to sort out the attendance problems.  While we were comparing my attendance records with the official register (which was missing the 10 new students) and counting bodies to be sure we hadn't missed any, she noticed the girls using their cell phones (the stop motion app).  "Why does she have a cell phone out?  You need to tell her off."  I tried to explain why they were using the phones, but she cut me off.  "Do it. Tell her off.  The policy is no cell phones, and I don't want you to come crying to me and complaining later that you can't get the girls to put away the phones."  I wanted to assure her that I would never in a million years complain to her about anything related to  my student's behavior since classroom management was after all, my job, and that I especially would never complain about the students using cell phones since I used them a lot in lesson plans, for pop quizzes where they text in answers, for on the spot translations, for voice recordings, for any number of things, and that sure, they were bound to occasionally be using them for non-academic purposes, and I would as she said "tell them off" in those cases, but as a whole, the educational benefits to using the phones in class far outweighed the risks of having them around.  I decided against saying all this, figuring I was already not her favorite person, and so the best course of action was probably put up and shut up.  Luckily, the students, who had been listening to her rant, had quickly put away their phones, so when she insisted again that I tell them off, there was no one with a cell phone to tell off, and after a prolonged glare at me, she returned her attention to the attendance.

There was also another small crises.  One of the students who had the leadership roll for her group, mostly because she had the best English in her group, had taken the plans home with her the night before we started building because she was going to add them to the powerpoint that they had started.  Only, she didn't end up doing the powerpoint and left the plans at home.  Her solution to this problem, was to simply not show up to class at all.  In fact, she was so nervous about coming to class with nothing, she convinced her friend, also in the group, to hide out in the cafeteria with her.  The other two girls in her group were understandably very angry with her.  They asked if they could leave too, and I told them the had to do what they could for now, and then at the break (there was a ten minute break in this class) they could go find them.  After the break, they came back, but wouldn't come into class.  They were afraid of what I would do to them, so they wanted to speak to me in the hallway.  She explained that she had been up late the night before visiting her husbands mother who was ill.  I asked her why she was explaining and apologizing to me, when it was her group members who were suffering, not me.  She seemed confused.  You aren't going to yell at me?  I told her I was not, but that her group mates probably would, and should.  I told her that I would grade her based on her participation, and asked her if she thought she deserved high marks.  She shook her head no.  I told her she had also hurt her team, and that their grades would suffer too, but not as much as hers.  I told her that the worst thing she had done was not forgetting the plan or the powerpoint, but that the worst thing was that she hadn't taken responsibility for it, had made her friend miss class with her, and left her team to deal with it alone.  I asked if she thought that is what a leader would do.  She shook her head again.  I asked her what she thought she should do now as a leader.  She said finish the project.  I told her she had better hurry.  In the 20 or so minutes they had left before the presentations were do, that team actually pulled together a rather remarkable design, and a fairly decent presentation.  It's amazing what you can accomplish under pressure.

By the end of the week, my students had built 2 towers and done a presentation for their classmates on these towers.  They were sick to death of towers.  They made me promise we would be doing something else next week.  I wanted to move on as badly as they did and hoped that before next week, someone in admin would have sorted out the obvious lack of content in the project based learning curriculum and done something to fix it.  In the meantime, I was proud of what my students had accomplished, and looked forward to what they would be able to do by the end of the year.  Check out one of the videos they put together below.

First Day of Teaching

The first day of teaching actually went surprisingly well, and surprisingly quickly.   I found my classroom and luckily, it wasn’t one of the super cold rooms with the really loud air-conditioning.  It was still a little cold, but it wasn’t frigid.

The girls arrived and we played a game to learn their names, which was easier than I thought it would be since most of them were either Bashayer or Hatha.  I wasn’t sure what their ability level would be, but it turned out they were mostly at a higher level than I thought.  Our books started at the very beginning with Hello, and assumed that they also didn’t know how to write or read English.  All of my girls could write, though with varying degrees of success, and most of them knew greetings and could handle basic conversations, so I had to quickly revise most of my lesson plan.  But in the end it went well.

