Here We Go Again!

Well, this past week was interesting to say the least.   Nothing too exciting happened at school with the exception of one day, and I’m not completely sure which day it was exactly, I think it was Wednesday.  I could tell that my coteacher wasn’t feeling well on Tuesday, however she is so dedicated that she never misses school unless she is deathly ill.  Since I could tell she didn’t feel well, I prepared myself on Wednesday and came with some new fun things to do with my kids.  I did have the luxury of having the art teacher teach my kids Arabic so I could at least have a break during the day.  I finished taking money for breakfast and then left her with the kids.  When I came back, we went over the number 14 which we had been learning this week for math.  I had brought my box of Cheerios with me to use either as an incentive to listen and behave or use as some sort of art project.  Well, I had them glue 14 Cheerios on their paper and the copy from the board (didn’t really translate well) “This is 14”.  I couldn’t help but laugh when they write this sentence completely backwards on their paper and some of them just kept on gluing the Cheerios.  This is a prime example of why a coteacher is needed, this was a very simple task and the directions were lost in translation.  I did have some students who made the number 15 out of Cheerios which I thought was cool.  They loved doing this, so much so that the next day when my coteacher returned, they all ran to their cubbies and grabbed the papers to show her what they had done. 

The weekend brought relaxation (recovering from the week) and trying new recipes.  I made a banana bread pudding breakfast thing.  I saw Chef Simon make it on an episode of The Chew and had to try it, however it calls for croissants and those are hard to find in MZ without cheese or Zatar in them, so I had to use a type of dinner roll instead.  It was ok, but I think using croissants would be better.  I also made some pretty tasty nachos as well, ground beef with bell peppers, mushrooms and onions and of course Windy’s Saucy Taco Seasoning.  Check out her website for some amazing spice blends and rubs for meats. http://fortheloveofspice.com/

This past week I also decided to try a recipe that my sister told me about, two bananas, a cup (I think) of oats and 1/3 cup of chocolate chips, mix it together and put it in the oven for 20 mins at 350.  I also made my Oreo truffles.  They were delicious, even more so than when I make them in the states.  I think it’s because the cream cheese here that I used was a tad sweeter than Philadelphia Cream Cheese.  I brought them to school for the EMT’s so I wouldn’t eat all of them. 

This week started normal, Sunday was a normal day of teaching, my students listened and worked well with each other.  Monday brought a meeting with our cluster manager whom we talked to for about an hour.  We talked to him about our frustrations with the lack of communication and how we find things out last minute, which prevents us from making the most of our teaching time.  He complimented us on the fact that all the concerns we had concerned the students and their learning time.  My students were also well behaved today, which makes the teaching very easy and enjoyable.  Today brought a meeting in the morning while the kids were in the hall playing.  Our meeting lasted for about an hour and fifteen minutes.  The meeting was to discuss what the cluster manager talked with us about.  There was quite the fuss from some of the Arabic staff (mainly the ones who are never in the room to translate) about having to be in the room to translate everything.  I made sure to compliment my coteacher for always being in the room and translating what I need her to translate.  When I am teaching, if she can tell the students might not know what something is, she will translate it to them, but they are mainly listening to me when I talk.  She also translates directions at centers for me as well which helps.  Some of the other teachers are never in the room after they teach their lessons, which leave the English teachers on their own for the whole day.  Boy were their words been thrown around about that!  We expressed our concerns and at least our principal listened to us, hopefully she makes sure that it will actually be put into play, but who knows.  Yesterday I also exposed them to Sesame Street!  I found this wonderful video of Usher singing the ABC’s with some of the characters.  There are movements for each letter.  I have been practicing the dance so I could do it with my kids.  So I told my students that I had something fun for them to do if they could be good listeners, well the ones that understand the most English knew exactly what I said and came right into the classroom for English and sat down nice and quietly on the carpet ready to go.  I played the video for them twice and they loved it, they giggled at the characters dancing and were yelling out the letters they knew.  The third time I played it I had them get up and do the dance with me, my girls were totally into it, some but not all of my boys were too.  They were all just amazed I was dancing and so had their eyes glued on me.  I played it again and they danced more, this will be a treat for them if they are good listeners during English. 

