Seemingly, every other blog post begins with me apologizing for my inconsistent publishing. Well, enough of that business. By now, you all know me well enough to understand that these things ebb and flow, and you are still back for more. So until I start getting harassed, I will only aspire for sporadic regularity. Rest assured, there are stories to catch up with, and I shall be doing my best to deliver them to you with the trademark cynicism, wit, and self-deprecation that I am sure you have grown to appreciate. My latest tale is rather recent and comes straight out of the bowels of some of the more incomprehensible aspects of Arabic culture via the unnamed school where I teach (I refrain from saying Islamic culture because, 1) according to some Muslims, the faux pas I am about to relate is not universal, it is exclusive to Arabic Muslims, and, 2) I really don't need a fatwa declared against me, Salmon Rushdie style, any time in the near future). With that being said, allow me to set the scene for you...
Coming back from our winter holiday was tough for just about everyone at school. We all had traveled either home, or to some tropical locale to recharge a bit. It worked, but when our platoon of English teachers arrived back, we found our resentment and apathy was also renewed (yeah, I know, who knew that apathy could actually gain steam?). After the first week, we were all getting back into the routine, with hopefully a few improvements. Personally, I found that I was getting much less upset about student behavior. I don't know if it actually helped, but I instituted a new policy of recruiting Arabic speaking teachers to call my students' fathers when they misbehaved. 99% of the time, this resulted in them receiving moderate to severe beatings and spending much of the next day walking on eggshells, or, more accurately, limping. A fairly regular conversation would go thusly:
Me: "Mohamed (I have probably a dozen Mohameds), I'm writing your name down."
Mohamed: "Mr. Richard! Please no call my father!"
Me: "Well, maybe you shouldn't be such a douche-bag then and just sit in your seat quietly."
Mohamed: "He is crazy! He will beat me!"
Me: "I guess that's probably gonna suck for you. Is your father a large man? Maybe you should be quiet next time then."
Now, I know that by Western standards, this seems like a terrible, immoral, and damaging thing to do. In the West, you would be exactly right. I totally agree with you. However, this is most definitely not the West. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but it is a crazy, messed up land where throughout all strata of society, violence is officially condemned, but unofficially embraced. So, if you have a judgement about these things, save them for someone a little more naive and a lot less jaded.
About a week and a half into my new at-home beatings policy, I decided to make an example of one class and just completely lose my, pardon the aptly used swear, shit on them. This wasn't going to be out of anger. Certainly I am done with that. It was just going to be part of the lesson plan for the day. This class had been getting rather uppity of late, in spite of the beatings, so I thought they needed to be reminded of what "Crazy" Mr. Richard looks like. As luck would have it, two of my better students came into class, or more accurately rolled into class, fighting with each other. This was about all the cue I needed. I immediately slammed the door and began with the rear end kicking and name taking. I hauled kids up to the front of the class to scream in their ears. I pushed kids around. I insulted kids (and then if they didn't understand what being a "dick" meant, I had it translated to them). I took one student's chair and threw it to the ground while screaming at him to sit. When he did sit down, I quickly pushed him to the floor. The look of confusion on his face was a thing of beauty. Bear with me to the end here. The truly offending part is yet to come.
After about 15 minutes of violent posturing, I had the whole class silent except for one. A student who regularly talks out of turn, comes late, and is of a rather husky build. Earlier, I may have made some disparaging remarks about him eating all of his classroom materials, but this mockery was not enough to get his attention. I proceeded to walk slowly over to him, ask him if he needed something in his mouth to shut him up, like, food, or (quickly scanning the rather barren room for something) my shoe.
About half a second after I did this, I realized that it was a terrible, terrible mistake. The student didn't say a word and moved faster than I have ever seen him move out the door and to the principal's office. I knew he was going to file a report on me because students do that from time to time over here, due to a lack of trust in teachers. You see, showing your shoe (especially the bottom) to anyone over here is a major insult, probably worse than giving someone the middle finger. You can't even cross your legs comfortably in public. Not one of my students said a word when I instituted a campaign of fear and aggression as my classroom management plan. However, this "shoe incident," as it would later be called, was simply unacceptable.
The aforementioned story quickly circulated among my fellow teachers. When they learned that the offending teacher was actually one of their colleagues, I was met with cheers such as, "He walks among us!" and "I thought this was just an urban legend!" As flattering as their praise was, I was concerned about getting called in to a two hour lecture about how teachers are supposed to be better than this and how we should be sensitive to other cultures. Yeah, I can't say that I disagree with any of that, but students aren't supposed to be raging maniacs, so I think we can just call this one even.
I waited the entire next week to be reprimanded. Surely, if I could be written up for forgetting my laptop one time in the entire year, I would be written up for this. So I waited. Sunday. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday. The next Sunday. And then finally, today, a week and a half later, I was called in to address the situation. I had already written a report describing my side of the absurd story (which is not nearly as complete as this one). The gist of the meeting was that administration just wanted to make this terrible problem go away. Hold on. Just wait a second. So this is genuinely a problem? Students beating the tar out of each other, teachers beating students, classrooms that get destroyed, teachers that get pushed to the brink of sanity almost every day, these things aren't problems, but me holding my shoe in front of a student's face is?
