The Qatar Blog: The Moorman's Experiences in Qatar

It is Valentine's day, 2008. My wife Kathy and I leave this afternoon for Qatar. We will fly from Charlotte to Washington, DC, then directly to Doha (a 13 hour flight). We are excited about the trip, a little uncertain that we are prepared, and anxious to be there and get started. We have had contact with Dr. Hissa, the Dean of the College of Education, and Nancy Allen who is working in the College. I've also exchanged emails with Kathy Jongsma, who is the English Specialist for the Supreme Education Council, and Grant Webb, an Australian who is also working there. Earlier, I had a long conversation with my old friend Linda Blanton, who is now working as a consultant to the Qatar University COE as they prepare for an international accreditation similar to NCATE. All of these contacts lead me to believe that great things are going to come from this four month visit. Please reply with questions and comments.
Gary Moorman

I wrote the two paragraphs below two days after we arrived. Unfortunately, we have experienced major computer connection problems. You don't want to know. Anyway, we've survived the first week, and will give you details in the next entry.

We arrived in Doha around 7:00 pm local time, or around 11am est, on Friday. It was a relatively easy trip, considering we were in the air for 12 hours from Washington to Qatar. As usual the Qataris have been great hosts. We were met off the plane by a woman who escorted us through customs and immigration. A driver took us to our “flat,” a humble three bedroom, 2.5 bath place that is really nice. We spent Saturday setting up housekeeping, then met Nancy Allen, a professor from Texas who is here on a three year contract for dinner. It’s good to have some one to mentor us through some of the basics of living in this very different place.

Today is Sunday, the first day of the work week in Qatar and most Islamic countries. Friday is holy day, and Saturday is an off day. I will meet this morning with Dr. Hissa, the Dean of the College of Education, and attend a meeting about accreditation: They are voluntarily going through an NCATE like process with a visitation scheduled in 2010. For those of you who might know her, Linda Blanton is consulting on this. More later as the work activity picture clarifies.

Friday Feb.15
We arrived safely in Doha at 7:00p.m.Qatar time which is 11:00 a.m. N.C. time. A lady from the airline helped us get our temporary visas and luggage and took us to our driver. He whisked us to our new home, an apartment in Al Zuhoor Complex II where visiting professors and guests of the university reside. He agreed to meet us the next morning to take us shopping. We quickly understood why we needed to go shopping. We needed sheets, towels, cleaning supplies, and food. Someone left us some soda, water, cheese, and bread. We found a little convenience store to pick up a few other snack items and paper towels so we could at least shower after our 17 hour trip from Boone to Qatar.

Saturday Feb.16
The driver dropped us off at Villagio, a mall that was designed to look like Venice, including a man-made canal. It also had every fast food place known to the U.S. as well as many shops you would recognize. It also had some very nice restaurants, European shops, and an ice skating rink. The ceilings are painted to look like the day and night sky. We ate at a little French café and shopped at Carrefours which is like a Super Walmart. This evening we went out to dinner at a Thai place with Nancy one of Gary’s colleagues from Texas and her friend Hans from Germany. They also live in our complex. Later that night I came down with the stomach flu and was laid up for the next two days.

Sunday Feb.17
This is the beginning of the Islamic work week. Gary went to the university to begin planning for his classes that were to start next week. Much to his surprise, he was directed to his class and was expected to begin at 8:30. Needless to say he had to wing it. He was expecting to do staff development and instead he is teaching an education foundations class to women who already have degrees in other areas, but want to improve their English and get a license to teach in the primary schools in Qatar.

Wednesday and Thursday Feb. 20 and 21
I accompanied Gary to the university and participated in teaching. There are presently 8 women from Algeria, Sudan, and Syria. They are friendly, bright, and highly motivated. I read some children’s books to them and we discussed the vocabulary and also how they could be used to teach math. I would have been happy to just volunteer to help Gary with this class, but Dr. Hissa, the dean of the education department told me that I will have a job. I will be working with the principal at Al Shaqab, a girl’s school helping teachers learn strategies for working with children who are having trouble learning. I look forward to the challenge.

Friday Feb. 22
Friday is the holy day and Friday and Saturday are the weekend. Friday evening we went to the Old Souq (marketplace) with Gary’s friends Ahmed who is an Egyptian who was raised in Britain and Raleigh, N.C. and his wife Anita from Iran and their baby Farid who was born in Raleigh. We ate at a terrific Morrocan place. Then we strolled through the souq shops, watched a Qatari woman making flat bread, and listened to Middle-Eastern music.

Saturday Feb. 23
Nancy picked us up and took us to the camel races. It turned out that there were no races, but we got to watch them training the baby camels. Then we went to Dukhan all the way across the country from Doha and saw the gulf. The water was a beautiful turquoise and was remarkably undeveloped. There is road and building construction everywhere in Qatar. That evening we went to dinner in a great Indian restaurant with Mickie, another new friend and colleague of Gary’s. I am really enjoying the cultural diversity and hospitality here in Qatar.

