finally blogging, i promise i'll get better

anger is a huge problem at school.  it's perpetual, its habitual and it permeates each and every classroom, corridor and building at our school ; students struggle to escape from its bind not knowing how to handle their anger and teachers struggle day in and day out, exhausting themselves mentally and physically, not knowing how to handle the students.  every day is the same. i dont know how many times a day i hear "teacher he hit me!" "but he hit me" "he hit me!" "teacher she hit me!" ..or my favorite (except not really) "TEACHER HE KILL ME!".  i never know if i should stop the fight first or explain first that the word is not "kill" but "hurt", "no basil, he didnt KILL you, say that he "hurt" you!"  "oh ok.  but teacher he KILL me!".   those two words  (hit and kill) seem to be the only two expressions they know to use when you ask them why in the world they are pounding someone else.. either its because they were 'hit' first or better yet because someone 'kill' them.

seeing when i wrote on this blog last is making me realize that it's been almost two complete months that I've been in ramallah.  i am clearly way way behind on this blog and i couldn't recap every significant/insignificant thing that has happened that's made this experience so far what it is.  it almost feels entirely too overwhelming if i try to recap more than the last 8 hours actually.

every day has been an adventure, as cliche as that sounds.  when i got here i had absolutely no idea what i was getting into, i had never taught before, i've never been to this part of the world before, i didnt even know the name of the school where i'd be working, who i'd be teaching, or who i was really working with.  if i sit to think about every other kind of "leadership" experience i've had or any other job that i've had, the idea of an 'orientation', or a guide or a manual or a training program seems ludicrously luxurious.  i'd been wanting to come to ramallah for so long that up until 24 hours before boarding the plane, my biggest concern was simply getting here.  i remember at jfk when i finally was walking over to my gate at 10pm, half paying attention half not because i was on the phone, i saw someone that was looking at me with the same curiosity that i was looking at them with  .."do i know you?"  and then she was like "o hey!".  lol it was my one and only contact and my bridge to coming here : M.  the last time i had seen her was 3 years ago on franklin street working at kidzu museum.  and now i was about to board the same flight with her to fly to Jordan.  weird how life works.  would have never thought the last time i was signing in for my volunteering shift at kidzu to clean up the mess in the museum that i'd be living with the front receptionist lady 3 years later. in palestine.

sitting across from her in the plane, i remember thinking "fuck".  "now that i am actually on the plane going to my destination i have to actually think about why I'm going there. about my job"  i thought to myself "wow i have like 27 hours to figure out this teaching thing!".  one of the first things that M told me that i was so puzzled by was "ok so your first day is on the 9th, two days from now, so we can figure out how to do the first day.  between rania and i (rania is the principal) we feel that we can prepare you".  she has teosl experience and i've been teaching for 14 years, we can prepare you.  all i had in response was a nervous laughter, hoping and praying that she was right.

it was surreal to pull up to our apartment the first night, surreal to go to school the first day to face my classes and surreal to come out of the first week alive.   M kept on reassuring me that the first month of teaching is always the hardest, and boy o boy was it tough.  this is the point when i lose words as to how to start describing the events day in day out.  i got my schedule and every day i rotate between 4A and 4B, 3A and 3B.  i quickly learned their personalities.  i put a little note next to the boxes on my schedule that said "hell" next to 4A and 3B.   I had wondered why M and every other teacher that I had spoken to reiterated that you really really have to show a mean face the first day, you just have to be a downright hardass, and i was even told to just glare, and warned not to smile.  my naive mind at that time had thought "aw but they are like 8! why would i not smile! they are SO cute!".

hell no.

i understood.  i understood why you can't smile.  i dont think i smiled in any of my classes for the first month.  every day, i struggled, frustrated and exhausted not knowing how the hell i'm supposed to teach ANYTHING if i am just breaking up fights, physically dragging kids to the principal's office, or yelling at kids to get down from windows, to stop walking on the desks, to stop throwing their pencils, sharpeners, erasers, hats and scarves at each other, or to simply to stop shouting at the top of their lungs, or to stop squeaking, or beating their desks or each other.  my voice was gone almost every day after school and i felt as if my voice was always drowned out by the commotion.  i was told almost with a chuckle when i was coming up with classroom rules, that i shouldnt touch the topic of 'respect' because it's not something that the kids will comprehend.  I didnt know what that was supposed to mean, what do you mean they dont understand this concept?  i quickly realized that yes..it's not something they  get.  after a couple of weeks i remember thinking, wait why am i accepting that respect is not understood?? shouldn't we do something to change that? after all we were brought in as international hires to help make and implement many many changes in the school.  ... maybe we can start here .with respect.

how do you explain 'respect' to 3rd and 4th graders who have never practiced it, at least not with their teachers? there's fear from the teachers that beat them yes, but respecting each other is not something that they do, nor is respecting the adults in their lives.

2 months later, i almost can't believe how attached i feel to the school and the students.  yes they drive me crazy, some of the crazies at school (non students) and the students who at times i think are rotten to the core, make me so angry sometimes,  but i can't believe how much i love them.  i'm learning more from them then they will ever learn from me.

 i wish i could get to know each and every one of my students individually. when i started, the classroom felt like a giant blob, and each day was a battle.  it's taken some time to figure out each kid, and i think thats what i was doing the first month, just learning about each kid.  how there's kids in my class that are close to fluent in english to others in the same section of the same grade that don't know the alphabet.

it's been a process to try to assess their actual capabilities and knowledge rather than look at them like numbers (on paper they are all A students, even the ones that dont know how to spell "me"). parents in the beginnign were just downright pissed off not understanding how i was teaching or why their kid was getting into trouble.  and i was an easy scapegoat for some to blame all of their problems on.  that was fun.


2 days ago a student actually bit me when i was trying to break up a vicious fight.  a couple of days before that a student had stabbed another student with his pencil.  like i said before, anger is an issue. a huge issue at the school.

M struck an interesting chord today saying that 'wait the kids have no idea how else to express themselves" they get angry and all they know is violence.  they fight viciously about the silliest of things, but they will fight nontheless because doing nothing simply means 'defeat'.  the kid that bit me, his punishment has been to sit out of recess for a week.  i've been sitting with him one on one to talk to him about his behavior in class, why it's bad and what he should do,etc but today he sat with maggie and a lightbulb went off in his head when maggie said "there's other things you can do when you get mad".

talking with the social worker at school, some of the other teachers and the principal, maybe this is something that we can actually put an initiative towards.  teaching kids that its OK to be angry but not ok to be violent.  baby steps towards something.  talking to kids about handling their emotions might not work magic overnight, but if it stops a couple of fights a day..that's still something.

i'm almost thinking i'm happy that this kid bit me, it drove a couple of teachers to pay more attention to this anger problem.