I had a 15 minute break before my next class, and I spent it re-arranging the desks for group work and trying to copy down the attendance before I had to turn it in.

My second class was project based learning, and already I could tell that they were at a lower level of English than the other class.  What they lacked in skill, they made up for in personality. This class had a class clown already, and a group of girls that I dubbed “the giggle gaggle” because they seemed to find absolutely everything funny.  I also had an older student in the group.  While most of the girls were between 18 and 25, this woman was clearly in her mid to late thirties, possibly even forties, and the difference in ages was clearly a barrier.  We did a series of group and pair activities, and every time she was in a group or a pair, I could see that she was holding herself apart, and the younger girls weren't exactly going out of their way to include her.  I would have to think about what I could do to bridge this gap.
I spent my lunch  break copying down the attendance, and snacking on the lunch I brought.  I didn't end up having time to finish eating it all, but I at least I managed to finish the apple and about half of the salad.  I could see that I was going to have to learn the art of fast eating.  I had a second hour with the first group of the day, and they started arriving to class well before the official start time, so I had to put away my food early.

My final group was at the end of the day.  I’m not sure if by now, they were all just warn out from a busy first day, or if they really were just a more calm and mellow group, but either way, this group was a dream class.  They were attentive and quiet, and were more advanced even then my first group, so they were able to do more advanced work and have interesting conversations.  I was really pleased with them. I was also glad that they were my last class of the day.   Ending on a good note is really important and helped me feel energized enough to begin planning for the next day instead of feeling drained and just wanting to go home.

We had about 40 minutes between the end of the last class, and the time the bus arrived.  But by the time all of the girls left and I straightened up the classroom, there were only 30 minutes left.  I knew it would take me about 10 minutes to pack up, put my abaya back on, head over to the administrative building and sign out.  I had intended to go upstairs and try to find the staff room I had been shown the week before I left for Riyadh, but in the end I decided I could get more done if I just stayed put and finished copying down the attendance so I would have a record of the students in each class.  
I lost track of time, and before I knew it, I had only 5 minutes before the bus left.  I rushed to pack everything up, and sure enough, I was the last one on board.  Turns out, since the bus arrives about 15 minutes before it is meant to depart, most of the teachers had been outside waiting for at least 10 minutes.  I felt bad, but since I technically got on the bus only 1 minute past the official leaving time, I didn't feel too bad.
The mood on the bus was generally one of excitement.  We had made it through the first day.  We knew now what to expect, and what the students needed, and now finally, we were in our zone of expertise.  We figured that now that we had students, most of the administrative headaches would start to disappear.  From here on out, hopefully, they would trust us to do our jobs, and we would leave them to focus on the logistical side of things.  For example, getting the internet working, connecting our computers to the printers and photocopiers that had been installed, and a thousand other small but necessary details.
All in all, it was a good day, and I was looking forward to the next day.   But first, I still had to get through tutoring Joury.

Second Day on the Job

The second day on the job we started getting down to brass tacs. In the morning we talked about class schedules and what our actual day would look like. Not great as it turns out. I remember in the interview that Chris, the Principal had explained a team system where we would all be responsible for one specific group of students, but also help with 2 other groups, so that between us in our teams we would have 5 or 6 groups to look after. She explained that we would teach 3 classes a day and spend the rest of the day planning. This turned out to be slightly different from what was actually going to happen. As it turns out, we are going to have six different class to teach each day, and about 45 minutes of planning time, plus 30 minutes for lunch. I think all of us teachers were pretty concerned about the teaching hours to planning hours ratio. Not only would we be teaching six different groups of students, we would also be teaching 6 different subjects, meaning 6 unique lesson plans each day. I don't care how good you are, 45 minutes چis no where near enough time to plan 6 quality lessons, never mind the other things that will likely crowd out that time like the mandatory 15 minutes of one on one time per week with every student in your group, general student queries, and marking the ten minute tests they are going to require at the start of each class and the mandatory end of week tests we will have to give, none of which have been written yet.

