October Update

Updating the blog 28.10.11

It's been a while since we updated the blog so here is the latest installment of our adventures in the Middle East.

This academic year has been particularly busy but without the adventures we embarked on in earlier blogs. The year started with the arrival of replacements to the staff who had been moved out at the end of the last school year and, surprisingly, a shake up of the existing staff who, in many cases, found themselves being transferred to other schools or their jobs redefined. Our librarian used to be a science teacher elsewhere in the emirate and the HoD science at our companion school found himself reclassified as a technician at another school further down the road.

We gained four new teachers of English and a replacement IT teacher. Three of the teachers of English have proven to be valuable and positive contributors to the Department who appear to have grasped the principles of the ADEC curriculum and the need to teach the skills associated with language learning which has certainly made the job we have a lot more positive and constructive.

On the other hand the fourth member has proven to be more of an opportunistic entrepreneur than teacher which has meant that I have had to provide intensive one on one PD to an increasingly bellicose and belligerent "teacher" in an attempt to ensure that the boys are prepared for the assessment of their language skill mastery later this trimester. Not an easy ask when one realizes that he defined "cupboard" as a "board in a house on which cups are placed" , questioned the use of "felt" in felt pens as the word was the past tense of the verb to feel and argued that "comprehension" was writing an essay to his classes.

I am now working on developing a series of resources to help the teachers teach English poetry as well as supervise an ECART (research) project on poetry using a web- quest process as the school doesn't have the resources to adequately teach poetry to the different grades. The unit is theme related for each grade but, and it's a big but, the study is limited by the consideration of topics that may or may not be acceptable. Hence we need to check the web links to make sure we don't get poems that talk about "delicate" topics as well as having accessible language that ESOL students can cope with.

There is, however, another issue I need to consider which is that many of the teachers of English have never really read or involved themselves with poetry other than learning a generic statement about poetry forms sufficient to pass an exam so that the skill, required under the curriculum, of reading a poem for meaning and personal response needs to be encouraged among the teachers before they embark on actually teaching poetry. From what I've seen of earlier attempts to teach poetry the lessons have been hunt the literary device exercises without understanding of what the poet is saying or doing through their use.

Socially, Joy and I have been enjoying ourselves in a Cognition quiz team which has had considerable success at the Abu Dhabi Golf Club. So far we have won three meals for six at the Club - not bad over the past four quiz nights!

Joy and her friends have been regular mall trawlers delighting in finding unusual bargains in the local shops and markets around Abu Dhabi. We now have a collection of lanterns, table mats and boxes that will be unusual additions to our NZ home when we return from our adventures.

We have, also, been up to Dubai and Sarjah for the odd weekends. We have bought a beautiful big ornamental hanging lantern from the Blue Souq in Sarjah which will pose a problem for us when it comes to hanging it back home. We tracked down a furniture dealer who specialized in ornamental furniture and now are the proud possessors of a brass inlaid wine rack and a distressed dresser that will look really great in the kitchen at home.

We were going to head off to Lebanon for Eid but the decision about its length has been one of rumour rather than clarity so rather than risk booking for the rumoured nine days and being summoned back to work after five days we have decided to stay around Abu Dhabi and explore the UAE while planning for the three week December break. Our present thinking is Malaysia then back here by the 28th December in time to welcome Rebecca for a visit over New Year and half of January.

We are avidly following the news from New Zealand as the country recovers from the euphoria of the Rugby World Circus and enters into the election campaign proper. The opening campaign addresses certainly presented the country with stark and obvious choices - asset sales and borrow and hope with wage cuts for the workers to support continued tax cuts for the wealth grabbers under NACTional or retention of the country's wealth, investment in the country and positive social policies under Labour.

With the social media available to us now we can, at least, do some campaigning for Labour even at this distance!!! Needless to say we will be voting as soon as the overseas voting opens on the 9th of November.

Will update the blog again at the end of the month.

CATCHING UP ON THE BLOG

CATCH UP BLOGGING

It has been a while since we updated our blog of our adventures in the Middle East.

