Settling in

I've been in Abu Dhabi for over a month now (so hard to believe!) and have started to settle into my school and with my two classes of third grade girls, am on my last few days at the Intercontinental Hotel, got my apartment keys, bought furniture (after hopping a concrete sky high mental block) and have formed a family of close friends from around the world. My mind is slowing making the switch from visiting this country to living here.

My school days begin at 7:25 a.m. Sunday through Thursday. And yes, it is difficult getting used to rising for work on a Sunday morning and calling Thursday your end of the week. I just spoke to my sister this morning and it is Saturday morning for me and Friday night for her. My weekend is ending, while hers is just beginning.

I report to the gym every morning for assembly. I line up behind my morning class (one day it is 3E and the next it is 3F) while they recite and sing in Arabic and do a school dance. The entire school is present for these daily assemblies and we are dismissed class by class. We walk to our classroom (our school is like a big square with the hallways outside and the classrooms inside around the border) and my girls line up outside the room next to their lockers with their homework and notes (Inshallah), while I greet each one by shaking their hands and wishing each other good morning. "Good morning, Ms. Kaitlin."

I write a daily message to them on the whiteboard, although they are all not yet to the point of being able to read and understand what I mean. They work on bellwork of some sort (practicing writing their name and father's name in English, single digit addition and subtraction problems) while I collect homework and give stickers for those who finished and brought it back to class. We pass out nametags and go back to the carpet for calendar time. We do a lot of listen and repeat and hand motions during this time to help them remember what the vocabulary means.

Questions my girls came up with for me to answer.

I have three 45-minute periods with each class of girls, where we touch on English, math and science. The time goes so quickly and before you know it, it's break time (my morning is scheduled like this: period 1, period 2, break, period 3 and my afternoon is scheduled like this: period 5, break, period 6, period 7) or time to say goodbye to one group for the day. There is no scheduled lunch break in the middle of the day. The girls use their morning break to eat lunch and I use my period 4 prep to eat (sometimes). They bring a lot of bread with chocolate spread, and Capri Suns. The canteen sells bags of popcorn, so everyone who can spare a dew dirhams has a bag of popcorn in their hands and you find kernels all over the halls.

My two groups of girls are very well behaved (albeit chatty - I have determined this to be a cultural norm) and most understand and can speak English quite well. However, don't let me lead you astray. There are a handful in each class that give me blank stares quite often. I find myself acting quite a bit in class -- many hand gestures, drawings and speaking animatedly to get my point across. I fall into my bed exhausted each night. When I feel frustrated that my girls can't understand me, I think of myself in an all Arabic classroom and remind myself how lost I would be.

We have quite a big staff -- many Arabic teachers and English Medium teachers from Ireland, South Africa, United States, Australia/New Zealand and Canada. The families we teach are middle class, and my girls arrive each day in pink and white uniforms. The girls are friendly and in general have a good attitude toward learning English. They all tell me it's their favorite part of the day. I must be doing something right! There is much chaos, but I'm trying to find my footing slowly but surely. I want to be as effective with my students as I can. Each day gets better.

This girl is teaching abroad!

After a week of playing the role of a tourist/explorer, I got ready to report to Al Afaq for my first day with teachers on Sunday, Sept. 1. It tripped me out starting my work week on a Sunday. The Friday/Saturday weekends feel shorter :( We had a week of orientations/meetings/planning/set up with the other EMT's (English Medium Teachers) and AMT's (Arabic Medium Teachers) before the kids arrived today (Sept. 8).

What a roller coaster this week was! I hadn't found my school beforehand, and since Abu Dhabi doesn't have an address system in place (suppose to by 2015), my directions to my school were: "Tell the taxi driver it's near the Bangladesh Embassy and next to the mosque with the four tall pillars." Ok. Perfect. What in the world?! I bumped into someone in the lobby who was waiting for a taxi who was also headed to Al Afaq, so we shared. We got a bit turned around, but managed to find the school within 15-20 minutes (a mere slice of time in comparison to some of our colleagues who were having to carpool or taxi more than an hour from the hotel one way).

 (Dress code at my school is skirts down to the ankles, shirts down to wrists - or at least past elbows - and collarbone preferably covered. Dress pants are also acceptable, but paired with a long tunic that covers your bum!)

(Al Afaq School -- all girls, grades 1-6)

 

Upon arrival, we saw a table full of welcome back boxes for us and Turkish tea. Inside the boxes was a few pieces of chocolate.

 

 (Lobby)

(Box of chocolates :))

 

We were caught off guard by all the welcoming, there were a lot of AMT's and EMT's greeting, hugging and cheek kissing down the hall by the principal's office. The cheek kissing is new to me. Sometimes they kiss one side of your cheek one time, sometimes more, and same for the other side. You don't know how many you're in for, so you just let them lead.

