Back in the Doha Haze

Our Apartment in Bin Mahmoud

It is hard to believe that we've been back in Doha for two weeks now as the days seem to have merged into the heat haze that is Qatar in summer. With temperatures regularly in the mid 40s during the day and lows of 30C the idea of doing anything really active during the day disappears as one contemplates the comfort of air conditioning in the cocoon that is our apartment.

On top of the heat induced lassitude it is also Ramadan here which means that the day starts with the dawn call to prayer at 4.00 followed by the sunrise call at 5.15. For the locals it means that there can be no eating or drinking after 5.00am until the sunset call at 5.45pm.

It also means that the working day becomes compressed into a 4-5 hour slot between 8.00 or 9.00am and 1.00pm. (For the workers on the building site behind our apartment the day starts with the shriek of an un-oiled pulley at 5.30 and finishes at around 10.30 or 11.00am when the heat is too much for any outside labour.)

There are several advantages to this situation: getting on with some reading both for recreation and professionally, polishing up PD presentations for delivery once schools start, writing up exemplar lesson plans to take into the schools for teachers to follow and for us, as ATs, to demonstrate as effective teaching to the staff, watching the news on TV, having organisation meetings with the ATs with both companies involved with the contract and socialising with our colleagues.

It does mean that we are getting ourselves well organised for the coming school year.

I've been on site at the school the team I'm on is working in for the past three days meeting the staff, sorting out our work space and getting ourselves ready to swing into action this Sunday when we meet the full staff for the first time.
This year the school is an ex-Ministry one that has become an Independent school. The plan is to operate out of the old site for 2009-10 then move to a new site in 2010-11. In the meantime the old rooms are being given a make over with new plant installed ready for the students by the 27th. Consequently the parking area looks like a building site with stacks of student desks, old filing cabinets, broken blackboards, chairs, papers, bottles and hunks of timber and broken masonry on one side and an army of labourers busy painting, reassembling and moving new materials into the classrooms while teachers hunt their way through the movement to find a space to work or talk about the new year in their departments.

It also means that the English Coordinator and I have to sit down and sort out the resources needed to ensure that the Department can deliver both in quantity and quality as there appear to be no text or consumerable resources left from the old MoE school for the staff to use to develop lessons from.

We are, however, impressed by the energy and organisation of the Management team who have been coordinating the changeover for some weeks now. Every discussion we've had with them has shown that they have a solid and well thought-out knowledge of the challenges and requirements of the change from a MoE to an Independent SEC school will mean for the staff and the students. It should also mean that come the 27th the school will be ready to spring into operation.

On the home front Joy and I have settled into our apartment and, following a long exchange of misdirection and misunderstandings, unpacked our final boxes of gear to make the place more homely. Joy has hung her canvases of NZ scenes on the walls in the lounge and lined the walls of the spare bedroom with blank canvases and her paints as a studio and I've set up an alcove in the lounge as a workspace and library. I also picked up a cheap DVD player so we can now enjoy films whenever we want rather than surf our way through the 1050 channels available on the satellite TV to find a programme worth sustained watching.

Joy and Priscilla, as the current surviving "Doha Darlings", are busy plotting and planning their next foray into musical theatre which means they are off most mornings to explore the air conditioned halls of the souqs on the look out for material and items they can put to use. They are waiting on the return of Jan to complete their trio and the "Darlings" will spring into action.

Joy with one of her paintings at the Souq Waqif

Joy and I drove down to the Souq Waqif one evening to check out the "Summer in the City" exhibition Joy had had two paintings exhibited in over the July-September period and were impressed at the range of work and styles the local artists are working in. I think it would be great if Joy could, with other Kiwi artists here in Doha, do a totally NZ art exhibition at sometime. The contrast between the intense colours of the Pacific and the haziness of the Gulf would be interesting to say the least.

On Wednesday we were the guests of the Bloomsbury-Qatar Foundation Publishing House for Iftar, the post fast meal, and a poetry reading by four local poets. The poets read their work in both Arabic and English to a very receptive audience after the meal. The poems revealed the differences in attitude, thought and imagery between male and female in the Middle East as well as the linguistic accomplishment of the poets.

The male poet's work resounded with discords and clashes of images while the women's work focused on the issue or the meaningful moment with intensity and controlled passion which left the audience in earnest discussion after the reading.

This coming week will be interesting especially as I,with my colleagues, will be beginning our work proper and as Ramadan nears its end. Joy and I are also trying to work out what we will do over the Eid break that follows Ramadan - there is a public holiday from the 17th through till the 27th - so we are looking at a trip to Turkey, which would allow us to visit places we didn't get to see when we first went there in 1997, or to Abu Dhabi where we could catch up some of our colleagues from last year as well as drive to Oman and as explore another Gulf State.