Our last blog recorded our leaving Nizwa and moving across the border to the UAE where I picked up work with Cognition as an English Adviser in a local Prep School.

I’m still waiting on CfBT to refund me monies they held back for cleaning the apartment and paying for the few utilities we used while there. But, then, I did come to expect that after the hassles we had in getting paid on time and of getting a meaningful pay slip delivered on the day that the pay was meant to go into our account. I don’t know how my replacement in Nizwa fared - I only hope that it was better.

On the housing front in Abu Dhabi, Joy and I moved from our apartment in the Platinum Apartments to an apartment in the Al Nayhan Area near the Al Whada Mall where we’ll be based until the end of our contract in July-August next year. The apartment is pleasant, well lit and airy with access to a swimming pool and, if we need it, a gymnasium that is filled with machinery that would not have gone astray in the catacombs of the inquisition.

Joy is really happy with this arrangement as she is a five minute walk from her Doha friend, Priscilla, so they can head off to go “mall trawling” when ever they wish to escape from the 45C of the UAE summer into the cool of the malls.

We are now back in New Zealand and winter. This trip home has been one of getting paperwork sorted out - new passports required, renewing my drivers license and teacher registration and other bits and pieces before returning to the ME.

When we return in August we will rent a car which will allow us to explore more of the Emirates and visit friends in other parts of the UAE. Getting into the bustle and clash of Abu Dhabi traffic will be fun after six months of using the bus and taxi system.

The School and Work:
At work the semester and a bit at the school proved to be a challenge as the teachers were convinced that the changes the school had experienced over the past few years, from a school using an American system, complete with ready made teaching units, lesson plans and US text books with Arabic names like Faisal & Ali replacing solid US names like Randy and Rudy, to a local Ministry of Education programme that returned to a curriculum that appeared to insist that, like the US programme, all students progressed from page to page with total understanding every day as long as the teachers delivered a lesson, word for word from the teacher’s book, to a standards based curriculum using material from NSW and Queensland that presumed that teachers could create their own unit and lesson plans that provided for the different learning speeds and abilities of the students was nothing to get really inspired by.

Their reluctance to come to grips with the curriculum documents and associated Learning Plans meant that I had to put a great deal of time into building up trust and reasonable working relationships before pushing hard for meaningful change. It also meant doing a good deal of modelling to demonstrate what could be achieved if one was prepared to do a bit of preparation and creative thinking.

The Advisory Team succeeded in creating an English Club that encouraged the boys to play scrabble, engage in an inter-school debate and write and publish a school newspaper. The latter two activities were greeted with some amazement by the teachers who had never seen or taken part in a debate before and were convinced that the boys would not be able to do either activity as they thought the boys did not have enough English to try. I look forward to generating the enthusiasm next academic year when we will have a full three semesters to establish the activities and keep them running.

The drives to get an understanding of the curriculum meant that I spent a great deal of time creating scaffolded work books to guide both staff and students through the inquiry learning focus of the course as well as writing meaningful and curriculum consistent assessment tasks that met the descriptors of the learning plan as well as guiding the teachers towards the content they were meant to teach. Mind you, these efforts, while sound and curriculum directed, were to be limited in delivery because the English Department had none of the resources that were presumed to be available by the Curriculum writers.

We came through the inspection and compliance review with flying colours even though we'd only been in the scheme for six months and the resourses were limited.

We spent several thousand dirhams on buying in a selection of books and references that the teachers could use and adapt to deliver the courses as well as providing some limited reading materials for the boys. While this was greeted with interest by the staff their use of the books was best described as reluctant as, to them, the best resources were ready made ones they could download from the inter-net... especially if they came complete with work sheets and answers.

Anyway, we did manage to make some progress with the teachers attempting to focus their teaching and the students’ learning on the skills the curriculum required. This, I thought, would be a reasonable base to build from in the next academic year only to discover that we were to lose six of the nine teachers in the English Department as the Education Council carried through a restaffing programme designed to replace English speaking Arab teachers with native English speakers in the secondary schools and male teachers with female teachers in the Primary schools, with no indication of the quality of the replacements being moved into the Prep Schools from the secondary schools from the rest of the Emirate. So it’s back to square one next school year in developing working relationships, getting staff up to speed on understanding and meeting the demands of the curriculum and planning for the new school year. At least my task won’t be as bad as that facing some other colleagues who discovered that they had lost all or 99% of the English Department.

