Teaching pt 1

In case it hasn't been clear - I'm, sure it has, actually, but what the hell, it'll save some people from catching up - I'm here in Palestine primarily as an English teacher. In the mornings I teach at Amari refugee camp; in the afternoons I divide my time between a group of (very serious) Bir Zeit University students and a (rather less serious) group of staff at Jalazone children's centre. So far, I've refrained from commenting on the teaching side of things, probably because it takes up so much time and requires so much energy, mental and physical, that it's nice to dwell on other matters for a change. The teaching has also, in truth, been a dispiriting enterprise at times, and when I drop into my regular chair after another crushing morning there's not much solace in reviewing the day's events, piecing together calamity after abject calamity. It wasn't supposed to be like this. I had had four completely free weeks after my college teaching finished to organise myself, tell everyone how serious I was, and (eventually, after much pontificating about objectives) put some actual actual lesson plans together but a couple of days into the programme I realised that all of these were useless and threw them out.

For some reason, I'd thought that the kids would be easy. I'd read all the theory about managing difficult behaviour, which I think is pretty understandable in most circumstances anyway. I was going to be a good little facilitator, and get maximum participation from all my students so I'd be able to channel all that wholesome, teenage exuberance into fun and productive lessons. Well, it's not worked out like that, exactly. I don't get a chance to set up lessons involving learning games and interaction because the children won't let me speak long enough to give instructions and make sure they're understood. Every lesson at least half the class will moan about not having anything to write with, despite the astonishing amount of pens and pencils that I've given out (of the original ten packs of felt-tips I proudly stashed in my resource cupboard on the first day I have a couple of individual pens remaining, and those don't have bloody tops). As well as disrupting anything involving writing, the chronic shortfall in resources means that artistic expression is considerably reduced in scope, and I get ten versions of the Al-Aqsa mosque in brown. And I'm all for a certain amount of chaos, usually, but in this situation it excludes the younger / smaller ones, who can't hold their own in the shark-feeding frenzy that takes place when I organise (say) a bartering game with flashcards and retire to the back seats with glum expressions and baleful stares. The worst thing is that this is not a caricature.

Hassan

Today was the second Friday in a row that we've been the beneficiaries of our friend Hassan's hospitality. He took us to Ein Perat, a spring near Jerusalem, for a picnic, a hike and a quick dip before it closed at four. Some of the group were a bit uncomfortable with the thought that we'd come to a settlers' paddling pool (one such outpost looms in the hills above) but by the end of the day the numbers of Arabs mingling peacefully with Jews seemed to disprove the idea that this was an exclusive resort. My friend was quizzed by a group of Israeli teens who wanted to know why he was teaching Arab kids and not Jewish ones, but that was about as openly political as it got. We did engage in vaguely subversive antics with an Arab family who joined us in a magnificent cave high above the valley; burrowed into the settlement hilltop, they sung about being refugees and we reciprocated with "Yellow Submarine", "Flower of Scotland" and a solo rendition of Celine Dion from one particularly shameless member of the group. "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" and "Kumbayah" were also considered in desperation before we plumped for the former anthems. Who says we don't have a national identity?

The previous Friday (the first day of our weekend) we had been invited to Hassan's house in Abu Dis for a barbecue, spending the daylight hours larking around with the younger members of his extended family (who can now declare with certainty that "rugger maketh the man" ) and the evening knocking back mint teas in the front office of his mate's letting agency and a threadbare cafe. We finished the night with laid-back engineer and architect friends, eating Kaak and arguing over football after a moonlit visit to the wall, so stupendously tall and hostile in the dark. Seeing the wall was a far more affecting experience in the company of someone separated by that barrier from family members, particularly in the company of a person so decent and pluralistic as to make those brute slabs of concrete seem utterly perverse.

Old Man in Green Cap

After a two-part servees ride, into Ramallah from Jalazone and then onwards to the outskirts of the city, our daily commute finishes with an uphill walk through the main street of Amari camp to the school. During this walk, we are almost always ambushed by a rambunctious old man in a green baseball cap, who waves his stick at us and elaborates a few wisecracks on a single theme: that we are off to work and he is not. The wisecracks are delivered with much cackling and usually mention coffee and cigarettes, though not necessarily in that order. Sometimes it is enough to simply remind us that he is going to spend the day drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. Sometimes he ventures the observation that we are drinking water and he is drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. Sometimes he guffaws about the fact that we will be ducking fusillades of chalk and sweating blood while he spends the day drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, or vice versa. Every now and again he injects a smattering of Arabic into the greeting, but the basic message comes through loud and clear.