Choices!!

Contract Countdown

Contract Countdown

Last week we went to the Emir's Cup match, the second soccer match we've ever been to. It still left me wondering what there is in identifying with a team or club or what the fascination is with watching mass sport but, as the clip I posted showed, the entertainment of crowd watching as well as the show put on before the game made the experience worthwhile.

Enjoying the evening at The Emir's Cup Final

May has come to an end with the end of the contract now becoming a reality as June reveals itself with 50c day time temperatures and somewhat lower 30c evenings.

These last weeks of May have been spent developing new course structures for the English Department to meet the decisions that the Grade 10 classes will all be taught using the Advanced Curriculum Standards and the Grade 11 and 12 classes will be either Advanced or Foundation but with different time allocations... Foundation for 3 periods a week and Advanced for 5 periods a week..... which means that the teachers must plan for more extensive programmes at advanced while providing a language rich intensive programme at foundation.

The decisions have also meant that the new course structure needs new material to ensure delivery so a great deal of time has gone into creating a new resource base for the Department that will encourage the students to speak and write in English rather than rote learn words in isolation.

The planning and writing up of the Unit outlines and suggested content, identifying resources and work-shopping the lesson planning has dominated the month and will consume what remains of the contract.

When I look back on my own Head of Department days and how I had to squeeze time between teaching classes, HoD meetings, Staff meetings, book orders and resource maintenance to put time into writing and rewriting Department schemes, manuals and administration systems I cant help but wonder how I managed it.

At least, as an Teacher Advisor, I can devote full days to ensuring that the school and Department are left with a clear idea of what the Curriculum Standards demand and how to get there along with directions on where to find the necessary resources without the added stress of dealing with classes, chasing up lost texts and ensuring the other end of year administration details are completed.

The School Library

Mind you, coming to the end of the contract hasn't just meant that I've been neglecting the Arabic Department and the Library as both of these areas have required time and advice. I was rapt to find that the Library had taken delivery of the books we'd ordered in April and that the Librarian could nowsay that there was a reasonable section of the Resource Centre that were English language texts - fiction and non-fiction - that were the Library's and not class-sets for the English Department.

We're also concentrating our efforts on providing PD on the requirements of the Teachers' Professional Standards Board so that the staff are aware of the processes they have to go through leading up to their registration as qualified teachers by 2011.

So with these programmes to complete by the 30th June we will be kept busy right through until the end of the contract.

We are all waiting to hear about the Cohort VI contract round both here and in Abu Dabai will determine our decsions for 2009-10. We may know sometime in June how many of us will be required in the schools for the next academic year.

Joy's Water Colour Group

Outside of the end of contract preparation we are busy organising ourselves for the return home. Joy has finished her water colour painting group classes with, I think, a lot of happy artists taking home their own paintings of local scenes of camels, beaches and the other places they've enjoyed.

Anna Voisey & horse

She has also completed several commissioned pieces and has her work for the "Summer in Doha" exhibition ready to deliver to the Souq Waqif galleries as well as packing the suitcases ready to take home.

Lesley's Grandchildren on Camels

We've booked our personal flights for travel other than the immediate return home which will see us jetting off to the UK for six days in England and Wales to see Jacqui and her family in the wilds of Swansea and,maybe, a trip to Tredegar where we lived for eight months when we were last in the UK. With luck and time we may manage to catch up with some other relatives and friends as well.

Joy's work chosen for the Souq Waqif Exhibition

From the UK we fly to Jordan for a seven day tour that will take us from Amman to Jerash and the Dead Sea to Madaba, Mount Nebo and Kerak to Petra, Wadi Rumm and back to Amman before heading onto Dubai and the flight home.
If all goes to plan we should stumble off the plane into the wet and chill of a NZ winter on the 16th. ( An experience I can't say I'm looking forward to after being spoilt in the perpetual warmth of the Gulf and the UK summer.)

At least, before we stumble into Winter, there is the prospect of exploring those places we've read about both in history and in fiction as we rode with Lawerence of Arabia, explorers and those fictional others through the deserts to stumble on the ruins of past civilisations carved and hidden in the cliffs of Jordan.

Rain and social activities

BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS

At peace with myself!

The past couple of weeks have been busy but without the unusual or different that has been part of our lives since arriving here in December. Probably a welcome relief after the events of March.
The highlights have been a "Geriatrics Party" to celebrate a colleague's 60th birthday. We were invited to attend in costumes that would relive our lost past.

Joy & Me at Geriatics Party: Bruce & Me at same party Whose youth has caught up?.