My other area of responsibility, the Library, was one of minute steps forward with no trained staff, no budget and no facilities to even begin stock taking or restructuring the existing limited resources. With luck and some hard talking about the budgetting necessary we may make more progress next year. I can only live in hope!!

Anyway, the year has proven interesting and challenging which makes the prospect of a new contract exciting as well.

Abu Dhabi update

After our recent blogs that have focussed on the reports from our friends in Oman describing the events in Sohar and Salalah rather than our doings in Abu Dhabi I felt it about time we updated everyone on our situation here.

Mind you, the reports coming out of Oman certainly gave our decision to leave the contract a degree of retrospective wisdom. We noticed a side bar story in the local paper describing the burning of the Wali’s office and other Government offices in Ibri last week which would indicate that the discontent there is not just confined to the coastal centres. This week there were reports of strikes in Muscat and the industrial areas around Muscat that had closed down the airport and many of the businesses there as the workers demanded better employment conditions and pay from the Omani government than they presently get despite the Sultan ceding some responsibilities to a small partly elected part of the central government rather than retaining the concentration of power in the Appointed Council of Ministers around the Sultan.

Abu Dhabi is certainly less tense than Nizwa and certainly a lot quieter than the events, reported on Aljazerra, CNN and BBC world news, in Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt,Syria,Saudi and other states in the area would suggest.

Which makes our decision that the Nizwa contract was not working out for us and giving notice to CfBT a wise one.

We were casting around looking for work in the UK, in the ME and, as a last resort, back in NZ so I was relieved to be offered a position with Cognition in Abu Dhabi as an English Advisor in a Preparatory school in central Abu Dhabi.

The position is similar to that which I was doing in Doha although I’m now working with Grades 6-9 rather than Grades 10-12.

The English curriculum here is a Theme driven one based on a marriage between the NSW and Queensland curricula over-written with UAE relevance references unlike the Qatari curriculum that was based on a set of descriptions of language acquisition written by a UK consultancy without the prescribed themes, although the examples demonstrating ways in which the curriculum could be taught often drove the ways the teachers taught their way through the forest of descriptors (standards).

The school is regarded as high achieving with good results in the external examinations and a very supportive administration. It has, however, been through several advisory programmes since the education reforms were implemented in the Emirates. From what I have gathered it was part of an American advisory programme for several years that created a dependency complex among the teachers in which they relied on the US advisors to create the Unit & lesson plans along with the individual lessons for the teachers each week (I haven’t discovered if the advisors did the marking as well even though the teachers assure me that this was a common expectation.) based on a formula that went something like: Sunday-phonetics, Monday - Grammar, Tuesday - paragraph reading, Wednesday - sentence writing and Thursday - testing. After the American’s left the school came back into the MoE system until mid way through the second trimester of this year which meant that the teachers simply taught through the textbook tasks then had to change their approach to meet the demands of the Thematic curriculum taken from the NSW-Queensland programmes.

This means that my job is to convince the teachers that they need to become more proactive in their unit & lesson planning in order to address the demands of the curriculum as well as setting up systems that will be sustainable after we complete the contract.

In many ways it is similar to the situation in Qatar but whereas I came into the school at the beginning of the academic year here I arrived six weeks before the second trimester was to end which has meant the teachers had already attempted to implement the curriculum based on minimal advice from the Company and worksheet raids on other schools and the inter-net. This has meant that doing any advance planning has to be for the third trimester and has to be combined with a search for suitable, accessible resources to address the themes nominated by the Education Council.

My efforts so far have resulted in my locating a few resources (teacher reference only) that may and could be mined to create lessons to fit the themes of “My Imaginary World (Grade 6), Heritage (Grade 7), Our Community (Grade 8) and From School to Work (Grade 9). While the few texts I have found are a beginning the final unit & lesson planning will be extract based as the English Department has no established resource library or store of reading levelled texts to draw on. (Just another challenge.)