I received my other package from my parents with my Ellen sweatshirt and my iPod stereo, now I can play music while they are working. Oh, how I have missed this!  Back home, I always had music playing while my students were working and they actually worked better with it on, some would stand and dance while working, which I didn’t mind as long as they were working.  Today I put the music on for the kids and they were relatively quiet and working.  It’s amazing how music can change the mood of a room.  I always have to have music playing, I am not sure why, but I have always been that way. 

Ok, here’s the most important part of this blog post.  After almost 6 months of me being here, the Starbucks in my town has finally OPENED!  It opened Saturday, minus the AC, but Rebecca and I sat outside and just watched people.  I have been there everyday since just sitting and watching people.  It’s a two-story building, so we found that sitting upstairs provides the best view to see everyone come in as well as being quieter than downstairs.  The baristas already know my name and my drink (that’s a good thing right….?).  I couldn’t be happier to have a nice coffee shop to sit at and work or just talk to people.  It also has a drive thru which is amazing and wonderful, but I won’t be stopping every morning, I’ve gotten used to my home brewed coffee in the mornings and it’s also cheaper! 

Please enjoy the pictures!

impromptu falcon demonstration at our school

Notice that my name is spelt Collin, each day the spelling gets closer to being correct

"Look teacher, Ninja" -no words....

The Inspectors are Coming, Quick Put on a Show!