In fact, the curriculum itself has not yet been written. Our job this week is going to be to write the curriculum for the trimester. This is potentially doable task, however, there are several obstacles in the way. First, the text books that were ordered (and still haven't arrived) do not align with the standardized test all Colleges of Excellence will be giving their students at the end of the year. Second, a non- ESL teacher developed a rough SOW (scheme of work) that doesn't align with either the texts or the test. Third, we are supposed to do this as a whole team of 28 teachers. Can you imagine trying to hammer out a curriculum with the input of 28 teachers at the same time? 28 people would never be able to agree on where to go for lunch, let alone a schema of work for an entire semester. Finally, we don't even know yet what the level of our students will be, so we are actually going to be developing curriculums for all the levels, that somehow still has to cover the same information in the same order as all the other levels. So, our job is to somehow bring all three of these things and people together to make a coherent plan for teaching which will start in less than 2 weeks. Worried yet? I am.

Luiza, who left our old company to join me here decided today that it just wasn't for her. She is trying to do her Masters Degree through an American shoot off University in Bahrain and needs to be able to go there two nights a week, one of them being a work week day, and the new company wasn't willing to let her leave early to make it there on time that one day a week. But she was also really concerned about the number of teaching hours and not enough planning. She decided it wasn't really worth all the extra time she would need to put in in order to do the job well. 'It's more money, true, but it's a lot more work.' she said. 'I would rather do almost no work at Dammam and get paid less.' I was devastated to see her go, but I completely understood how she felt. On the one hand, at the University, we only taught about 3 hours a day, but the students, administration, and even most of the teachers didn't take it seriously. It was glorified baby sitting. At the Khobar Female College, we were being asked to do a lot more, but we were also asking a lot of our students. This new company was trying to raise the bar, and of course, to do that, you have to work hard. I appreciated that they were taking the standards seriously. But I also wished they would take the need for planning time seriously. To develop the kind of engaging and effective lessons they needed to get the students where they needed to be by the end of the year, we would need the time and resources to do it right. It's clear that whoever designed the time tables was never a teacher and didn't understand the relationship between good planning and good lessons.

Perhaps I've been naive in thinking that because this is a British company, things will be more organized and well managed. After all, we are still in Saudi. I'm skeptical that this year will be successful for the school if things remain this ambiguous and quasi complete. I think the company has bitten off more than it is prepared to chew at the moment. A lot of what we are doing now should have been carefully thought out and planned way in advance, not a week before the students arrive. But the show must go on. So I will do my best, which at the moment seems to be trying to stay out of the shouting match as 28 teachers hash out a plan that will no doubt be scrapped and re-worked when the books finally come in.

Job Opportunities

There is nothing like sitting around in an office for three weeks with no work to do for motivating you to look for new jobs.  Actually, there is nothing like working for a company that doesn't respond to phone calls and emails, and has you working in a country illegally to motivate you to look for new jobs.  It's just a lucky coincidence that they happen to be paying me to do it on their time.

So, they still have not given me an Iqama.  I have been living here on an expired visa since July 23rd.  If I try to leave the country on an expired visa, the company (but really me, because they could refuse to pay it) would charge me $2,666.00 (ominous exact amount when I convert it from Riyals).  Obviously, I have been pretty concerned about this, so I have been sending emails asking them about my situation daily since we came back from Eid Break.  I have also called them everyday.  Two weeks later, they have still not responded to a single email or phone call.

In the meantime, I have been spending my time applying for other positions.  Last week, I got an interview with a women's vocational training college in Khobar (about 30 minutes away) that pays about $1,000 more per month, and would house us in a brand new compound.  It seems too good to be true.  They offered me the position the next day, and want me to start August 31st.  Great, right?  Wrong.  Like everything else in this country, it is not that easy.

First of all, there is the 30 day resignation notice that I need to give my old company, which obviously wouldn't finish before August 31st.  I asked if I could start a week later, and they told me they really needed someone now, or if I couldn't start on time, they would have to have me wait until December when the second trimester starts.  However, I do have about a week of vacation saved up, and could take that plus leave without pay for any days that might overlap, if that were the only problem.  But it isn't.  In Saudi, you are sponsored by your company, and your legal status in the country is provided by them.  So if you resign, the only way to legally remain in the country is to have your Iqama transferred to another company.  There are two problems with that, one, I still do not have an Iqama, and two, most companies do not want to simply hand you over to another company seeing as how they have paid to recruit you and paid your plane ticket and invested all the effort of bringing you here in the first place.  So the chances are slim to none that they would agree to transfer your Iqama.  What they are more likely to do is give you a final exit visa.  This means that you have to leave the country right away.