So I’m looking forward to the challenges involved as I try to build up positive relationships with the teachers while resisting their demands for me to write and provide all the unit & lesson plans for all four grades before the end of this trimester!!

Personally, Joy & I have been busy getting ourselves established and settled into Abu Dhabi as we work our way through the system to get residency, bank accounts, drivers licences and ID cards. The process has been reasonably smooth. We have a bank account and my residency close enough for me to start the application to sponsor Joy and for her to get residency.

Joy has joined up with Priscilla Ellis, her friend for Doha, and begun exploring the Malls and sights of the city which has given Joy the inspiration to begin painting again and to explore some different approaches to the themes which she has explored since we came to the Gulf so that our apartment is beginning to get a more colourful look.

I’ll post some photos of her new works on our next blog.

More on Oman - The Sohar situation

At home things are slowly settling down. The Christchurch earthquake was predicted.

This is more on Sohar from a colleague living there.

'An uneasy calm has descended over the town over the last few days a mood heightened by the leadened skies caused by the unpleasant Shamal that has brought along with cooler weather dust shielding us from the growing strength of the returning sun. The town is calm in a way, because many of the shops are closed, the shopkeepers, according to a Pakistani computer salesman I had taken my printer to for repair, afraid to open in case they suffered the same fate as burnt out Lulu. Many long distance trucks and lorries are becalmed in long lines along the highway or on waste ground, unable to pass the still occupied globe roundabout. Some of the more adventurous of the drivers are taking circuitous routes through the town so one encounters these huge juggernauts along the twisting urban roads causing long traffic jams, resulting in crazed car owners performing idiotic acts like driving along the hardshoulder in the wrong direction to try and avoid the snarl ups, but in so doing causing even greater havoc. The police seem to have disappeared and have been replaced by the army who have set up a roadblock about 50 meters from my flat from where they divert the traffic on to the service roads. From where I live it is virtually impossible, unless one is prepared to drive an extra 20 km in traffic to get to the other side of the highway, but anyway as Lulu has gone and Al Fair has not yet reopened there is no point going over there.

The roundabout is still occupied and many tents are pitched around it, so it is permanently occupied at all times, but whether by the same people or whether they rotate occupancy I do not know. In the evening the crowd swells and last night it appeared that there was a particularly large group who were addressed by a loudspeaker that I could hear clearly in my flat a kilometer away. The roundabout is festooned with banner in English and Arabic proclaiming their loyalty to Sultan Qaboos, though according to Omani friends they still have several demands, such as the dismissal of more ministers and higher wages. From the news this morning I gather that these demands have been largely met by a major cabinet reshuffle. The new ministers are all elected members of the Majil Ashure, the fledgling parliament that is voted on by Omani citizens, both men and women.

The access to the roundabout is still blocked for vehicles and policed by Shibabs (youths), who are polite and show no aggression, but wave you away on to the service road. On the Shinas side of the roundabout near the flat, as I mentioned earlier, there is a military armoured car and several armed soldiers who direct the traffic on to the service road.'

FROM NIZWA TO ABU DHABI

From Nizwa to Abu Dhabi- January - February 2011.

We left Nizwa at the end of January to begin work in Abu Dhabi. A decision we consider was well made after the isolation the contract in Oman created for us.

Here we are in Abu Dhabi, back working for Cognition as an Advisor in an Abu Dhabi school. After the isolation we experienced in Oman, both professionally and managerially, it was a relief to be back among friends as well as being assured that the office would respond to requests promptly and efficiently without having to go through several silos and umpteen request forms to get a response.

The school I’m working in is in central Abu Dhabi, close to where we’re living..... walkable now but perhaps not so easily come summer. The Principal and administration are on the ball and very keen to see the school improve although being transferred from a MoE school to the PPP system two weeks before the end of the first trimester and only getting the advisory team five weeks ago was a considerable jolt for the staff as they had to change their curriculum and delivery models overnight with little time for preparation.