Well, I have learned my lesson, I should not wait so long to blog because I have forgotten what happened last week.  I do remember that last week was actually a good teaching week.  I had my co-teacher in the room pretty much all day, my lessons were prepared and engaged the students.  My students make me laugh.  Here are some examples why they make me laugh.....
I have a student that I have talked about before on here, I call her my "busy bee".  She challenges me every day in the patience department.  She is super smart, both in Arabic (from what I can tell) and English, Math and Science.  However, she works so quickly on her center work that I have a difficult time finding something to challenge her with when she finishes.  My co-teacher requested that I make laminated pictures of each student so we could put them in different spots in the classroom.  When students finish their center work, they will know what they can do afterwards, either play center, blocks center, reading corner or computer.  I put her in the reading corner which she was thrilled to go to (thank goodness).  There is a constant battle each day to be the second student in line.  I always have a line leader and they know who that person is, so they fight to be second.  I cannot get it through their minds that it doesn't matter and we are all going to the same place, but I don't think I've ever been able to get that through to my classes.  Anyway, my "busy bee" is so busy that when she stands in line, she cannot for the life of her control her body enough to stand still and quiet.  She flails her arms, shakes her head and makes a joyful sound all at once.  It cracks me up!  I remind her how she is supposed to stand, she can do it for .5 seconds and that is all.  Frankly I don't care how they walk in line as long as they are in a line (not possible for my class) and quiet (again, not possible).  I feel like I have gotten off topic, but I think that from now on I am going to have them do arm exercises as we walk in line, that way they are paying attention to me and hopefully (fingers crossed) quiet at the same time.  If anyone (especially my principal) says anything to me I will gladly explain I have an extremely busy class and this is the only way I can get them to walk in a quiet line.  I will keep you posted on how this goes.  Oh! I remember what happened last week, towards the end of the day, my co-teacher was doing a review of Arabic when her phone rang.  Normally her phone is in her purse and tucked away, however today it was out and the ringer is set as loud as it possibly can be set.  So, as per how things go around here, she answered it and proceeded to have a 10 min conversation with someone.  As this was happening, my students went a bit nuts.  They were up, touching things they weren't supposed to be touching, moving around when they should have been on the carpet.  Well, I decided to just watch all of this because I figure if you decide to answer a phone call while you are teaching, you kind of deserve this behavior.  In the middle of her call she looks at me and says "Miss Colleen, Sultan Yousef, in English is he good?"  I was thrown off a bit, thought about it and said he was actually doing really well.  She proceeded to tell me it was his mother on the phone wanting to know about how he was doing.  Ok, two things wrong with this picture, one obviously is answering the phone while teaching and two, the mother calling knowing darn well that her son is still in school.  After the phone call, my co-teacher got after the kids for their behavior which I kind of found humorous based on what she did, but oh well.  
This week started out very calm which freaked me out because we had inspectors coming to evaluate our school based on what the education system in this country says we should be doing.  There was lots of prep for this week, not since the beginning of the year, rather the past 2 weeks, great preparation if you ask me......  I did hear a screaming match between one of the Arabic teachers and the principal which was quite shocking to say the least considering the staff room door was closed and the classroom it occurred in was a ways away.  The argument was over the fact that the principal wanted all shelves cleared of teacher supplies in the classrooms before the inspectors came.  This didn't need to be done I found out later from the inspection team.  
