Teaching in Aqaba part 2

So, when we left our fearless hero he was just about to commence teaching in a high school all day in Aqaba, Jordan...

    So, the first class I was only thrown into for about 25 minutes, and Khalid told me just to talk with the kids, to engage with them and practice their English.  When I asked him what would be a good activity or exercise to go with, he said, you know, just talk with them.  Right.  As you can imagine, walking into a classroom of 25-30 tenth grade students in a foreign country with no real plan leads to a slightly absurd situation.  I think the only thing that really saved me was their initial  fascination with me being from North America - they asked me some questions about it and I told them a couple stories about canoe trips and train trips and how long it takes to get from one side to the other.  Then I started asking them some questions: What do you like to do?  What are your favorite movies?  What kind of stuff are you learning now?  The time passed and the conversation was pretty consistent, but it was pretty obvious that I didn't have any sort of plan and there was some ruckus and what teacher's call "classroom management issues".  But the time passed nonetheless.  After the class (and all the ones that followed) the students filed out and each one personally thanked me and called me "sir".  If only Canadian high school students were so respectful.

Then came the real class, the one I had actually prepared for.  About 30 kids packed into a classroom just big enough to fit all of them.  Luckily it's winter and so it wasn't sweltering.  With 30 kids in the room in June I don't think I would have been able to breathe!  And....it actually went pretty well!  The kids got into it, especially when I was speaking about water scarcity, which even the high school kids know its a huge issue.  They deal with it every day.  At one point I broke them up into little groups and had them debating whether or not a water diversion project should be implemented - they were supposed to be different people involved: the farmers who would get the water, the animals whose water source would be dried up...it was a little chaotic and I overestimated their reading ability, but I'd say about 50 percent really got it.  One lesson learned: Know your Class!

The rest of the day went pretty smoothly and we even had nice little break for sandwiches and tea.  After seeing me teach a few classes, Khalid insisted that I come and teach for them starting in September.  They were looking for Biology teachers, and especially ones that spoke English.  I would like to think it was due to my outstanding teaching abilities, but my guess is that he makes that offer to any Anglophone to walk in the door. 

I left at the end of the day, shared a cab with one of the other teacher (who we dropped off at her place before heading to the border), crossed back over, paying my 5 Jordanian Dinar to get back into Israel, and headed back up to the Institute.  What a whirlwind of an experience!

Teaching in Aqaba part 1 (of 2, really :-)

Tuesday morning, 3:30 am.  My alarm goes off, and though my first instinct is to promptly smack the snooze button and close all avenues of escape for the warm air sandwiched between my body and my blankets, it hits me suddenly what I'm going to be doing today.  Having packed up everything I needed in the evening, I jump out of bed, jump into an unsatisfactorily lukewarm shower (since the showers are solar heated, mid-day is by far the best), get into my somewhat nicer clothes for teaching, and run out to the Arava highway just outside the kibbutz to catch the night bus from Tel Aviv as it barrels down the straight path at 150 kilometers an hour.  The bus I'm catching actually left Tel Aviv at midnight and I'm catching this one since the first morning bus to come by in the Eilat direction wouldn't get me to the school remotely near on time for my 8 o'clock lesson  We pull into Eilat, and it is nearly 5 am.  This is what Eilat looks like at 5 am.  We're looking here over the Jordan mountains, in the direction I'm headed:

The border doesn't open for another hour and a half, so I've got a little time to kill.  I find myself a 24 hour cafe/convenience store, buy some bland crisps and a pack of humus, and go over the lesson plan I've prepared.  Hanan, the professor in environmental education who set me up with this gig, assured me that I would be teaching 15 +, and that "their English is better than most of the Israelis".  As I go over the lesson plan, a pretty sophisticated discussion of humans and their relationships with the natural world, I start to get a little panicky.  What if they can't understand a word I'm saying?  What if they don't give a rat's ass? 

Oh well, I'll probably never see them again. 

At about 6:20 I grab a cab to the border to beat out the big tour buses which lumber through carrying hundreds of eager tourists in and out of Jordan for the day.  I covered crossing the border in a previous post, and now I know exactly where to go and what to do.  Only last time I had a cab there waiting for me and this time I'm planning to just be resourceful and figure out a way.  After all, I'll have about an hour to get there.  At the other side of the gate I see what looks vaguely like a couple of cabs with some somewhat sketchy looking drivers hanging out smoking.  I ask one of them how much it would be to take me to the rosary sisters school.  After conversing in rapid Arabic for about 20 seconds, one of them smiles a big, friendly smile and says:

"10 dinars for the hostel."

"Sorry, but I'm looking for the rosary sisters school"

more conversing

"8 dinars for the hostel"

"no, not a hostel, a school"

"what school?"

"the rosary sisters school.  Do you know where that is?"