I spent the first three weeks simply reading through the curriculum documents and the assessment models that are required to assess what the teachers were expected to cope with. So how they coped without seeing or reading the material I’m not too sure.

Fortunately I found the curriculum statements familiar as they are modelled on the Queensland & NSW curricula that were developed about the same time as the NZ one was that underpinned the NCEA from 1990-2010. The assessment methodology is very similar to that we’ve been using in NZ and developing in Qatar so, for me, getting on top of the material has been relatively quick. For the teachers, however, it is a different matter.

For some there is a vague understanding coming from their conversations with colleagues in other schools already on the scheme while for others, the majority, there is a sense of confusion and frustration as they have few immediate resources to use to develop units of work from or, for that matter, any idea about assessment methodology apart from short answer tests that give a numerical mark.

The teachers with a vague understanding of the curriculum and assessment processes are confident that they have it together and are absolutely right so I am going to have to start right from the basics and step them through the theory, with some practical exercises to get them aware of the demands, before we can really get into the process of proper unit and lesson planning complete with annual and trimester plans that link into a school syllabus and then back into the curriculum.

Difficult when the expectation is that they should be able to sprint before they pass the toddling stage!!!!

I’m pleased with progress on other fronts at work as we have begun planning to redevelop the school library and to set up an English Club to get the boys involved in improving their skills in English. The response to each of these has been great with buy in from the Administration which will mean we will have support when we need it.

The turmoil in the Arab states, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, Egypt, Bahrain,Yemen, and now, Oman has not affected us directly in the UAE but has certainly made our decision to quit the contract in Nizwa a wise one as I think the tensions and worries that the isolation of the contract gave would have been exacerbated as time went on.

The news out of Oman has been confined to brief reports on the TV news and paragraphs in the papers. The following, from our friend, Donald, in Sohar, gives an idea of the events across the border.

FROM SOHAR:
All seems quiet now. It is like a Friday, with little traffic, the schools shut, the shops shut, the training center empty of all trainees and the cleaner has disappeared. I sit here in front of my computer wondering what to do. Should I prepare for a possible Intermediate English Language session tomorrow, where I will probably find myself sitting in an empty classroom, or should I take this opportunity to finish cataloguing the books in our library? Or should I for the moment just record my observations and feelings about the events of the last few days?

Last night, against the embassy advice notice, I drove past the Globe Roundabout, the epicentre of the protests in Sohar, to find roadblocks manned by unarmed youths who politely waved me on so I drove past the burnt out remains of Lulu, noticing that all the shops around the blackened hypermarket, seemed to be untouched, though now locked up. From conversations with Omani friends I have been given to understand that Lulu was targeted because it is owned by an unpopular minister. I drove on and passed Sohar palace, surprised to see it appeared to be unguarded at least from an outside view. Whether it has soldiers on guard on the inside I could not see through the partially opened main gate. The absence of guards here I think indicates that opposition is not towards the Sultan himself but rather to ministers and some of the policies.

It is not only around the palace that there are no signs of police or army. I haven't seen a policeman or police-car for two days. The main police station was torched, as was the home of the wali, the governor of the area, and the office of the ministry of manpower. At the present time Sohar appears to be a town without any obvious government control, it is almost as if they had lost interest in what is happening here. In the absence of the authorities it is surprising that there hasn't been more trouble, which shows, I believe, that the looters of Lulu were opportunistic rather than seasoned criminals. However, the boarded up shops,even the little laundry I use, may be an indication that their owners are afraid of more trouble. Some garages are closed and I wouldn't be surprised if we were soon facing a petrol shortage, so no unnecessary driving. I got a full tank the night before last, fearing that we might have problems here. Yesterday morning I also transferred the bulk of my money back to the UK; I hadn't made any transfers for six months because I believed that my money was almost safer here that in an almost bankrupt British bank.