Even this wouldn't be so bad, if say, you could just leave, go to Bahrain, get a new visa, and then re-enter with the new company.  The problem is, most Saudi Visas must be issued in your country of origin.  Meaning, I would possibly have to fly home, start the visa application process all over again from scratch, and hope that my former company didn't do anything to prevent me from getting a new visa.

The other thing about all this, is that everyone gives you different advice.  Some people have said that since I don't have an Iqama yet, it is actually a good thing, and I can leave more easily, and the new company can issue me a business visa from Bahrain, no problem.  Since there is no Iqama to transfer, the old company has no hold on me.  Another person said that no, If I left before the Iqama was issued then that triggers a 2 year ban on getting any visas for Saudi in my name.  Another rumor is that if I tell my old company that I have another offer, they will not agree to release me, and without a final exit visa, I can not legally exit the country.

I spoke with an HR person at the new company who told me that they would try to get a business visa for me through Bahrain so that I wouldn't have to go all the way home to the United States.  They are currently bringing all their new teachers in on business visa's since they haven't yet received their LLC license in Saudi yet (they are a Brittish Company).  They will then eventually switch us over to Iqamas when they receive the license.  The problem with this is, my old company still has my passport and will not give it back until they issue an Iqama, making it impossible to leave the country, let alone get a new visa.  They are consulting with their lawyers and the Saudi Government Liaison to see what can be done.

In the meantime, I can't give notice, because if we can't figure out how to work it out so I can start in August, I won't be able to start until December, and I don't want my current company to fire me, or resign too soon, and then I will have to sit around for three months with no pay in order to start again in December.  It's a frustrating game of waiting for more information, and holding my breath to see what will happen.  Cross your fingers for me....

Neverending End of Year Parties

One thing Saudi's are good at is throwing parties.  Last week, the men were treated to a nice dinner by their Dean to celebrate the end of the year.  They got on the bus rubbing their full bellies and bragging about how nice it was.  On the women's side we had a regular work day.  We were so jealous.  I wouldn't have been if I had known how many end of year parties were in store for me in the next few weeks.

We decided that it wasn't right that the men had a party and we didn't.  So we arranged to throw our own party.  We decided we would have a potluck and invite all the women from the other campuses to join us.  We originally scheduled this potluck for Thursday.  Unfortunately, we didn't know that our Dean, not to be outdone by the men's Dean, was also planning to have an end of year party for us, also on Thursday.  So we changed our potluck to Wednesday.  No sooner had it been rescheduled for Wednesday that we had to change it to the following week because there was a chance we might have to proctor exams all day that day.

Luckily, there was no proctoring, but we did end up having a party afterall.  Two of the administration ladies were leaving (one was moving, the other taking maternity leave) so we had a going away party for them.  It was just the women in the English Department, so it wasn't a lot of people, but there was brownies and ice cream.  It was the most delicious thing I have ever tasted.  Of course, I have had brownies and ice cream before, many times.  But it has never been quiet so delicious as it was that day.  I don't know if it was especially good ice cream and brownies, or if it just tasted better because I hadn't had anything that sweet in three months.

The next day we had another party.  This party was from the Dean.  She wanted to treat us all for the hard work we had been doing and also to tell us that she was leaving and we would have a new dean for next year.  She got very emotional and cried a lot.  Her English isn't great, so she was speaking through an interpreter, who was also crying, and so I really didn't catch much of what she was saying.  I didn't get much of the food either since I waited to go at the end and by the time I had made my way through the buffet line, most of the meat and all the samosas were gone.  But there was plenty of rice left, and luckily, I like rice.

