So a friend posted a link to this blog that another teacher has written and I think it really captures all the negatives of my experience thus so far. I also think it would be a good blog for anyone considering this experience to read.
Here is a link:
http://mellyschu.blogspot.com/2010/11/truth-is.html
This is pretty intense and I can see all of what she is writing about. I think in a way I am pretty lucky at my school, while there is a division and probably some teachers that look down their noses at me (not probably there is!). I choose to only notice the happy bubbly Egyptian music teacher that always smiles at me (and makes less money then us). She is a larger woman with glasses and a very colorful and elaborate kandora and head scarf, and she wears a thick pancho over her clothes in the cool weather. Every morning she gets the girls together to play music for the assembly and she works so hard and because she is Egyptian her salary is less then us (salary for expats is generally a significant amount more than one would earn in their home country but not equal to other teachers at the school...westerners all make the same based on experience and then Emirates naturally make significantly more). Well she greets all of the LTs every morning with eye contact, smiles and firm handshakes. She asks about family and really cares. One morning my friend Sylvia from South Africa was shivering a bit and coughing and she took her warm pancho off and gave it to her! This is just an example of some of the humanity in this country that does exist. Another teacher works in Special Education (I still have no idea what she does but she has a child with special needs of her own and openly admits it and this is humbling for someone from this country). She has lost a child from illness and I imagine that has been humbling as well for her. She is an Emirate woman and due to her child's illness she lived in the states a few years so she has more acceptance and appreciation for western society. She lights up when she sees me. When I was out sick with kidney stones she was scribbling down homeopathic remedies for me and had legitimate concern for my health. So there are some open minded opened arm teachers at my school; however they are in the minority and many of the ladies shake your hand if you come up to them and they look somewhere else and they force fake smiles, and I try to attribute it to the language barrier (hey I got to sleep at night!).
The principal to me is a quiet woman that stands at morning assembly and never addresses the student body. She is thin and frail and wears a very simple black abaya and shayla. She doesn't say a lot and is always very quiet and smiles when she sees us. From what I can tell she appreciates and wants us at her school and understands how hard we work) It seems the assistant principal is the real authority and I do get a bit of disgust from her and lack of appreciation for what we do (for example she wanted us to complete our marks over Christmas vacation with no value for our time off). For the most part I know that there is a division at our school and there is a level of disrespect to the point that some of us feel like servants at our school but I just choose not to see it that way. I come to school just as I always did in the US and I teach. I close the doors and I close out the drama that exhists at every school (which comes with the territory of working in a female dominated profession, too much estrogen makes me choke). I dot my i's and cross my t's and I stay under the radar as much as possible. My principal has stepped foot in my classroom twice and both times she smiled. I also have a few random Arabic teachers that stroll in to yell at the girls, pass out notes, take my girls away or whatever and I go with the flow. But honestly I can do this and I feel like what I am taking from it is that I am becoming a better teacher for it. I am seeing some progress with my girls and in the grand scheme of things that is what matters.
We took our girls on a picnic at the park. I brought a jump rope and they loved it! Great picture of girls jumping rope.
Many of the girls just as their culture teaches them, tossed their trash on the ground. Well, the Arabic teachers were happy with that and I guess thought that the laborers could clean it. But the LTs brought trash bags! And all the grade three girls new the words to the Barney "Clean up" song. The Arabic teachers jaws were to the floor as our girls happily sang the clean up song scurrying around picking up garbage and sorting out any food that was untouched to give to laborers at the park or the cleaners at the school (these ladies are from Ethiopia and the Phillipenes and make roughly 200 USD a month that they send home so they eat very poorly). It was fantastic! When one of the LTs said to the Arabic staff, "we don't want the park to spread around how filthy our school is," they agreed to this disgusting task as they certainly were not going to pitch in!
