An Exercise in Disaster

Feeling that my life was not busy enough already, and definitely lacking interaction with children, I have started volunteering at a community center in Sweileh (where I live--but in the poor area) teaching a music class to children. At first, this seemed like an excellent idea. I would speak to children for several hours a day in Arabic (actually, twice a week for two hours a day) and I would be well on my way to changing the world.

Right?

Sunday (Friday is our Sabbath here) was my first day volunteering. Let me remind you that I had just returned to Amman after an exhausting week in Israel/Palestine the night before and probably hadn't gotten as much sleep as was needed.

The next morning, bright and early, I arrived at the community center, only to find out that instead of teaching at 9, as I had previously thought, I was teaching at 10.

No problem. I just sat and talked to the receptionist for an hour, praying to be able to teach my class and also trying to understand this dear woman who is Iraqi and was telling me about some of the problems she had faced in Iraq. (Side note: it is times like this that I am most frustrated with my lack of Arabic ability. Ordering food, going the wrong way in a taxi, getting lost--these are all minimal compared with times when people are almost weeping as they are telling you their life story and you miss the key verb about why they are weeping.)

At 10, I walked into my classroom. There were about 30 students, between the ages of 7 and 16, boys and girls (the girls, of course, sitting in the front and the boys all crowded into the back row) together (in the public schools in Jordan, they don't mix genders, so there are boy schools and girl schools).

After introductions all around, I started teaching some English songs. First I started with "Doe, a deer" from the Sound of Music to help teach them the scale (it worked for Maria, it should work for me, right?). Arabs have a much different scale/music style (I think they operate on 4th or 8th notes instead of half notes, like Western music) so I thought the scale would be best to start with.

Picture this: I am writing the words on the board in Arabic and English, teaching them the English, translating the meaning into Arabic, and trying to teach them the tune also. Meanwhile, each student has the need to go to the bathroom at least once an hour, which would not be a problem except they have to ask me each time (which is normal) and in order to get out, they have to either climb over the table or under the table (the classroom was set up with three long tables in a row, with no space behind to walk).

And, all the little boys in the back are definitely not singing and are definitely hitting each other and talking to each other loudly.

And picture me in the front, trying to keep the class under control.

In a different language.

It was kind of like in elementary school, when you had a substitute, and the whole class was bad. But think of how much worse it would have been if the substitute did not speak the language.

And that was me.

It was thrilling, to say the least.

To make matters worse (better?), one of the little girls in the class ran and told the administrators that the boys were being little pests, and she came in, yelled at them, and had the girls point out which boys were acting up. Then, she took all of the boys out, scolded them, and most of them went home, except for two which came back to class and had to apologize to me in front of everyone (in English, although I am not sure if that was part of their punishment or just a reflection of my bad Arabic), and then sat quitely the rest of class.

At the end of class, feeling like a failure, all of the little girls came up and kissed my cheeks (normal Middle Eastern practice) and told me they were excited for the next class, and one of the little boys who had been acting up came up to me and gave me a paper crane whose wings flapped (which he made) and which he had written on the wings, "I love teacher."

And the administrators asked me why I was only coming twice a week and not every day.

And then, as I was walking down the stairs from a pedestrian overpass going to catch a taxi the rest of the way to the university, I fell down the stairs. In front of a whole bunch of men who were staring at me at the bottom.

Self, great day!