Upon request of writing a reflection as an international teacher teaching English in the West Bank as a part of the Latin Patriarchate, this is a short reflection that I wrote that I'm going to share :
Teaching in Palestine: A Personal Reflection
By: Fahmida Azad
English Instructor, Grades 4 & 5, Al-Ahliyyah College
I was taking a giant risk, as I was packing up my bags during the first days of January at the beginning of this year, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, USA. I was taking a blind leap to start life in another part of the world, a part of the world where I knew only one person and I knew that I had a job that I was passionately driving towards: teaching. I wanted to teach in Palestine. And so, I came here.
Looking back on the evening before my flight, at what I knew about Palestine, about teaching in Palestine and living in Palestine, and looking into my heart about what I know now, 10 months after that point in time, now having worked in Ramallah for almost year, I realize the gravity of how this experience has impacted my growth as a human being. Teaching has taught me more than I could have ever imagined. And my greatest teachers in these life alternating 10 months, have been my students.
I remember my first day of teaching, walking into a classroom of 27 hyperactive students who had no idea who I was, who could not grasp my foreign accent and who struggled to respond to my requests. I didn’t speak Arabic and they did not communicate in English. But we were both in the classroom for 40 minutes together and we had to make it work. When I think back, I still grimace at the level of frustration and struggle that challenged my students and I, to our core. For both of us, it was as if we were being dunked head first into a tub of ice cold water. We didn’t understand each other. The daily struggles included things such as me reciting simple sentences, which I wanted them to write, to gage the level of their listening comprehension and to see how they write. They didn’t understand why in the world I would ask them such a ludicrous thing, to write sentences that didn’t come from the book. Our styles simply didn’t mix. I was asking them to tell me all about their weekend in English, correcting them every time they used the wrong tense or said something absolutely incoherent in English. Their ears, their learning styles, their classroom expectation of a teacher, were all being molded into something they did not know.
I was simultaneously learning from them. I was studying each student to see what makes them feel encouraged and what makes them tick. I was trying to understand what they knew, and what they didn’t know. What I discovered, with each passing month, was that albeit me feeling at times that there were no results coming from their end, that they were trying their hardest as well to learn, as I was to teach. What I discovered at the end of my first four months, was that students were now able to make small talk with me outside of the classroom, and were trying their hardest to speak to me in English , not because they were curious about the lesson, but because they were curious about me and who I was, and where I came from. I discovered very quickly, that the endearing affection that I received from my students cam e straight from their hearts, emotions which were absolutely raw and pure. And that is what grounded a relationship between me and them, together in the classroom. A feeling of mutual understanding and affection. This became the fuel in both of our learning experiences.
Ten months later, since that first day of teaching, I now feel that it’s difficult to imagine the time when I didn’t know so many little things about each of my students. After having been invited to countless homes, for lunches and dinners, garnished with incredible hospitality and kindness, I realize how my role as a teacher goes way beyond the classroom. Families and students have taken me beyond just an English instructor, many of them have embraced me into their lives.
Teaching in Palestine has taught me the value of teaching and being a teacher. It is not a one dimensional role, nor does it start when I enter the classroom and end when I leave the school. It is a valuable relationship that certainly starts in the classroom, with a common goal of learning together, but it only goes forward from that point. The relationship doesn’t end, it simply progresses and changes with time. I’ve learned resilience, patience and curiosity from the eyes of my students. And I’ve let them carry me into their world full of both pain and wonder, which has taught me more than I could have ever imagined about my own world.
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