This is not a Muslim or Arabic thing, this is just what money does to these people. Why walk or find a trash can if someone else can pick it up? It is not uncommon to see trash flying from a car, or to see a family cleaning the trash from their car on the ground of a parking lot. We were also amazed that the Arabic staff just left their picnicking materials on the path thinking someone would pick it up and of course we did (sure that makes us look less like their inferiors right?),
Ok so this blog I mentioned earlier in my post got me thinking because the real cure to culture shock is acceptance and appreciation of the culture but I know for me that will never really happen, I will leave here repelled by Arabic culture (ok not all Arabic culture but for the most part any Arabics with lots of money) and the opposite is happening to me. For example when I see Arabic kids at the playground I grab Gavin and go away because I know they will be throwing sand, taking his toys, or just plain push him away because he is an annoying two year old (they will come up to me and tell me to make him stop trying to play with them...so sad). Instead of keeping an open mind I find myself thinking or expecting these kids to be rude brats. Let me exemplify, last night we were in Dubai at the Chucky Cheese and Gavin was playing with one of the employees and he got away and was on the run so she was chasing him and I was right behind her chasing him too. Well he saw an Arabic boy , maybe ten or eleven playing dance revolution and jumped on the game too! He started playing with the kid. I caught up to Gavin and grabbed him and the Arabic kid is screaming bloody hell at this employee. His mother and father are at the table near by taking the whole scene in and they are not intervening. He wants a refund because this little boy ruined his game. I was holding Gavin in my arms watching this and I said, "stop yelling at her!" I handed him my game card, "I will pay for another game, my god he is two years old." He glared at me and stomped over to his table and grabbed his card and paid for the game. The employee rolled her eyes at me and smiled.
I am trying to find the beauty in the Arabic and Muslim cultures but not sure I can really find the needed appreciation and acceptance to really allow myself to settle here for even a moment. I guess on some levels my culture shock is becoming less and less as I learn my favorite places to shop, my routes to and from school, make friends and I am even joining a bowling league and buying a car so in a sense we are making a life here but I know it will always be us and them and that I will leave her never really taking on the original acceptance and appreciation I intended to have or gain when I leave this country.
I think about what made me want to pick up my roots and run away from New Mexico and it was mainly poverty. Because of poverty the social problems that existed made Albuquerque a not so enticing location to raise a child. High rates in alcoholism, drinking and driving, drugs, gang activity, garbage in the parks and streets, lack of parental involvement with children (which translates to poor academic performance, more violence and bullying on the playground), and too much crime. Our neighbors were shooting shot guns on the holidays into the ground, our neighbors would not think twice before stealing packages from our step or letting their dogs crap in our yard. You get it, no sense of community, the parks were not safe, and the schools were not safe. I didn't want my son to grow up and be hazed for a gang...you get it right? I couldn't leave soon enough after four men walked into the Denny's down the street with machine guns leaving the 16 year old waitress dead.
So in contrast what disgusts me here is the money (which breeds poverty that lives in fear so it doesn't translate to crime). I appreciate the family values and the safety that the stringent laws creates. But so much faith in their god seems to translate to lack of safety. They feel like God wills them to be safe. So no carseats, stuff 100 kids on a bus made for 60 kids, drive like maniacs and if a child dies it was their God's will and there was nothing they could do to change that. Then the life of priviledge and having a servant to do everything means complete lack of humanity for some of these laborers. They always have someone to carry things for them or clean things for them. I could go on and on when I think about lack of humanity in some of these people and lack of work ethic. It seems like too there is also a lack of parent involvement because these women just shoot out babies (the more babies the cooler you are) and so they don't have time to give their children the attention they need and often the nannies take care of them. So this translates to no discipline, bullying, violence, and poor academic performance. Hmmmm interesting how similar poverty and money can translate to the same thing...
I guess what I am saying is that suburban and middle class America has never looked so good to me.