This has become quite an adventure, as Kathy talks about in the entry below. It has been an ongoing series of problems related to technology. I think things are settling down, but we are still clearly in transition in terms of both the professional work here and the details of moving into a new home.

As Kathy mentions I was thrown for a loop the first day at the university. I was in a meeting discussing their accreditation efforts. They are going through the international equivalent of NCATE. An interesting note on this, Linda Blanton, former ASU professor and Ass't Dean is their lead consultant. As the meeting ended and I was talking with Dr. Hissa, the Dean of the COE here, someone came in and said, you are supposed to be teaching your class right now. Interestingly, no one had told me I would be teaching this class, or actually any class, during my stay here. So I got a quick background briefing, and rushed up to meet the students.

It is a post graduate "Diploma" class designed to help students speak English well enough to teach in the Qatari schools; most schools will eventual use English as the language of instruction. My students are terrific. We meet four and a half hours a day, four days a week (I haven't had this much student contact since I taught in high school!). They are from Algeria, Syria and Sudan. They are in Qatar because of the opportunity in the super-charged economy. They are all college graduates, in things like business, computers, mathematics and English literature, and they are bright and energetic;.They bring to the classroom lots interesting life experiences, a drive to improve their lives, and a certain desperation. They are all mothers, most also work. And they are committed to succeeding and becoming highly fluent in English.

I've spent the week putting together ideas about how to approach the class. I've finally have a syllabus ready and the first assignments outlined. I would appreciate any suggestions on how to approach the class. Obviously, it must evolve over the course of the semester, so multiple insights would be helpful. It's a real challenge, so stay tuned.

The class I’m teaching is entitled “Academic English for the Graduate Diploma in Primary Education.” Students in the program already have degrees and are looking for opportunities in the Qatari school system. The goal here is to have most if not all schools using English as a language of instruction within the next decade. English is commonly spoken here particularly in Doha. The population of Qatar is around 900,000 (and growing rapidly), but only about 200,000 are actually Qatari. The language of commerce, education and construction is English, because it’s the most common. Nearly everyone in the University speaks at least conversational English.

My goal for the class is to make my students fluent in the language of teachers. They are highly motivated and very enjoyable to work with. Late yesterday I was informed that I needed to give a blood sample and get a chest xray this morning in order to complete my extended visa. Since this happened after class after class yesterday, I asked a colleague here to go into class this morning and let my students know I wouldn’t be there. Something unexpected happened (this is SOOO common here) and she could not meet with them. When I returned to the University, my students were in the media lab working on their assignments. I’m sure this wouldn’t be how it would work at Appalachian.

We’ve spent the first two weeks reading a lot of children’s books. Since they will be primary teachers, I feel like they need to be able to read with fluency and expression. It is also a great way to work on pronunciation and vocabulary. Kathy has been a great help. I’ll fill in more on the class in the next post.

Yesterday I finally went to Al Shaqab where I met Samat, the vice principal. Her name means "forgiveness", which I may need a lot of. (Gary's students told us that all Arab children are given names with meaning. The parents name the baby according to a characteristic that they see or one day hope to see in the child.) I observed a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade class. The teachers were teaching English through reading, math, or science. It was very interesting. Later I was invited to join a professional development workshop about the new Qatar professional standards for teaching. I thought this would be very useful info. Unfortunately, the workshop was conducted in Arabic. Fortunately the power point and my handout were in English. Also some of the teachers at my table took pity on me and gave me the high points in English, even though they had no idea why I was there. I wondered the same thing. This is definitely a learn by doing experience. I guess I will figure it out "enshallah". This is a very useful saying that means God willing. You hear it sprinkled throughout any conversation with an Arab person whether they are speaking Arabic or English.
I mentioned before that there is construction everywhere. Everything appears new. Fortunately most of the houses, apartments, and villas are designed with a Middle-Eastern architecture. There are mosques with minarets on just about every corner. Some are huge beautiful complexes. Some are small plain buildings with the Islamic crescent on top so you know what it is. We hear the call to prayer broadcast throughout the city five times a day from speakers atop the minarets. The first call is usually between 4:00 and 5:00a.m. and the last is usually between 7:00 and 9:00.p.m. The times are different each day and I hear that they are posted in the newspapers daily. Gary asked his students to let him know what time prayer was so he could plan breaks around it. The ladies said they could pray when class was finished. I guess they are not strict about time as long as they pray five times a day. Before prayer time every Muslim is required to do a ritual cleansing so it is usually easy to find a restroom wherever you go.

It is Thursday and the end of the work week here. Kathy and I are starting to settle in (she is now in the school full time) and I'm adjusting to my class. I have been focusing this week on children's literature. Today we did web searches and found online books to read. Students seem to enjoy the process and the books they found. I asked them to summarize the class today before they left; the idea of an exit slip. They all seem happy, but it is unreasonable to expect to be critical in Arabic culture, probably the same in America if we are honest. Overall, I can already see improvement in their language skills. It's interesting to see this in action.

Next week we are going to do readers' theatre. I've found several good scripts online. Any suggestions on this would be appreciated.

Everyone who wrote from Boone this week talked about the snow storm, must have been a good one.