The Qatar Blog: The Moorman's Experiences in Qatar

The traffic in this city is as bad as any place I've ever been, including New York, San Francisco, LA, Skopje Macedonia (horrendous), several cities in Mexico. The streets are jammed, there are an extraordinary number of highly aggessive drivers, and there is continuous construction. To add to all of this, there are the "round-abouts." In Europe these are often called traffic circles, and they take the place of traffic lights. Essentially traffic hits the round-about from four directions, with some basic rules of right away. You turn right into the circle, then drive around the circle until you come to the direction you want to take. So there are always four options; in order, right turn, straight ahead, turn left, u-turn. Cars coming from the other three direction may need to cut in front of you to make the turn they need. To the uninitiated, it looks like complete chaos. For experienced drivers, it's only chaos. A friend here says there is no sense of "lane integrity," so entering the circle, especially in heavy traffic, is a high risk sport.

I have not yet mangaged to get all the paperwork done to be eligible for a drivers license. That should happen within a week. It will be a mixed blessing; I really want the flexibility of being able to drive, but this is a scary place to be on the road.

Beyond a doubt, one of the most interesting differences in Qatar is the way women and men relate to one another. The culture as a general rule separates men and women. Qatar University has a men's side and a women's side. Classes are almost always separate, and there are separate libraries. Traditional Qataris and other Middle Eastern women "cover," that is they wear scarfs to cover their hair. Some also cover their faces so that only the eyes are visible, and still others wear veils that cover their entire heads. When men are not around, the women generally uncover. Two days ago I was on the women's side of campus in a classroom building. As we walked through the halls there was always a scurry as the women quickly covered. Some would simply hold a book or notebook to hide behind. The sense of modesty is so clear. However, there are many women here, both Arabic and others, who don't cover. I'm still figuring out the ins and outs. But one thing for sure, I had the feeling of being a peeping tom when I was walking through that women only building. Very weird and disorienting.

Today's class was the most interesting to date. My first assignment for these students was to read children's books. As one of their projects, they were to find and practice reading one of their favorites, then read it aloud in class. As part of our conversations over the last two weeks we talked extensively about how in most Arabic families reading to children is uncommon. In its place, there is a strong story telling tradition.

So today, each student read an American or Western children's book aloud. They were great, animated and highly involved. The most interesting part for me however, came next. They took turns telling Arabic children's stories. These are rich cultural messages, and there is often a good deal of humor. Let me see if I can capture one of them. A common character in these tales in Jiha, who is sometimes a fool and sometimes clever; this depends on both the story and the country of origin (remember my students are from Syria, Sudan, Algeria and Qatar). In one tale, Jiha goes to his neighbor to borrow his donkey. The neighbor doesn't want to lend it to him, so he lies that he has lent it to someone else. As Jiha leaves his neighbor's house, he hears the donkey neighing. His response is "it's usually better to trust a donkey than your neighbor."

Next week we will start the next assignment; they will each write a simple children's story, using powerpoint and pictures they locate on the internet (thanks to Amy Williams for this idea). I'm looking forward to this one too. These are creative and highly motivated students, andI'm begging to get a better feel of their considerable sense of humor.

Today is Sunday, the first day of the work week. The difference in days of the week create some cognitive havoc. The work week is Sunday to Thursday, Friday is holy day, and Saturday is a day off. So, in Qatar, Friday is Sunday, Sunday is Monday and Thursday is Friday. Most Westerners constantly make mistakes like "on Monday my class.." meaning on the first day of the week. It will be interesting to see how long, if ever, it takes to get over this.

I am finally figuring out how I can be of use here...I think. I spent several days immersed in the new Qatar curriculum standards. As I was reading the math standards, it occurred to me that I had not seen "daily calendar math" in any of the primary classes. I sketched a picture of it and explained it to the assistant headmisstress who asked me to prepare a workshop to present to the teachers. Sooo....next Monday I will be presenting it. Wish me luck. I recently found out that most of the teachers are novices and have had little or no training in reading instruction so that will be my next challenge. I also found out that they teach reading in English in the library once every other week. The in between weeks they teach reading in Arabic. There is no daily reading instruction. The teachers are asked to do a lot. They must teach the children math and science at the same time they are teaching them to speak English. There is a lot of oral work as there needs to be for the children to learn the language. They are also supposed to prepare most of their own materials,which is a challenge to them as they all speak English as a 2nd language. I can't imagine being asked to make up all of my own materials in my own language and I have had 27 years of experience and a lot of university and inservice training.
Each day I have a driver, Mahmoud, who picks me up at 6:30 a.m. to take me to the school as I am not nearly as anxious to brave driving these crazy streets as Gary is. Everyone who knows me knows that I am a directional dyslexic and not even close to being an aggressive driver. So I think I will do myself and everyone else a favor and stay off the streets. Mahmoud takes me home around 1:30 and believe me the school clears out then...even the administrators. Every Monday there is professional develpoment until 3:15, but no one stays late on the other days.
The girls are all beautiful with dark shiny hair and dark eyes with eyelashes a mile long. None of the younger girls cover, but some of the girls who look like they might be 5th or 6th graders do. Some of the teachers cover at school, but many do not cover unless there is a man in the building or when they are getting ready to go home.
Each morning the girls line up with their classes for morning assembly at 7:00 in the middle of the school. During this 15 minute period a lesson on values is presented and they sing the Qatar national anthem before they head to class. The girls are very friendly and like to stop me to practice their English. Sometimes the older girls will shake my hand and kiss me on both cheeks. The little girls will say hi or hello and giggle. I think the teachers are getting used to seeing me. I hope after the workshop they will feel free to come to me for whatever help they might need. And I hope that I can give it.