Potluck spread of my student's Recipies

I thought two parties in one week was pretty great, but the following week we had four parties!  We had rescheduled our staff party to Tuesday at noon, but then had to change it to Tuesday at 10am so the women at the other campuses could be back in time for their afternoon classes.  Then, at the last minute we had to move it back to noon because, well, i'm not really sure, I stopped trying to keep up with all the changes. I decided I would just show up whenever the food did.  This would have worked out well, if it wasn't a potluck.  I had forgotten to bring a dish with me, and so if I was waiting for the food to show up to start the party, I would be waiting a long time.  Luckily, it just so happened that my students' recipe projects were due that day, and some of the students had done the extra credit and brought in the recipe they wrote about for us to try.  Even more fortunately, there were a lot of leftovers that the student's insisted I take with me.  Wallah, instant potluck.  I was a hero that day.  I brought two salads, a tray full of cookies and two kinds of desserts.  Everyone was so impressed.  If only I could have gotten away with pretending I had made it all, but the students came back in the afternoon to collect their dishes, so I was busted.

Ramadan Spread... Delicious!

Wednesday was the last day of summer school classes, so the students in one of the classes got together for a project and threw a little party for us.  This party was a sort of pre-Ramadan party where we learned a lot about Ramadan.  There were a lot of sweets and dishes designed to fill you up like oatmeals and potato dishes, so that when you eat them you can go all day and not get hungry.  The girls dressed up in traditional costumes and wore chains of gold coins on their heads.  There was a lot of music and dancing, which was confusing since we have been told all along music is haram.  They even sang a couple of chants that the kids traditionally say about halfway through Ramadan, where they go from door to door at night asking for candy.  It's like trick or treating, but without costumes.  It was a nice party, but they kept insisting that I dance with them, which I was horrible at, and felt really strange doing, since technically it was illegal.

Arabic Coffee & Cookies

 I also had to drink like 8 cups of Arabic coffee because each student gave me one thinking that no one else had given me one yet.  Arabic coffee is actually not like coffee at all.  The best way to describe it would be to call it hot spice water.  They put cardamom and other spices in water with no sugar (probably because the arabic cookies they bring you to eat with it are too sweet otherwise).  It's not great the first time around, and by the fifth cup, I was practically gagging.  But the deliciousness of these fried cheese balls someone had made more than made up for it.    I also got a rose from one of my students, and a bracelet that says "KSA" from another student.  I have to admit, I felt a little like a rock star.  Everone, even students that were never in my class, wanted to take their picture with me.  Of course, when I wanted to take a picture with them, they said no because they were afraid I might put it on the internet somewhere or accidentally show it to a guy or something.  Funny, they didn't think it was an issue for me everytime they came over to get a "selfie, teacher, selfie!"  Some of them even had this telescoping device that allows them to hold the camera phone far away before it clicks.  It's like a tripod, but only one leg.  It's really strange.

Bag of Ramadan Trick-o-treat Candy

So party number three was on Thursday morning.  This was another pre-Ramadan party, only this time it was all the summer school students and teachers, instead of just one class.  They had moved all the rugs from all the little corner mosques on each floor of the building and spread them out in this one open area.  They moved all the airport benches into a u-shape and added a lot of leaning pillows.  They hung lanterns on all of the walls and suddenly we weren't in Jeoffrey's cafe anymore, it was like being inside an Arabian tent.  There was more music and more dancing, and more Arabic coffee.  Thankfully, this time, I only had to drink one cup because I had an excuse.  I was substituting for one of the other teachers, so I got to leave early to go to the other building and teach.  By the time I came back, the party was over, but another one was just beginning.

The University was having an official closing ceremony complete with certificates.  To get the teachers to come, they promised us a big buffet meal afterwards.  Since this was for the entire women's campus and not just the English Department, we met in a really large theater room.   I was a little late arriving because I had come straight from teaching, but I needn't have worried about missing anything, they hadn't started yet.  To buy some time, they sent the cleaning ladies around with trays of sweets and, of course, more arabian coffee.   I have to say, by now I had had so much of it, I was starting to like it.  Either that or the sweets were so sweet that I desperately needed anything to wash them down with.  The ceremony opened, as academic ceremonies are want to do, with a trivia game about islam in Arabic.  In fact, the whole ceremony was in Arabic.  We watched an incredibly long video with pictures of events and projects that had happened during the year, which was torture because there was no music and all of the pictures were of inanimate objects, and not even particularly good.  Imagine sitting through someone's vacation photos, if say, they had gone on vacation to a conference room with no one else, and you couldn't understand anything they told you that might have illuminated the importance of, say, the chair with a pepsi can on it.