Who knows what today will bring. The British ambassador is supposed to be coming to Sohar this evening and we have been invited to meet him at the Sohar Beach Hotel. I will go along out of interest, apart from anything else it may be an opportunity to meet other expats and here about their experiences. Last night I had a chat with Indian neighbours in my building and we were just saying how quiet it appeared to be then when there was a small burst of firing. Again this morning we had some very short bursts which appeared to come from the area of the Globe. My Omani colleague, who has just arrived in the office, tells me that local people have formed committees of public safety to prevent further looting. She said last night, the looters tried to burn down some schools, but were chased away my members of these local vigilantees, perhaps that was the cause of the firing I heard when chatting to the neighbours. Her opinion is that the looters come from outside Sohar. She believes they have been chased away, but is afraid they may be back. I have also received three Arabic texts which claim that the troubles have been caused by Emirates and according to my colleague they claim some have been captured and confessed. She thinks that this is just another example of people trying to cause more trouble.

The ambassador rode into town last night or rather he hitched a ride in a helicopter with the army general who was coming to command the troops, over 1,500 of them, who are now I believe encamped somewhere between here and Sohar port. The ambassador told us that the army was taking over the powers of the police, who many felt had been discredited over the last few days. A small section of the resident British community turned up to meet his excellency and his vice consul at the Sohar Beach Hotel and hear what the embassy can, can't, will and won't do for us. Much of what he told us we already knew, because of course we have been here at ground zero. One common thread that united all of us, embassy staff and Sohar residents, was surprise that this could happen in Oman and in Sohar in particular. Though there was some apprehension expressed by some residents, all reported that they had not been threatened in any way and that their Omani colleagues and friends had provided help and reassurance where needed. There was some disquiet at the number of rumours flying round and this was heightened by the lack of information from official sources, especially the local TV and radio. Some rumours that were quickly discounted were that the Sohar Crown Plaza was on fire and that the border had been closed. Our lack of Arabic language skills, including my own, was painfully exposed when no one reported being able to read the many Arabic text messages that have been floating round, but some reported that Arabic speaking friends had told them that some were from the authorities and some from people accusing Emiratis of fomenting the trouble. My colleague in the office told me of these and she discounted them saying that it was people trying to create more trouble.

Though people were naturally worried no one said that they had started packing their bags, but one person said that the French, on the advice of their embassy, had already left town, and that the Dutch had been advised to stay indoors. The British issued no such edicts but advised that we should keep a low profile and avoid public areas, though as some residents pointed out that this was hard to do when the Globe roundabout was occupied as this was the main communication highway between the coastal area and the country to the landward side of the highway. The embassy pointed out that in the worst possible scenario, which they were confident would not happen, they had plans to evacuate people and that any British person would be accepted together with spouses, and children of any nationality. Having only a cat to care for I wondered about her, but felt it was probably not wise to bring this up.

On reaching home I sent out a text message to all my Wednesday language course teachers telling them that it was business as usual. This morning 7 out of 18 turned up, all ladies; the three gents were no shows.

While we cope with the political turmoil in the Middle East we are also torn as we listen to the news coming from New Zealand, especially Christchurch, where Jocelyn and Caroline have been coping with the after effects of the two earthquakes that have devastated the city.

Thankfully, Jocelyn & Caroline and all our friends in Christchurch have survived the quakes with little more than broken crockery and windows and repairable damage to their homes which is a personal relief to us. On the other hand the fatalities and the ruin of the CBD with its historic buildings are events that will remain as horrors for a long, long time.

The pictures of the old Christchurch Teachers Colleges, once turned into up-market apartments, reduced to rubble and the destruction of the Cathedral and other iconic buildings are stark reminders of the power the earth can exert on our efforts to show that we have been here.

The text messages from home telling of quakes in Wellington that we’ve received from Rebecca at all hours of the night keep us alert to the ever present knowledge that New Zealand sits along the fault lines of the Pacific rim and that the events of Christchurch could be repeated elsewhere in the country.
It is, however, disappointing to read that the present government is preparing to use the earthquake as an excuse to sell state assets and to slash the social support mechanisms that have been built up over the years. To consider such actions when the country needs the assurance that the support will be there is, to me, unthinkable and unacceptable but, then, when the PM declares that the best other way to raise money to rebuild the economy is to ask Oprah Winfrey & Letterman to run appeals on US TV one is driven to wonder at the quality of leadership New Zealand has elected????