Monday - Wednesday were very interesting teaching days.  It was as if I walked into a brand new school, the Arabic teachers were on time to lessons (some showed up period which was an improvement), there was a large adult presence in the play area during break time and the same in the lunch room for breakfast.  It makes me laugh that the Arabic teachers were so stressed during this time, there's nothing to be stressed over if you are doing your job correctly and to the best of your ability.  I didn't change a darn thing when they came to observe me.  This happened during my math lesson, the kids saw someone new in the room and were in rare form if you know what I mean, but I carried on as if I didn't even seen the man in the room.  He talked with me for a bit after I sent the kids to break and had he seemed to understand that our job is to say the least difficult.  The last day they were at the school, they wanted to see how we conduct a fire drill.  I actually thought it would be interesting to see myself since we hadn't done one all year.  I was pulled into another teacher's room who wasn't at school that day to walk her kids out during the fire drill.  Being the team player that I am, I obliged and walked them out, however I had know idea where they were to stand.  I was also told to take the class list to make sure they were all accounted for when we got outside, that's great and all however I don't know every one's name, so the list did me no good.  The fire drill was really entertaining, the fire department came and sprayed the school with water and then brought out the water cannon on top of the fire truck and sprayed the sand surrounding the school.  The kids loved it!  We were told to go back into the school, I decided I was going to follow my school back in and stay with them since I hadn't had a chance to teach my students English as I was interrupted in the middle of my lesson to take my kids to breakfast before the fire drill.  I was quickly pulled from my class yet again and told to watch the other class.  So, having no materials to teach them anything, I let them have free play.  I was doing an alphabet puzzle with about 4 of the students when the inspector came in and sat down.  You have got to be kidding me?!?!?  After finishing the puzzle, I went over to talk with him again.  I explained that I was not their teacher and was asked last minute to watch them and I had no idea where their Arabic teacher was.  The gentlemen talked to me again about how things at the school ran and my opinions, etc.  I was irritated that I wasn't with my class and no one informed me when I would be relieved (I hadn't gone to the bathroom once and really needed to go).  I looked at the schedule and saw that they had library at 11:30.  Thank goodness for this, I had them clean up and line up to walk to the library.  I entered the library and the librarian looked at me funny and said she didn't have a class right now.  I told her this was another teacher's class and it said they had library on the schedule.  She informed me that she was asked to switch them to the morning, so she had already seen them today.  GREAT!  So, I lined them back up and was going to take them to the play area but KG1 was in there, so back to the classroom we went and outside to play on the playground.  I dismissed them to the buses when it was time to go home to.  As a result of this, my students did not receive their Science homework I had prepared for them.  This really irritated me, mainly because our principal has stressed we need to send homework home every night (these kids are 3-5 BTW) and because I was taken from my class, this didn't happen.  
Thursday turned out to be another normal day at school, oh wait no it wasn't.  I was yelled at by the "vice principal" to go to a meeting with the principal while she watched my class and the class next door.  All the teachers needed to be in this meeting that took place during our teaching time.  I am sorry, but we have a morning routine, a routine it took a while to get the hang of and you are disrupting it, so I will come when I am finished taking breakfast orders and money from my kids.  She apparently did not like that I wasn't jumping up right then and there, so she continued to yell and I yelled back telling her I was coming.  I am a coworker of yours, please show some respect and don't yell at me.  I got all of the money and orders completed and made my way to the meeting room.  We sat for 2 hours (our school day is only 4 hours long mind you) to talk about what the inspectors wrote up about our school.  We were pretty much thrown under the bus as an English staff, being told we weren't doing what we were supposed to be doing.  My blood was boiling 10 mins into this meeting.  After the meeting, my kids went to break, then had breakfast, my co-teacher wanted to teach them Arabic and then they went to library and home.  I taught nothing, however I was mentally exhausted from this day.  I went home, gathered my things and made my way to Abu Dhabi.  I spent the afternoon with Casey, whom I felt like I haven't seen in way too long.  We went to dinner at Jones the Grocer (she owed me dinner from the bet we made that the Seahawks would beat the Saints when they played...) which was delicious, then to Ikea and Ace.  I made my way to Dubai where I spent Friday exploring.  Dubai really is a real city, it reminds me of Seattle, only the buildings are so much taller.   The area I was in reminded me of Orange County as well, people sitting outside enjoying food and coffee while the beach is just across the street.  Here are some pictures from the past two weeks, I hope you enjoy them!