Here is a link:
http://mellyschu.blogspot.com/2010/11/truth-is.html
This is pretty intense and I can see all of what she is writing about. I think in a way I am pretty lucky at my school, while there is a division and probably some teachers that look down their noses at me (not probably there is!). I choose to only notice the happy bubbly Egyptian music teacher that always smiles at me (and makes less money then us). She is a larger woman with glasses and a very colorful and elaborate kandora and head scarf, and she wears a thick pancho over her clothes in the cool weather. Every morning she gets the girls together to play music for the assembly and she works so hard and because she is Egyptian her salary is less then us (salary for expats is generally a significant amount more than one would earn in their home country but not equal to other teachers at the school...westerners all make the same based on experience and then Emirates naturally make significantly more). Well she greets all of the LTs every morning with eye contact, smiles and firm handshakes. She asks about family and really cares. One morning my friend Sylvia from South Africa was shivering a bit and coughing and she took her warm pancho off and gave it to her! This is just an example of some of the humanity in this country that does exist. Another teacher works in Special Education (I still have no idea what she does but she has a child with special needs of her own and openly admits it and this is humbling for someone from this country). She has lost a child from illness and I imagine that has been humbling as well for her. She is an Emirate woman and due to her child's illness she lived in the states a few years so she has more acceptance and appreciation for western society. She lights up when she sees me. When I was out sick with kidney stones she was scribbling down homeopathic remedies for me and had legitimate concern for my health. So there are some open minded opened arm teachers at my school; however they are in the minority and many of the ladies shake your hand if you come up to them and they look somewhere else and they force fake smiles, and I try to attribute it to the language barrier (hey I got to sleep at night!).
The principal to me is a quiet woman that stands at morning assembly and never addresses the student body. She is thin and frail and wears a very simple black abaya and shayla. She doesn't say a lot and is always very quiet and smiles when she sees us. From what I can tell she appreciates and wants us at her school and understands how hard we work) It seems the assistant principal is the real authority and I do get a bit of disgust from her and lack of appreciation for what we do (for example she wanted us to complete our marks over Christmas vacation with no value for our time off). For the most part I know that there is a division at our school and there is a level of disrespect to the point that some of us feel like servants at our school but I just choose not to see it that way. I come to school just as I always did in the US and I teach. I close the doors and I close out the drama that exhists at every school (which comes with the territory of working in a female dominated profession, too much estrogen makes me choke). I dot my i's and cross my t's and I stay under the radar as much as possible. My principal has stepped foot in my classroom twice and both times she smiled. I also have a few random Arabic teachers that stroll in to yell at the girls, pass out notes, take my girls away or whatever and I go with the flow. But honestly I can do this and I feel like what I am taking from it is that I am becoming a better teacher for it. I am seeing some progress with my girls and in the grand scheme of things that is what matters.
We took our girls on a picnic at the park. I brought a jump rope and they loved it! Great picture of girls jumping rope.
Many of the girls just as their culture teaches them, tossed their trash on the ground. Well, the Arabic teachers were happy with that and I guess thought that the laborers could clean it. But the LTs brought trash bags! And all the grade three girls new the words to the Barney "Clean up" song. The Arabic teachers jaws were to the floor as our girls happily sang the clean up song scurrying around picking up garbage and sorting out any food that was untouched to give to laborers at the park or the cleaners at the school (these ladies are from Ethiopia and the Phillipenes and make roughly 200 USD a month that they send home so they eat very poorly). It was fantastic! When one of the LTs said to the Arabic staff, "we don't want the park to spread around how filthy our school is," they agreed to this disgusting task as they certainly were not going to pitch in!
This is not a Muslim or Arabic thing, this is just what money does to these people. Why walk or find a trash can if someone else can pick it up? It is not uncommon to see trash flying from a car, or to see a family cleaning the trash from their car on the ground of a parking lot. We were also amazed that the Arabic staff just left their picnicking materials on the path thinking someone would pick it up and of course we did (sure that makes us look less like their inferiors right?),
Ok so this blog I mentioned earlier in my post got me thinking because the real cure to culture shock is acceptance and appreciation of the culture but I know for me that will never really happen, I will leave here repelled by Arabic culture (ok not all Arabic culture but for the most part any Arabics with lots of money) and the opposite is happening to me. For example when I see Arabic kids at the playground I grab Gavin and go away because I know they will be throwing sand, taking his toys, or just plain push him away because he is an annoying two year old (they will come up to me and tell me to make him stop trying to play with them...so sad). Instead of keeping an open mind I find myself thinking or expecting these kids to be rude brats. Let me exemplify, last night we were in Dubai at the Chucky Cheese and Gavin was playing with one of the employees and he got away and was on the run so she was chasing him and I was right behind her chasing him too. Well he saw an Arabic boy , maybe ten or eleven playing dance revolution and jumped on the game too! He started playing with the kid. I caught up to Gavin and grabbed him and the Arabic kid is screaming bloody hell at this employee. His mother and father are at the table near by taking the whole scene in and they are not intervening. He wants a refund because this little boy ruined his game. I was holding Gavin in my arms watching this and I said, "stop yelling at her!" I handed him my game card, "I will pay for another game, my god he is two years old." He glared at me and stomped over to his table and grabbed his card and paid for the game. The employee rolled her eyes at me and smiled.
