The sun was shining, the students were smiling, as we were welcomed with figs and milk, a traditional treat for guests. Then, we were ushered to the courtyard where all of the students gathered to sing the national anthem, while Wendy and I raised the flag. Later the Head Master presented all of the female teachers with a rose for International Women's Day. When I return, my own students will find their teacher has become a diva. A royal. A star. I trust they will treat me accordingly!
We had a few great classes where I was able to see Youssef teach about phrasal verbs (prepositional phrases) and then I presented about Stevenson.The kids seemed very interested in seeing our school, and today I saw my school through the eyes of others. My school, a typical suburban high school in America. Vast athletic fields, modern gyms and a fitness center, the wide hallways with painted murals, the numerous modern computers, the stacks of books in the LMC. Here in Nador, the school just opened in September yet they have no books in their library and no computers in the classrooms. There isn't even a computer for the teacher in the room! Youssef had to borrow the "stick" from the principal that he plugs into his computer to get wi-fi to show this students a Youtube clip. There is a very nice courtyard for basketball and other sports, but nothing at all like our athletic facilities. Do we emphasize athletics more than academics? The students walk to school and can take the public busses, so the idea of their own car is truly foreign for them, yet they saw the SHS parking lot in the slideshow with the student cars. What were they thinking? That our students are rich? That they have so much? We do have so much. We may say we need this, we need to drive everywhere, and maybe we do, but maybe we don't. Is it better to have the most recent computers and shelves, and shelves of books, an indoor track and treadmills, or be fluent in four languages, complete complex engineering schemes without a calculator, and know the philosophers Hegel, Kant, and Descartes? I say a global citizen needs both.
Everything here needs funding and permission from the Ministry of Education. Everything is a bureaucracy. Everything is difficult if not impossible to change. The teachers follow the textbook, chapter by chapter, section by section, question by question. The theme of centralization is also evident in that we need permission from the Ministry in Rabat to go to any school. The paperwork must be sent. The paperwork must be signed. Today Youssef and the Vice Principal took us to the oldest high school in Nador, opened in I believe 1979, and since the paperwork hadn't been approved, we could not visit classes. The reason they don't have the books or the computers or the counselors is not really a money issue, it is that all of the permission most first come from Rabat, the delegation, etc. In the U. S. we change quickly, spontaneously, too fast, too much, but we do change, we do innovate. If our current Common Core, Smarter Balance, approach is truly to move towards centralization, we may be in much more trouble than I had thought.
I have had the opportunity to present to a few different classes today, and now tomorrow we will learn from Wendy about Kansas. If there is time, I would like to have the students write what they think it means to be a Moroccan and to share what my students wrote it means to be an American. Inshallah, as they say. God willing.
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