Footprints vets hosted a BBQ for the new arrivals! 

Moreeb Dune

Ibn Battuta Mall

Dubai as seen from the Palm Islands

Communication, Not the Norm

So last weekend was very relaxing, it started with Thursday.  The fog was so dense we weren't able to make it to school, attempts were made to make it in only to turn around and come right back.  Sunday, fog again, didn't make it into school.  I am not going to risk my life to make it to school, like I have told my coworkers, I like my life and getting into a car accident because someone was going to fast or couldn't see me isn't in my current life plan.  Monday, fog again, however we made it to school.  We were slightly delayed in getting here because one of the teachers I was driving received a call on our way to work from a courier saying he was on his way to her place to deliver something from the bank.  Well, we told him we would pull over on the highway and wait for him.  He showed up on the other side of the high way and like they tend to do here, he walked across the highway to our car to deliver the package.  Having been here since September and out in the west since October, this is not an uncommon thing.  There are always men on the side of the road walking, waiting to be picked up, crossing the highway, some run and some choose to risk their lives and leisurely walk across.  So having this courier deliver on the side of the highway was not exactly shocking.  We finally arrived at school only 30 mins before school was out, and the translator informed us that our principal was not very happy that we hadn't shown up (you know because we had a choice) and was yelling at her because of it.  I apologized to her for having to listen to her yell and that it shouldn't have happened.  We explained to her that we weren't going to risk our lives just to get to work and she understood.  The next day, the tone of the Arabic teachers changed, you could tell they weren't very happy with us at all. I explained to my co-teacher why I wasn't there and she seemed to be sympathetic, but I could tell was still irritated.  I would have been irritated as well if I had to have the kids all day, but at least they have an advantage and can speak their language.
As I was leaving school on Tuesday, I was stopped by the translator and the Arabic teacher that is on my committee.  I was given a list of things that my committee needed for their binder by the next day, yes, the next day.  Now, let me explain something to you, this visit we are going to be having in about two weeks (their one day visit is Sunday) is equivalent to Accreditation (my skin crawls just having to type that word) in the states.  HOWEVER, with accreditation, we worked on gathering data and information for about a year and a half, NOT two weeks!  I should mention that during the school day, we had bicycle day which involved all the parents and people from the community as well.  The kids rode their bikes from one end of the parking lot to the other end and the top three kids from KG1 and KG2 were awarded a trophy and a medal.  One of my boys won 3rd place for KG2 which I was very proud of! So among all of that craziness and not knowing what our role was exactly was in it, the end of the day was the last straw.  So, when I got home on Tuesday, I worked for about 4 hours gathering and making things for my committee.  I produced everything that was needed for our committee, but was not exactly happy about it.  I do not like to do last minute things especially when I don't see the point in it, which I do not see the point of this visit at all.
On Wednesday, after school, I went to go find Monica, the very nice woman who is in charge of making copies for the teachers.  I had given her a hand written behavior log, one for KG1 and one for KG2 in the morning to make ONE copy of each.  I hadn't had them returned to me, so when I went searching for them she informed me another teacher had taken them, well, she hadn't so I started to panic because this was something that was hand written and couldn't be printed again.  I found them in the hands of the lady who is on my committee!  Oh man did my blood start to boil, I snatched them out of her hands which probably wasn't very nice, but if she would have waited 2 minutes, she would have had them.  Anyway I had Monica make me the copies I had asked for at the beginning of the day (would it be so hard to let us make our own copies, just saying).  I was then shut out of the office where the copy machine is because the VP was exhausted from the day and laying on her couch (eyes rolling right now).  Anyway I gathered my papers and brought them to my committee and was then asked if everything was there, at this point in the day I had had enough of kids being rude and disrespectful as well as the adults I had encountered, so I rudely took out the papers and flipped through them showing her EVERYTHING she had asked for!  We were also informed that after school on Thursday, a day in which we are allowed to leave at 12:45, we needed to stay until all the binders were finished.  This is all well and good if you UNDERSTAND what is supposed to go into the binders and oh yeah, could READ the language they are in!  We were also informed that Thursday would be Math day since last Thursday we couldn't do it because we weren't there.  So, we pretty much taught all day, which is fine, but also not fair.  I did number basketball where the kids lined up and I showed them a number, if they knew it (numbers 1-20), they could shoot the ball, if not they would go to the back of the line.  They loved this and I had fun with them.  One of our KG2 teachers was out sick, so we only had 3 rotations, not 4.  The end of the day had nothing scheduled which apparently meant that the English teachers should have to stay with the kids because you know we taught all day, so sure why not.  I took my kids outside with another teacher to play on the playground.  After school, we all decided that since we had ALL done our parts for our committees we could leave at 12:45, all at once.  Well I got caught by my committee and asked to help.  She told me that I needed to help put the binder together, I told her I didn't know how it should be put together and wasn't sure how much help I would actually be.  She told me I needed to take the pile of papers and put them back to back into plastic sleeves.  This is all well and good, however half way through this, I realized that since their entire language is written completely backwards from the English language, I was more than likely doing this all backwards.  I finished what I was told to do and went to find her and inform her that I had finished and I needed to go and take another teacher to the TAMM center in town.  She didn't seem very happy about it, but whatever.  On my way out I walked by my principal who said nothing to me about leaving, which I didn't understand, but oh well.  I walked out to my car thinking everyone would be standing there waiting for me because I was the driver, only to find everyone gone!  I received a text from another teacher saying they were at the TAMM center waiting for me.  They high tailed it out of there in order to avoid being pulled back in to help, which we can't exactly help anyway.
Thursday night, Cormac, Rebecca and I went into the city to eat at Samurai, a delicious sushi restaurant as well as go to Waitrose which to me is a little bit of heaven in the city.  It is a grocery store similar to Metropolitan Market back home.  We ventured back home, where I have been relaxing all weekend, trying to prepare myself for what is to come this week at school.  Enjoy the pictures!

Starting line

Finish line

Well, if there weren't people in the way you would be able to see my student on stage, that's his father in the white though.

New frames

See the floating building?!