I am trying to find the beauty in the Arabic and Muslim cultures but not sure I can really find the needed appreciation and acceptance to really allow myself to settle here for even a moment. I guess on some levels my culture shock is becoming less and less as I learn my favorite places to shop, my routes to and from school, make friends and I am even joining a bowling league and buying a car so in a sense we are making a life here but I know it will always be us and them and that I will leave her never really taking on the original acceptance and appreciation I intended to have or gain when I leave this country.
I think about what made me want to pick up my roots and run away from New Mexico and it was mainly poverty. Because of poverty the social problems that existed made Albuquerque a not so enticing location to raise a child. High rates in alcoholism, drinking and driving, drugs, gang activity, garbage in the parks and streets, lack of parental involvement with children (which translates to poor academic performance, more violence and bullying on the playground), and too much crime. Our neighbors were shooting shot guns on the holidays into the ground, our neighbors would not think twice before stealing packages from our step or letting their dogs crap in our yard. You get it, no sense of community, the parks were not safe, and the schools were not safe. I didn't want my son to grow up and be hazed for a gang...you get it right? I couldn't leave soon enough after four men walked into the Denny's down the street with machine guns leaving the 16 year old waitress dead.
So in contrast what disgusts me here is the money (which breeds poverty that lives in fear so it doesn't translate to crime). I appreciate the family values and the safety that the stringent laws creates. But so much faith in their god seems to translate to lack of safety. They feel like God wills them to be safe. So no carseats, stuff 100 kids on a bus made for 60 kids, drive like maniacs and if a child dies it was their God's will and there was nothing they could do to change that. Then the life of priviledge and having a servant to do everything means complete lack of humanity for some of these laborers. They always have someone to carry things for them or clean things for them. I could go on and on when I think about lack of humanity in some of these people and lack of work ethic. It seems like too there is also a lack of parent involvement because these women just shoot out babies (the more babies the cooler you are) and so they don't have time to give their children the attention they need and often the nannies take care of them. So this translates to no discipline, bullying, violence, and poor academic performance. Hmmmm interesting how similar poverty and money can translate to the same thing...
I guess what I am saying is that suburban and middle class America has never looked so good to me.
I really appreciate your post detailing the real issues you are experiencing with UAE culture. Many bloggers (who've gone home early, had negative experiences, etc) don't take the time to blog what they're going through psychologically in a clear and succinct way. No thoughtful review of what's actually not working makes a blog of less value for those of us who are coming along after you.
ReplyDeleteYour blog, especially this post, has been quite the opposite. Even the less savoury aspects of your experience are written in a way that helps newer teachers visualise what life could be like once we get to Abu Dhabi. So thanks for taking the time to create this post!
Thanks for reading! I think there is a large portion of us right in the middle...lots of experiences we can complain about; but just enough to make it worth while. We love what we are doing in the classroom but we are happy to have a good complaining session over wine one evening. In the long run I know my school isn't perfect but it isn't by far the worst situation. I have had days that I have thought if my days were always like this I couldn't do it, but fortunately I just have more good days then bad and isn't that how teaching is? We hit a lot of walls in this profession... but today I had a girl that at the beginning of the year had no phonemic awareness read a 55 word story to me with only 2 errors and she has no idea why I was crying and smiling at the same time.
ReplyDelete