Back in the Saddle

I have loved getting back into teaching. I have a tiny class - only eight students who sat there on the first day so very perfectly that I had to ask them to please make some noise! I’m used to three times that amount!

Even though I signed up for half-time, the work has been full-time these first few weeks. We are starting the American system from scratch and although there are textbooks, they are all old and do not match the current standards. The system started too late to order books and I think the new director is against textbooks anyway, so we are getting all our resources off the internet. This takes huge amounts of time and paper. The school has approved and paid for a few websites so we have to find and print out all our materials and books from them. But the sites don’t have everything, so I spend a lot of time searching for grammar worksheets, ESL activities, etc. etc. I feel like I’m reinventing the wheel every day. It doesn’t help that the printer is often out of paper and ink, the copier almost never works, and other frustrated teachers have been known to print out entire 300-page textbooks tying up the printer for large amounts of time.

I deeply miss the well-equipped teacher supply-room back in Topeka. There are few supplies so I used our beach towels to cover my bulletin board and painted & cut out letters on butcher paper for the boards. Everything has to be colored with no color printer and no teacher supply stores from which to get things like alphabets or posters. I now realize how spoiled I was in Kansas!

The computers all have the French keyboard with Arabic letters on the keys as well which means I have to change the language setting every time and not look at my fingers otherwise I will get hopelessly confused! The language defaults back to French every time I go to a different website which adds to the fun. When I asked the school everything-guy for an English keyboard in my room to teach typing - he got out his keys, popped off a bunch of the letters with them, rearranged the letters, reset the default language and told me that was as good as it would get. All the symbols and other keys are still different, but at least it’s a start!

Scheduling has been a nightmare trying to work with my half-day restrictions, fitting in three languages, and working with the high school teachers who are on a different schedule. I think I redid my schedule at least ten times. Once, when reworking my schedule yet again I asked, “Isn’t it a problem for the students to do English, then French, then Arabic, and back to English all before lunch?” I received blank stares. Apparently it’s not a problem.

Then there are the levels. My eight kids are on five different reading levels ranging from second grade to sixth grade. Trying to figure out how to make this work as well as to keep my two native-English speakers challenged has been - well, a challenge!

In spite of all this, I love what I am doing. It feels so good to be back in the classroom and I am hoping that I am to the point where I actually know what I will do two days from now and not just one! I also hope that when things calm down, I will be able to see my girls more than when I stayed home since I teach one of them and the other is next door!

I know most of the students except the new girl, who is the daughter of the governor of the province of Ifrane. She is very bright and her English level is great. The students knew me as either “Miss Julie” or “Mommy” and have been told by the director I must be “Mrs. Reimer” to all. They have really struggled with this and amazingly, Katrina has done about the best at it! But I’m “Mommy” until 8:15 and right after 3:30! It hasn’t been strange at all to teach her probably because I’ve done so many activities with her as part of the group that we are all used to it.

Yesterday at the school picnic it was amazing to see the school finally as one instead of the French system vs. the American system (the elementary was French and high school was American and believe me, the two were at war). The parents of my students came up and hugged me and were so wonderful and supportive. They asked me to be a little meaner so their kids would at least be scared enough to do their work! They got a little too used to the teacher their kids have had the last two years! I assured them I could get the students to work without screaming at them!

The first day I started the kids on journaling and told them this was just to practice writing and they would not be graded. They are so happy to have this opportunity that I have not been able to get them to stop. I asked them to hand in their journals Friday and they said, “No! We want to write all weekend! We want you to have A LOT to read!”

Speaking of - that was a lot for you to read! Time to stop!