"Sure, yes, yes.  I take you downtown and then someone take you to the school"

"Is the school downtown?"

"I take you downtown"

It was about this time I heard "pssssssst" from behind me.   The exit guard was beckoning for me to come over.  He led me to a friend of his, an oddly plain-clothed man, and the two spoke quickly in Arabic just like the other two men had done. 

"I'll take you to the school"

"The rosary sisters school?"

"yes, of course"

"you know where it is?"

"yes."

"how much?"

"don't worry about it my friend, no need to worry.  I'll get you there"

This guy was going to take me for free!  This seems to happen in Jordan quite frequently.  When I went to Egypt with my dad, everyone offered you a gift, only to say at the end "oh, well how about a little bit in exchange, you know, for a friend who gave you such a gift."  But this guy just drove me there.  We had a  nice ride and conversation about our families, where I'm from, what we're both doing, and a firm handshake and smile, then he dropped me off.  Amazing.

And this is what I saw in front of me:

Pretty snazzy, hey?  So I walked onto the premises and into the building, not really know what to expect.  Inside it was quite nice, with white stone floors, a black reception desk and simple decor.  One thing though, there was no one at the desk.  It was about 7:15.  I stood around for about ten minutes, and every now and then someone would pass by on their way through to something, and we would exchange a nice good morning smile and a SabaH il-Kheer (good morning in Arabic).  But I still had no idea what to do.  I decided to ask the next person to walk by if they would show me where Khalid was.

"Khalid?"

"ahhh...yeah Khalid Ali"

"who's that?"

"Khalid.....uh...Ali?"

"hmmmm..."

"Khalid?"

"Ahhhh, KHAlid!  Not in yet.  I'll take you to the sister.  The principle."

So I walked wearily down the hall after this man and entered a little office smelling sweetly of Arabic coffee, rich with cardamom.  At the desk was a tiny middle aged woman with a hijab (which, by the way, is the religious head covering of traditional Arab Christians as well as Muslims).  We sit down and she offers me some coffee, the strongest I've ever had, in the smallest cup I've ever held.

"So, you are here to teach.  How long will you be here for?"

"Just for the day"

"Not for longer?  We love having Americans come to teach for us.  It helps our students so much with their English.  Where are you from?"

I remembered that Hana has cautioned me to not mention Israel if I didn't have to.  Apparently the sister and he had a good relationship until the Gaza war, and so this operation was a little under the radar, just between Hanan and Khalid.

"Canada"

"ah, Canada!  It's beautiful, but it's very cold, is it not?"

"yeah...so, do you know where Khalid is?"

"Oh, you are teaching for Khalid's class.  Funny, he didn't mention anything about it to me.  He' will be here shortly"

Yes...funny.

"Oh, that's odd."

So we chatted away until Khalid showed up, and then he led me up into his office.  He basically told me that he didn't really care what I taught, and he just really wanted me to speak English with the kids, ask them questions, talk to them and get them into conversations.  I told him what my plan was and he frowned a little:

"hmmm....that is pretty complicated.  Many of the students don't have that good English.  Maybe you should just speak with them about whatever you'd like, but not so complicated"

Great.  The premise of this project is teaching environmental education.  I make up my mind to tough it out through my lesson plan and wing it out of my repertoire of Green Stuff if things start to head south.

"oh, and can you stay for a few lessons?  I have you filling in for teachers for most of the periods."

What could I say.  Why not?

Happy New Year!

Last night was a wonderful new years eve.  It was a full moon, and so we went out into the Negev Highlands for a five hour hike back to the Kibbutz under the brilliant silver light.  My camera isn't functioning properly, so unfortunately I have no pictures to post, but I can paint you one:  Imagine being surrounded by the jagged edges and exposed body of the desert landscape, interspersed with dunes of sand so soft and fine that it feels like powdery snow.  Rabbi Michael, who came with us on the hike, made the comment that so many visionaries find their visions out in the desert because the landscape is totally exposed, and in turn you expose your own soul.  But the most amazing vision for me was of the moon shadows playing on the landscape.  The moon was so bright that the interplay of the clouds and the moon made shifting silver ephemeral shapes crawling across the dunes.  And to think I could have been stuck inside watching the New Years shows in TV!  We climbed down from the plateau of the highlands into the Arava Valley along one of the supposed paths that the ancient Israelites used on their 40 year wanderings, and made it back to the Kibbutz by around 11:30.  Following this fun spiritual journey, we all piled into the already crowded Kibbutz pub to dance to the top 40 and bring in the new year!  But I have to say, coming in from the desert made the pub experience all the better in its juxtaposition.

