A Ginger Teacher in Abu Dhabi: 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!