I don't know what this all says about the culture here, but I know as long as this gulf in our understanding of each other exists, we will never see eye to eye. And as much as I'm not one to push my beliefs on someone else, it might be a good idea for them to meet us a little more than halfway on this one, because, at the end of the day, I definitely deserve some sort of punishment, but for a shoe? Really?
Coming back from our winter holiday was tough for just about everyone at school. We all had traveled either home, or to some tropical locale to recharge a bit. It worked, but when our platoon of English teachers arrived back, we found our resentment and apathy was also renewed (yeah, I know, who knew that apathy could actually gain steam?). After the first week, we were all getting back into the routine, with hopefully a few improvements. Personally, I found that I was getting much less upset about student behavior. I don't know if it actually helped, but I instituted a new policy of recruiting Arabic speaking teachers to call my students' fathers when they misbehaved. 99% of the time, this resulted in them receiving moderate to severe beatings and spending much of the next day walking on eggshells, or, more accurately, limping. A fairly regular conversation would go thusly:
Me: "Mohamed (I have probably a dozen Mohameds), I'm writing your name down."
Mohamed: "Mr. Richard! Please no call my father!"
Me: "Well, maybe you shouldn't be such a douche-bag then and just sit in your seat quietly."
Mohamed: "He is crazy! He will beat me!"
Me: "I guess that's probably gonna suck for you. Is your father a large man? Maybe you should be quiet next time then."
Now, I know that by Western standards, this seems like a terrible, immoral, and damaging thing to do. In the West, you would be exactly right. I totally agree with you. However, this is most definitely not the West. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but it is a crazy, messed up land where throughout all strata of society, violence is officially condemned, but unofficially embraced. So, if you have a judgement about these things, save them for someone a little more naive and a lot less jaded.
About a week and a half into my new at-home beatings policy, I decided to make an example of one class and just completely lose my, pardon the aptly used swear, shit on them. This wasn't going to be out of anger. Certainly I am done with that. It was just going to be part of the lesson plan for the day. This class had been getting rather uppity of late, in spite of the beatings, so I thought they needed to be reminded of what "Crazy" Mr. Richard looks like. As luck would have it, two of my better students came into class, or more accurately rolled into class, fighting with each other. This was about all the cue I needed. I immediately slammed the door and began with the rear end kicking and name taking. I hauled kids up to the front of the class to scream in their ears. I pushed kids around. I insulted kids (and then if they didn't understand what being a "dick" meant, I had it translated to them). I took one student's chair and threw it to the ground while screaming at him to sit. When he did sit down, I quickly pushed him to the floor. The look of confusion on his face was a thing of beauty. Bear with me to the end here. The truly offending part is yet to come.
After about 15 minutes of violent posturing, I had the whole class silent except for one. A student who regularly talks out of turn, comes late, and is of a rather husky build. Earlier, I may have made some disparaging remarks about him eating all of his classroom materials, but this mockery was not enough to get his attention. I proceeded to walk slowly over to him, ask him if he needed something in his mouth to shut him up, like, food, or (quickly scanning the rather barren room for something) my shoe.
About half a second after I did this, I realized that it was a terrible, terrible mistake. The student didn't say a word and moved faster than I have ever seen him move out the door and to the principal's office. I knew he was going to file a report on me because students do that from time to time over here, due to a lack of trust in teachers. You see, showing your shoe (especially the bottom) to anyone over here is a major insult, probably worse than giving someone the middle finger. You can't even cross your legs comfortably in public. Not one of my students said a word when I instituted a campaign of fear and aggression as my classroom management plan. However, this "shoe incident," as it would later be called, was simply unacceptable.
The aforementioned story quickly circulated among my fellow teachers. When they learned that the offending teacher was actually one of their colleagues, I was met with cheers such as, "He walks among us!" and "I thought this was just an urban legend!" As flattering as their praise was, I was concerned about getting called in to a two hour lecture about how teachers are supposed to be better than this and how we should be sensitive to other cultures. Yeah, I can't say that I disagree with any of that, but students aren't supposed to be raging maniacs, so I think we can just call this one even.
I waited the entire next week to be reprimanded. Surely, if I could be written up for forgetting my laptop one time in the entire year, I would be written up for this. So I waited. Sunday. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday. The next Sunday. And then finally, today, a week and a half later, I was called in to address the situation. I had already written a report describing my side of the absurd story (which is not nearly as complete as this one). The gist of the meeting was that administration just wanted to make this terrible problem go away. Hold on. Just wait a second. So this is genuinely a problem? Students beating the tar out of each other, teachers beating students, classrooms that get destroyed, teachers that get pushed to the brink of sanity almost every day, these things aren't problems, but me holding my shoe in front of a student's face is?
I don't know what this all says about the culture here, but I know as long as this gulf in our understanding of each other exists, we will never see eye to eye. And as much as I'm not one to push my beliefs on someone else, it might be a good idea for them to meet us a little more than halfway on this one, because, at the end of the day, I definitely deserve some sort of punishment, but for a shoe? Really?