So, there is something that I must tell those of you who have been reading this blog in the expectation of two full years of stories and thoughts.  I have, for various reasons, decided that the pursuit of a masters degree through this program is not where I want to be headed.  Retracing my steps through my thought process, I realized that it was really the experience of the place, and not necessarily the degree, that I really wanted, but thought that I "might as well" go for the degree if I was going to be here anyway.  So, though it may seem odd given the enthusiasm I've displayed, I will only be staying at the Arava Institute for one term, and will be leaving on the 29th of this month.  I've had some unbelievable experiences here, and hope to continue writing about them through reflections on this blog.  I will also be staying in Israel for a few months after I leave the Institute to volunteer and travel, and will write about those experience too.  I'm glad I chose a flexible blog title!  Where I go from here I'm not entirely sure.  I have some ideas, probably too many, and I think that some time experimenting with them and trying on some different hats will help me figure myself out.  After all, I've been in school writing papers and doing tests every year since I was six (well, maybe the papers started after that, but you get the idea).

Anyways, Happy New Years everybody!  May it bring us all a little more joy and wisdom.

As the New Year Approaches

Yikes!  My last post was on December 12th!  A ton has been going on here, and I've been a little caught up to report on it.  Just to give you a little taste, for my environmental education class I made a trip over to Aqaba one chilly morning to teach a high school class about sustainability.  I ended up being cajoled into staying all day and mostly chatting with the students, since they really just wanted an English speaker to come in and talk to them.  In the end, they offered me a job teaching Biology starting in September!  We had another intense trip over Christmas, this time to Jerusalem.  The trip included Gilo, a "settlement" within the green line, Efrat, a real contested settlement (where we spoke with Rabbi Riskin, a leader in the settlement community), a talk with Ir Amim, an Israeli social justice watchdog, including a trip through Arab East Jerusalem, and finally a trip into a refugee camp in the area.  Needless to say, tensions were a little high and the practice of "compassionate listening we've been working so hard on broke down not a few times.  This was all followed by a well-deserved weekend doing whatever we liked in Jerusalem, and many of us spent Christmas in Bethlehem (imagine!).  Right now I'm working on some projects, but I'll fill in the details as much as I can soon!

An Angelic Arava Alumnus

Here is a recent article in the Jerusalem Post about Ilana Meallem, maybe the most charismatic and positive person I've ever met.  She graduated from the institute a couple years ago after doing some award-winning research on Bedouin health issues.  She now does an insane amount of work on peace-building and environmental activism - all from her home/peace van.  Her friends call her a techno-Bedouin.  It's inspiring to me that such a person exists, and a bonus that I've met her and am in the same program she went through.

RAIN!!!

That's right, it rained!  No dust in the air, the ground soaking wet, and a rainbow to boot!  It smelled so good around here.  But wouldn't you know it, 48 hours later and it's like it never happened.

Arna's Children

The gloves really came off tonight.  First we had our environmental leadership seminar, where we watched a short movie about direct, non-violent action against the felling of old growth forests of Australia - essentially holing up in trees, lying under bulldozers, holding satirical dramatic protests in the streets.  The discussion after this was fairly moderate, mostly centered around the ethics of civil disobedience to accomplish particular goals.

Then came a voluntary viewing of the film "Arna's Children", which follows the lives of a few Palestinian children from the Jenin refugee camp. All of the children were involved in the project of a woman named Arna, who brought an educational program to the camp involving art and theatre.  This part of the movie is truly inspiring, if a little bit disturbing - this woman is incredibly political, but she tries to help these hurt, frustrated, and angry children channel their anger into something beautiful.  Even through her efforts though, their art and their theatre often remains centered around the "resistance", and in one scene, following the demolition of one of the youth's house by the IDF, she encourages them to act out what they would do to a soldier if they saw one.  Slowly, throughout the movie, you see glimpses of what happens to these children - one becomes a suicide bomber, a few are killed in the fighting during the siege of Jenin.  Through conversations with many people in the camp you get a sense of the general attitude of the people - the resistance is ingrained into their very sense of self.

So then we got to talking.  It really surprised me, but many of the Palestinian students were very reluctant to denounce the form of resistance demonstrated by the boys later in their life, even the suicide bombings.  To be sure, they all said explicitly that they were personally against these attacks, but they also said that they could understand the motivation.  For many people, growing up in the culture of martyrdom, this is "the only way"  Many of them have lost friends and family members to the conflict, and to them whether or not a death is "collateral" or not, or whether it was intended or not, they feel that resistance is justified, that if the IDF comes with violence that they have a right to respond with violence.  The Israelis and Americans of course emphasized the fundamental difference in the ethics of what the IDF does (ie minimizing civilian damage, trying to be as precise as possible) and what a suicide bomber does, but of course things on the ground never are as clear cut as that.  All I can say is that for a Canadian boy who's only experience with violence was a playground fight in third grade, I can only superficially understand.  The night ended with hugs and crying, and then we stood in a circle and held hands, and reminded ourselves that we're not here to trip over the past, but to try and build a better future.