I was really relieved when the video was over until, I figured out what the next part of the ceremony was.  The names.  So we sat while about 150 names were read, and waited while each woman got up, walked to the stage, collected her certificate, and sat back down.    It took a long, long, long, time.  The English department were the last to receive their certificates.  Listening for our names was a special challenge because the woman reading off the names had never met any of us and wasn't particularly adept at English.  My name was "G-Knee-Fire Kul-ee"  and when I got my certificate, I could understand why she had had such a hard time, since my name was spelled "Jeniiferr Keli"  My name wasn't the only one misspelled.  In fact, not a single name was spelled correctly.  Clearly someone had given them our names in Arabic, and someone had transliterated them back into English.  A lot was lost in translation.  The certificate thanked me for all my hard work throughout the 2013-2014 school "yeer" even though I had actually worked for maybe only 10 days of the official school year.  They also confused the words "academic" and "academy"  It's good to know that no one in the admin department thought to double check the English with say, anyone who worked in the English Department. Still, it is the thought that counts, and a good reminder of why they need us here doing this job in the first place.

Finally, everyone had gotten their certificates and it was time to eat!  But not before they made us all gather for a group picture of the English department.  It was chaos trying to organize it.  Some people walked off to talk on their phones, other people were refusing to stand next to other people, or trying to stand next to the new dean, or trying to stand behind someone so they wouldn't look fat.  Some were trying to hand over their phones to someone to take a picture with their cameras too.  Others were trying to cover their heads or sneak out of the picture altogether.  At no point during the nearly 5 minutes of camera and phone flashes were all of us ever looking in the same direction at the same time, let alone smiling. It was a mess.

By the time we made it to the buffet line, we were nearly last.  Five minutes after standing in line, we were definitely last.  Somehow, the Saudi teachers who were behind us in line, had made their way to the front of the line.  This is the thing about lines here... they do not exist.  I still haven't quite gotten my head around that, so it usually takes me twice as long as everyone else to check out at the grocery store, and in buffet lines, I just can't win.  After ten minutes of waiting in line, the word came that there were no more plates left.  I happened to spot a stack of plates on the opposite end of the buffet by the desserts.  I decided I would be a hero.  I pushed and shoved my way through the line to cross the room and get the plates.  I grabbed a huge stack full and made my way back into the thick of the line.  Here is the thing; I'm obviously struggling with a large stack of plates.  There are no plates left for you to grab.  Still, the Saudi women would not let me through.  I didn't know how much clearer I could make it that I was trying to help them.  They obviously couldn't progress through the buffet without the much needed plates, and yet, they were very very reluctant to let me through to set down the plates.  Were they that concerned with their place in the non-existent line?  I have no idea.  I made three trips with stacks of plates and it never got any easier.  When I had moved all the dishes, one of them asked me for napkins.  Thats when I gave up and rejoined my fellow English teachers at the back of the line.  Let them find their own napkins.  We watched plate after plate leave the buffet, stacked like volcanoes of rice with shrimp and chicken exploding out of them.  After the fifth or sixth such plate, I was literally drooling.  By the time we got to the front, we had to share plates, because there were only a few left.  Which turned out to be fine because there wasn't much food left anyway.  We had some rice and there was a bit of hummus left, and I took the bones of what might have been a small lamb to try to scrape off any meat that might have escaped the vultures, but that was about all.  Even the desserts had been picked clean.  I guess that is what I get for trying to be the nice guy.  I'm sure glad I sat through that whole thing for those few mouthfuls of rice.

In a way, it was a fitting end to a week of year-end parties.  A cosmic sign that I'd had more than my share of parties already, or no one should have this much fun or food at work, or something.