Zamzam Water and Kisses

A lot of people ask me why I don't teach in America.  "If you love it so much, why not America? And if you really did want to teach, why travel so far away and leave home? Why here?"

Well let me tell you why. You know why? Because in America I wouldn't have students showing up to class excited to share a cup of Zamzam water ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zamzam_Well ) with their teacher, that their grandparents brought back for them after completing the Hajj.  Nor would I have students who start class only after they give me a kiss on the cheek  Nor would I have students that I can be affectionate with. Showing them both kinds of parental affection: extreme kuchi koo cutness lovy dovy love to encourage them, and strict, reprimanding, scary, yelling, firm,discipline to straighten them up.

If I did that in America, I might have a lawsuit filed against me or I might be ousted from the teaching line all together.  For showing feelings.  Or not being a slave to bureaucratics.

I go through massive ups downs when I'm teaching.  It's not fun breaking up fights, or having to scream, or having to feel like you're baby sitting kids instead of teaching them.  27 kids, 40 minutes at a time, 5, or 6, or 7 times a day.  And it's not fun dealing with their tantrums or their sheer volume, which fires up your nerves into smoking, flaming, smithereens.  Or pulling them out from beneath chairs, desks or cupboards.  Or having to hear 10 of them speak to you in their loudest voices about 10 different things, completely unrelated to class.  Nor is it fun when they are angry at you, nor when you've lost your temper, for the umpteenth time during the day.  And it's really not fun grading stacks of papers and notebooks filled with incoherent, illegible scraps of writing that gives you a migraine just looking at it.  Nor is it fun having to correct every snippet of conversation kids have with you to correct their verb tenses, pronunciation, or vocabulary.

But certain moments, when you have a student who runs up to you in class, and they share something with you that is extra special to them and you see them act in the most humbling, selfless way, opening up their hearts to you completely, which then makes you realize how lucky, and blessed you are as a teacher to experience raw, pure, selfless love that most people in the world probably don't know how to experience, you understand why it was that you chose this path in the first place. They live on the tip of their innocence, volatile and sensitive, yet forgiving and compassionate. It makes you realize how much you can learn from your students, instead of the other way around.

Teaching in Palestine : Article for the Latin Patriarchate

The Latin Patriarchate is who I work for.  They have schools in countries across the Middle East, mostly in Jordan.  I actually visited one of their schools in a village in Jordan, and it was about a thousand times better than the Latin Patriarchate school I work for in Ramallah.

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.