 

Then, we were told that the school had been overstaffed. Reality hit us quickly. What did this mean? What was going to happen? I was instructed to pair up with the third grade team for the day and soak things in from them. I did not have a classroom, nor a guaranteed position within the school. For the remaining days that week, I floated around the school, feeling very unproductive, hearing that more teachers had been transferred in this week and that teachers who had been at our school the year before were transferred out. Finally, on Wednesday around noon (we left at one each day this week), we were given confirmation of our positions (third grade sections E & F) and the go ahead to start setting up our rooms.

 (Luckily, there were a few things left in my room by the previous occupant, and I noticed right away that my walls were green and yellow!)

(The center pod area for second/third grade - my classroom is the teal door in the back left corner)

 

(A little collaboration time with a vet second grade teacher on Thursday -- trying to squish everything in on this last day before the weekend!)

 

By the time one o'clock on Thursday rolled around, I was panicking! My room was not what I wanted it to be, I didn't have the supplies I needed and I had not wrapped my head around the lesson plans and my rules/regulations/procedures I wanted to present on Sunday yet. I walked out knowing that I'd be stopping back in Saturday morning with a few other new EMT's to finish setting up/organizing my plans and my mind.

 

The weekend came and went far too quickly and soon enough I found myself snoozing my alarm on Saturday morning. A colleague and I took a taxi to a few teacher supply shops in the city picking up posters, border, paper to cover bulletin boards and punch-out letters and numbers and made our way to school, where I proceeded to fall off a student chair while trying to hang border, bruising my left ankle and our sweet HOF (Head of Faculty) called us down to her office for homemade scones and chai tea made from scratch.

 

Then. It was Sunday morning. D-day.

(That might be a fake smile, due to the early hour)

(Who can find the spelling errors?!)

 

I didn't sleep the greatest Saturday night as my mind was swerving and spinning at lightning pace, thinking about how the first day would go. How many students would show up? When would they get there? Would they look small or big to me? What would their English level be? Would they be kind to me and each other? Would I meet parents? Would they be able to speak to me/understand me? How was I going to fill my day? What if I forgot everything I had planned? What if I ran out of activities? What if I just plain forgot how to teach? Oh God.

 

I arrived shortly before 7 to find a student and her mother already in my classroom (the doors aren't locked) immediately. I was hoping I would have a few minutes to myself before meeting students and parents, but I rolled with it. Introduced myself and gave the student a task of cutting some numbered locker tags out for me, while the mother filled out some paperwork. I managed to make a few notes to myself during this time, got my head (sort of) right, and took a deep breath.

 

This was really happening. The thing I had talked about doing for so long was about to go down. Teaching abroad. Amazing. How did I get here?? The other girls streamed in a few at a time throughout the morning up until 10:30. I only had one crier! I attempted to go over rules/procedures/routines with the girls who were there, but was very distracting when every five minutes a new mother-father/daughter pair came in. The girls had a task on their desk of making a name tag for their desks and drawing/writing a few pictures of their summer holiday that I instructed them to continue on whenever new people came into the room.

 

By the end of the morning, I had collected 13, 14 girls out of 24 and that was as high as we got today. We went to the "cantina" (cafeteria) for breakfast around 9:30, then down to the gym for an hour-long assembly/national anthem/school dance/PE games. My girls did a great job on staying criss-cross applesauce, hands in lap, facing forward, not talking while all of this was going on. A few slipped and I had to play regulator and lay down the law with expectations, as I know I will be thankful I did later in the year.

 

Following the assembly, we started walking back to the classroom, but a few were talking in line, so I explained that this was not how Ms. Kaitlin's class would be walking in the hallways this year, and that we would turn around and try walking out again. This time, they came out with bubbles in their mouths and hands clasped in front of them as we practiced. Whew, because the early afternoon heat/humidity was creeping in and I was getting hot waiting for them ;)

 

We discussed teamwork through throwing a ball of yarn around to everyone in a circle; took a few polls about favorite colors and number of brothers and sisters; made a rule poster of my jobs and their jobs in the classroom; I told them a little about myself and showed them on a globe where my family and friends were. "Miss! That is so far!" We ended our afternoon with a big book called Kackadu Jack on the carpet.

 

Dismissal was chaos. Lol. We're going to have to work on that. That's all I can say about that. Much more discussion of rules and practice with procedures and routines on the to-do list for tomorrow, but had a wonderful first day with my girls. And best of all? The nervousness paired with the first day of school had passed. I have my work cut out for me in a lot of areas, but I jumped the first, and perhaps, biggest hurdle today. And I feel like I could climb Mt. Kilimanjaro! I have accomplished a goal that I have had for many years today. I did it. I am doing it. I will continue to do it. And do it well. Let's go!











Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10100310201396445&l=4866575090273748486

 

The mosque has a strict dress code, requiring women to cover from ankles to head scarves. If your outfit did not comply with these rules, you were given a black cloak to wear over your clothes.

 

 

The most spires a mosque has, the more money that region has. This mosque has quite a few. At night, lights that look like clouds light up the white surface of the mosque.

 

Upon exiting the mosque and returning the borrowed cloak, I couldn't take the heat anymore and ditched my cardigan to get some relief. Didn't work. Thought about jumping into the pools ...