Karen Hughes

Today we had a celebrity visitor at the school in Amari camp. At the behest of UNRWA, Karen Hughes, some kind of flunkie (but important one - undersecretary?) for Condoleeza Rice came to do a photo-op and review the 'Knowledge Camp' which has been taking place at the school. The Palestinians are seeking renewed funding for the programme: the Americans saw a good opportunity for some PR. I'd stayed back in class to teach a few of the keener students and stumbled out onto the shady school entrance in the middle of it all. Karen Hughes was in full flow about the generosity of the Americans; minutes later an attractive child was perched on her knee; the usual platitudes rolled forth about chasing your dreams. So it goes. One of the students had the temerity to suggest that frequent nightly incursions by the IDF make studying tricky, but no-one mentioned the flaccid American response to the the continued metastasis of Israeli settlements in the future Palestinian state, or intimated that there might be a contradiction somewhere along the way between silvery invitations to dream and the reality of US policy in the region. Still, the kids had a good day, although my lot were a little bemused by the security goons with earpieces and dark glasses, a malevolent perimeter to all the colour and gaiety. And no-one was fooled by all the fine talk, least of all the Americans. Money is money, and propaganda is propaganda, as one of the Palestinian notables dubbed the event (the word "disgusting" also slipped out), a rare moment of frankness on a morning characterised by its abscence .

Armed Watermelons

Every morning, we jump on a yellow servees minibus, hand over our shekels and speed off towards Amari camp on the southside of Ramallah where Michael and I 'teach' every morning (see some other post for an explanation of this particular curiosity). The servees bustles along towards our destination, turning sharply at the brow of the hill and winding its way down into the valley past square, white houses and the endless olive groves, which like everything else appear to be covered in a permanent sheen of dust. The journey is not frantic, but now and again the driver overtakes a straggling auto, swinging out far across the road and making very little effort to swing back in again as we hit the next corner. Somehow, there is no cause for concern. The driving is uncannily immaculate, considering how anarchic it is. As we near Ramallah - only five minutes from home - watermelon stalls appear at the roadside, under blue and yellow tarpaulin sheets. There is also a checkpoint of sorts manned by Palestinian security personnel with machine guns, the only other obstacle a spiky looking object in the middle of the road (which looks rather superfluous), and now and again the servees pulls in briefly for a quick visual once-over before being waved on. Further up the road, with isolated soldiers multiplying as we pass Yassir Arafat's bombed out compound, there's another watermelon stall. This one always seems to have an armed guard under the canopy, watching over the tall rows of dark-green fruit. I suppose it's just a solider taking advantage of the stall's proximity to his post, but we like to think that these are especially good watermelons, worth hiring some extra muscle to protect. Even so, I hope that one day Palestine can do without his services.

Sunday 22 July 07, Ramallah

So this is the first post of what I hope will be many short pieces on things which strike me, living here in Palestine for a month. It's a week into my working trip and things have been super busy so far. Every night we stay up late making resources and writing lesson plans and even socialising with local people in the camp has been sidelined by the (crazy) amount of time this is taking up at the moment (I'll explain why in a bit). There's a trail of glasses with bedraggled mint leaves and sugary gunk from the kitchen to our balcony planning station. A blog makes sense insofar as lengthy email updates just aren't going to happen and often skip the interesting bits. Little and often will be more manageable. It's also a waste of time to be patching together long accounts over sticky keyboards when I could be talking to people, or (more likely) adding to my growing arsenal of grubby flashcards. This will provide glimpses of life here: small details that I notice, conversations I overhear, things I do, people I meet, thoughts I have. It'll be short on political analysis - for one, because I think a different kind of perspective is useful, and secondly, because I'm not the person for that. Not now, anyway. Unless I change my mind. It'll also be short on any kind of continuous narrative - I don't want to bore you or (equally importantly) myself recounting exactly what I've done everyday. I'll just bore you in small segments. If you think I should be finding out about something in particular, just ask and I'll see what I can do.