After three and a half weeks of bureaucratic manuevering, I've finally been able to get a drivers license and rent a car. As the prototypical middle class American, I haven't been this long without a car and being able to drive since I was 16 (a long time indeed!). It has made a lot of the moving/settling in process very difficult. When I first drove last night I had the clear feeling I was back in control; beyond a doubt, this is an illusion. Still, now we can get around the city, see more of the sights, shop without making it an expedition. We will begin taking more pictures, which I will post on the blog.

The downside is now I have to negotiate the traffic, which I describe in a post below. When people talk about driving here they often say "When you get in an accident..." like it's just going to happen sooner or later. It will be a challenge.

Gary will tell you that he has a bronze car, but it is an orange KIA. It looks like we stole Cinderella's pumpkin carriage. At least we will be able to find it in the parking lots. Most of the cars in Qatar are either white or champagne colored,especially the rental cars. I am not complaining. Now we are free to go out and explore whenever we want.

The morning assembly today was presented by several of the girls in support of the children and people of Gaza. They made posters, danced, sang, read poems, and made speeches. Throughout the program pictures of Palenstinian children were shown on a screen in the background. Without understanding the language I could still be touched. Many of the girls and teachers had tears in their eyes. No matter what your politics are I think we can have sympathy for the suffering of others. According to some statistics that were quoted on one of the news channels 80% of the people in Gaza now depend on food aid, 50% are unemployed, and 75% of 4th-8th graders are failing in school. That last statistic is certainly an example of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Quoting from Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, "The international situation is desperate as usual." During the break the girls had a bake sale to raise money for Qatar charities and Red Crescent. I guess our hope for the future is when we see children like these girls and children from our own country who work to support those who are suffering and need help, wherever they may be.

One of the great things about our stay in Qatar is the interesting people we meet. The diversity is fascinating; most everyone here comes with interesting stories unusual for your typical American. Today in class I was talking with a student from Sudan. At first I thought I misunderstood her when she said "...that's when they executed my father." Turns out her father was an intellectual/academic who had written a book on Islamic justice, criticizing a common interpretation of the punishment for theft (cutting off the thief's hand). The judge gave him three days to recant. He refused, and they killed him. This was written up in the NY Times. Evidently he was serene and unrepentent to the end. A real existential hero, one who refused to compromise his beliefs even in the face of death.

Gender continues to pique my curiosity. Think about this Arabic saying"
"A woman without a man is like a garden without a fence."

We have begun to examine the Qatar Curriculum Standards, not unlike standards in North Carolina and other States in the US. Yesterday I carefully walked them through four introductory paragraphs for the English standards. We used two column notes to identify main ideas and supporting details. It took an hour and a half. For homework they were to read the description of the one page overview of Reading and Writing standards: four subsections, a total of seven paragraphs. They were to use the two column notes technique, and come up with questions to ask in class today. For two hours today we covered ONLY the vocabulary; here's a partial list: shared context, enlarged texts, independent reading, reading intensively, fluency, leveled texts, extensive reading, decoding, predicting, cueing, sefl-monitoring, self-correction, word knowledge, phonics, spelling knowledge, deciphering, information gathering strategies, inference, deduction, induction, evaluation, narrrative, fiction, non-fiction, systematic progression, non-chronological progression, persuasive texts, organizational features, genre, explicit, implicit, direct instruction, generative spelling strategies, bilingual-monolingual-multilingual, planning-revising-editing, transcribe, shared composition. Almost all these words from the text generated other vocabulary that was necessary to explain these technical terms.

A couple of insights for me. First, this is for non-native English speaking teacher to teach, in English, to non-native speaking students. Second, if I was teaching this to a class in America, I would assume that the students had all this vocabulary under control. But as I began to explain all this words, I found them difficult to explain and highly technical. It was an absolutely terrific discussion, and every student was involved throughout, but it really made me think about how useful these standards are in practice. Here of course it's almost absurd, But in the US, it's only slightly better. Who writes these standards? And in the end, how many people can really understand them?

Qatar is obsessed with world class sporting events. Since we've been here, there's been a rhythmic gymastics meet, a table tennis championship, and yesterday an F1 speed boat championship. All of these brought in the highest level competitors in the sport. We went to the speedboat race yesterday. The boats were spectacular, going about 125 mph around an oval course. The turns were unbelievable, the best of them close to a crisp 90 degrees. What a sight.

Last Friday was a fascinating day. Gary and I attended the 1st Annual Al Shaqab Independent Schools Conference. Gary gave the key note speech. He spoke about the importance of oral reading instruction and demonstrated Reader's Theater using 8 of the Al Shaqab teachers as his pretend 2nd graders. One of the Qatar professors from Egypt translated into Arabic. Today one of the teachers told me she used some of his ideas already. I was thrilled! I really enjoyed relating with the teachers in this more relaxed atmosphere.
Friday night we were invited to a friend's home for dinner with 8 other friends of hers. What an international table. The hostess was originally from Japan, but is now a citizen of the U.S. living in Atlanta. One gentleman is from Palestine, but now lives in Oklahoma. There was another British man who was raised in Bahrain. There was a young woman of Lebanese-Irish-Mexican descent who now lives in Texas. Most of these people are teaching or doing administrative duties at Qatar University. Our friend Hans is from Cologne, Germany, but has spent the last 7 years as a construction engineer in various countries in the Middle East. Everyone there was well travelled. Some had spent time in countries I hadn't even heard of. I think the way to bring peace to the world is to sit down to a meal, converse, and laugh. What a treasured memory this will be.