Needless to say the costumes were varied and sometimes both temporally and spatially confused. This may have been a result of our collectively impending short term memory losses or merely because the 1960s were, for some, a confused blur anyway.

The party was held in a Villa in the West Bay area of Doha which gave usan insight into life outside of the Apartment blocks and an idea of the grand style favoured by Interior Decorators here.
The Villa had a swimming pool and barbeque area outside which catered for those who favoured the balm of the evening air. Once inside one was exposed to an over the top luxury - the front doors opened onto a marble floored lobby and a grand marble staircase that was lit by a chandelier that would have done justice in an hotel.
Beside the entrance lobby was a fully equipped mini-gym with every piece of self torture equipment a masochistic gym lover would need. The walking frame even had a flat screen TV so you could screen films of bush, desert or ice fields as you walked yourself into a trance in the quest for fitness.
The lounge was dominated by a flat screen TV as big as any at a mini-cinema complex while the dining area held a table capable of seating 20 people comfortably at one time.
We were told that the bedrooms each had an en-suite and a built in flat-screen TV screen on the wall at the foot of the bed so one didn't get bored luxuriating in the generously proprotioned beds.
However, we party goers ignored the blandishments of luxury and got down to the serious business of celebrating Bruce's birthday and reliving pasts both real and idly imagined. Great fun!!!
We packed ourselves up around 11.30 - age having put a dampener on early morning party finishing, you know, and headed back to our apartments and the reality of home comforts.

RAIN IN DOHA!!

Then, just for a change, last weekend Qatar decided that it really needed to provide a variation on the theme of perpetual sunshine and, for the fourth time since we've been here, it rained and, for the second time, the front page of the Qatar Tribune was stopped to allow the headline story "RAIN IN DOHA" to drive all other world news from the front page.

Hyperbole aside the rain was heavy and the run off made more spectaular by the lack of an efficient or effective drainage system which meant that the water pools at the lowest points on the roadways - the middle of the roundabouts that mark intersections here.
TV & Burger-King Roundabouts had water at least 60cms deep around them so that drivers were forced to either circle out wide to go around or plough into the pool in the hope one could get through without stalling. It made for interesting driving especially as many of the locals are not familiar with the idea of hydroplaning on wet tyres.

Rain in Doha gets front page coverage again!

NORMALITY RETURNS

With the excitement of the party and the rain past life has returned to normal - up at 4.30am to the first of the prayer calls - Fajr (Dawn) and preparation for school as I listen to the BBC news on TV while the second prayer call - Shorook (sunrise) swirls through the window. The mosque nearest to us has a call to prayer that ensures one is aware of his aural presence. Thankfully, he gets submerged in the more musically adept calls that begin to blanket Doha and the day begins in earnest.
This week school has been dominated by the Grade 10-11 national testing which has meant that the Grade 12 students were at home supposedly studying for their own end of Cluster (Unit) tests in Arabic and English which took place on Thursday.
This was, in itself, unusual as the students had to sit two two hour papers in one day! The reaction to the second paper, English, was as expected.... looks of total incomprehension and loud claims of excessive difficulty when faced with what was little more than a reading and listening comprehension requiring them to write full simple sentence answers based on two typical airport /flight announcements and a two minute recording of a business meeting.
At the end of the day the teachers of English were looking as though they'd been through a session on a really rigorous gymnasium and then pummeled into submission by an over-enthusiastic masseur as they assembled in the workroom to mark the students' contributions to academic enterprise.
During the hiatus from classroom teaching each subject Department has been expected to write up a full annual plan for each grade level, a break down of the proposed Unit Plans and, given time, luck and enterprise, specimen lesson plans that allowed for differentiation for classes that would, in the 2009-10 year, be operating at both Foundation and Advanced levels according to the Curriculum descriptors. Just a small task.
We succeeded in creating a logical and sequenced Annual plan with interlocking and more student centred units for English. It now remains to assemble the resources and begin to write coherent standard based lessons to satisfy the descriptors in the Standards, the proposed unit content and allow the students to develop their spoken and written skills in English without falling into total grammar lessons and rote recall responses to questions. That, of course, means that we have to begin a series of workshops on effective test creation and assessment methodologies which will be another story in itself.

JOY'S PAINTINGS

While I've been enjoying work Joy has been busy painting and selling some of her work. She's sold four pieces so far and hoping to sell more as the contract period draws to an end.
She received a real boost this week when she was invited to contribute to an exhibition of works by artists resident in Qatar at the Souq Waqif galleries over July-August. She is to select three of her paintings and provide a brief biography to the gallery who will select the paintings they wish to exhibit. Needless to say she is keen to see her work on exhibition here in Doha.

We'll keep you posted on the exhibition.