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[Noor]

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How much is spent on airfares, housing and other costs for teachers who may not make it past the first week of school? Too much.

So says Emirati sociologist Maryam Ismail in a recent editorial on the state of education in the UAE.

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Hard lessons that must be learnt in our schools

Maryam Ismail
July 04. 2009 8:13PM UAE
The National

So you walk through the school, everything looks nice, flowers and Mickey and Minnie Mouse greet you at the door, you even see a few Fullas, and you think: �I like this place.� But then up on the first floor you hear the frustrated voice of a tired teacher shouting: �I will break your head!� Oops, that wasn�t supposed to happen. The question is, why is it happening?

Teaching is an art, a science, a craft and a profession that needs talented, energetic and special people who love to change the world one person at a time. Also, teachers must possess a special sensitivity and understanding of the children they teach.

Last week�s latest results from the Dubai school inspections give us a view with blinkers, one that doesn�t assess exactly what teachers do, primarily because there wasn�t a proper fit from the beginning. There was a mismatch between the school inspectors and the schools they were assigned to. An American inspector might not understand why kids don�t learn all their times tables by third grade, while a British inspector may not get why sixth-grade students have to carry around a 300-page anthology of literature just to lean the basics of reading. The two curricula have totally different approaches to teaching young children to read: one teaches the letters and the sounds, the other teaches only the sounds. This might seem minor, but when it makes the difference between whether a school gets a good grade from the Dubai Schools Inspection Bureau (DSIB), it matters a lot.

Add to this the different ways of recruiting teachers, and you have potential problems for both school owners and their principals. Hiring teachers at the moment is too often trial and error, and that has to change. School owners have to be held accountable. Their licences should depend on proof that they have trained teachers and teachers� assistants, which means creating a system of accountability free of influence from the school owners, and perhaps even the Ministry of Education itself.

This could be as simple as adding a component of teacher training at our universities, and/or using the talent already present in the MoE to create smaller teacher training centres in each emirate. People already in the field can mentor and teach new teachers essential skills before they enter a classroom for the first time.

And the first thing is that you screen them. This might seem like a no-brainer, but beyond an e-mail interview it often doesn�t happen: many schools don�t know who�s coming until it�s too late and children lose precious learning and development time, which could harm them for years to come. Often, school administrators ask only two questions: �Do you think you can do the job?� and �When can you start?� All that is required is a warm body and a partially functioning brain. How much money is wasted on what I call tourist teachers: adventure seekers, listless wanderers and refugees from the West looking to get paid while having fun? How much is spent on airfares, housing and other costs for teachers who may not make it past the first week of school? Too much.

Recruiting locally means looking for people with at least a working knowledge of what it�s like to live and work in the Gulf. That�s the minimum. The next question, which is usually left out, is: �Can you teach?� OK, even without asking that question you might still find some great people. On the other hand, you might find someone who loves to read and enjoys boxing. Translation: they will sit at their desk reading instead of teaching, and won�t mind watching kids beat each other to a pulp. It sounds outrageous, but believe me, it happens.

Bars need to be raised and benchmarks set. This is what the DSIB is doing, and bravo to them, but more needs to be done. A testing standard for teachers, principals and specialists is required. I would take the US Praxis National Teaching Exam (NTE) or the UK�s Initial Teacher Training (ITT) preparation to gain Qualified Teacher Status (QTS). Neither is exactly the right fit for the UAE, but they�re a start.

The NTE has a clear core skills requirement on which teachers are tested. The UK programme focuses on literacy and numeracy. On top of that, what should the UAE require? Well, first of all a test of a teacher�s knowledge of UAE history, its people, culture and religion, partly because there is so much confusion over what it means to be an Emirati, to be a Muslim, or to live in the Middle East. Do they know what an Anglo-Indian is, for example? There also needs to be an understanding of and an ability to teach core curriculum standards in reading, literature, critical thinking, speaking and writing, maths, science and social studies. There should be a demonstration of classroom management, problem-solving skills and student assessment. These are areas in which training and improvement are desperately needed.

Finally, to understand how to teach their students, teachers have to have a basic understanding of Arabic to assess language problems with reading, phonics and sentence logic.

If we can work out the science of it then teachers can get to the art and master the craft of teaching and the kids here might just end up the smartest, brightest students in the world.

Maryam Ismail is a sociologist who divides her time between the UAE and the US

http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090705/OPINION/707049932/1080

[umzakaria]

Maryam Ismail is American, not Emirati.
A really pertinent piece, I have to say it goes both ways though, the teacher is never sure whether the 'fit' is going to be right for them either; the info they can glean from an 'phone/skype/f2f interview and internet research is not a substitute for walking around a school and talking to other teachers, (which is what you would do if you were applying for a teaching job in your own country). So whilst the bar needs to be raised for recruiting teachers, it also needs to be raised for those schools recruiting internationally.

[mousette]

Not to mention that not all of the "teacher tourists" are Western. I have been in the region for 5 years now, and have encountered many "teacher tourists" from Arab regions or other nationalities and cultures. I believe that consideration of not only the teachers, but the educational leaders, administrators, curricula, measurement of curricular outcomes and other aspects must also be considered as factors in the discussion of improving education for students. In addition, leaving the issue of students and parents out of consideration is problematic.

[ItsJustMe]

[carlen]

Iedit

[ItsJustMe]

[johnslat]

Dear carlen,
I've always liked what Chesterton wrote:

"The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land." ~G.K. Chesterton

Rather like the old Peace Corps slogan:

"Discover America; Leave it."

Of course, if you're not a USAer, fill in your own land.

Regards,
John