During week one at our "new teacher orientation" I knew that I had landed in a pretty special school with some excellent people. Our school's leader, Tom Baker, outlined his 3 expectations for everything that goes on here. They are as follows:
# 1 Kid's needs are first priority
# 2 Staff must be supported, and everything that staff wants that supports priority #1 will be seriously considered
# 3 We must be in partnership with the parents, but their needs are third priority.
This philosophy was demonstrated before the students even arrived when, during week one, Tom's wife noted that the carpet in my room was looking pretty bad and if I wanted new tiles or to have the walls painted or anything made for my room, I just needed to ask. She said it might not get done until Christmas break, but the maintenance staff would get to it as soon as they could. So, I asked. Within the week, my classroom was being totally painted in the color of my choice! The carpet would have to wait as flooring was in the long-term plans for the whole school, but did I want an area rug? How about pillows or beanbags? Tom noticed the curtains in the room needed to be replaced, so new ones were made. I asked for a bookshelf that would fit under my bulletin board - so they built one for me. Oh, and the whole school is getting brand new furniture, student and teacher desks by October. Tom showed us the new chairs they had picked out - all in Falcon blue (the school's colors). These have all been paid for by the school's PTA group which puts on a very fancy gala each year to raise money.
The school itself is over 90 years old. It was originally built as a respite compound for Presbyterian Missionaries who worked in Cairo and other areas closer to the desert. They would come here and relax while enjoying the breeze and view of the Mediterranean. Since then, the city has grown tremendously and you can no longer see the ocean from the school. The missionaries then turned the school into a boarding school, mostly for the children of the missionaries. Later the school became as it is now, and the boarding areas were turned in to housing for foreign hire teachers. We are also a US consulate school, meaning we do get some funding from the US government. Most recently, our school was given a security grant, so the entrance is being given a new look, we have many security cameras that have now been installed, a new fire-fighting system is being installed, and security guards watch the school 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The elementary building is the newest building on campus. There are 4 middle school classrooms above the auditorium. The high school building is 3 stories around a courtyard. My classroom is on the second floor. There are two apartment buildings, one of which has many of the management offices and cafeteria in it. There is also a building for finance and superintendent office and board rooms along with the superintendent's apartment. In addition, there are buildings for maintenance, art and music, nurse, exercise facilities, and canteen.
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| High school from courtyard |
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| View from my classroom on second floor of high school |
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| Elementary Building and soccer field |
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| School pool |
Professional Development is encouraged. Every month there is at least one half-day and sometimes two where the school offers professional development. Often the classes are taught by current staff (for example, I have been asked to do two presentations this year during the PD time), but sometimes (like tonight) people are brought in from places like Norway or elsewhere to provide some PD. The school also sends out reminders and suggestions of various PD. As far as I know, teachers are able to go almost anywhere to participate in some of the world's top PD.
Positivity is encouraged. We are fortunate that the staff seems very supportive of each other. Most of the staff lives in one of two apartment complexes on campus. It seems that with working and living so close to each other that people might get sick of each other or start talking behind other's backs or causing other types of drama - but if that goes on, I am oblivious to it. We live across the street from the school and have the whole floor of an apartment building to ourselves, so we are better able to avoid annoying any of our colleagues - but seriously, everyone seems so nice. One teacher has agreed to offer yoga lessons, another has started a book club, we have been included in some impromptu outings with other staff - we are probably the worse of the bunch at remembering to ask others to socialize - something we will have to work on!
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| Little gift given to all the teachers on the first day. At times, positive messages are left on our desks along with pieces of chocolate. |
Sports and academic teams here travel abroad for matches. Every teacher is asked to sign up to lead at least one after-school student activity or team per year. I have signed up for "Academic Games" (it sounds like Quiz Bowl, but I don't know for sure yet!) Last year, one of the teachers had her students do an online Book Club with a class from the USA. At the end of the year, her class traveled to the USA to meet the other class!
Healthy meals made with fresh ingredients are provided for staff (and spouses) three times a day. From time to time, they also provide special meals, poolside, served with wine.
Social activities are planned - Once a month there is a resident's meeting. The elementary principal invited the entire staff to her beach house on the Mediterranean. Every Saturday the staff has the option to go to the "City Center" - a huge shopping complex. The weekend that we were gone to Kenya, the new staff was treated to dinner at the Greek Club, and given a tour of the many important historical sites in Alexandria. The Operations Director invited the whole staff to his beautiful villa for a barbeque and swim. Besides that, residents set up impromptu social activities.
Unlike the fear-based evaluations meant to punish teachers in Michigan, we have been told that evaluations are meant for helping teachers refine their craft. Evaluations are seen as learning tools, and teachers are encouraged to self-evaluate their teaching and work with other teachers to improve their skills. Professional development is encouraged and supported, and teachers are reminded to seek out excellent professional development wherever they can find it, worldwide. This idea of evaluations being for growth opportunities rather than strictly used as punishment is refreshing. This is the type of evaluation system that we had in Michigan in the 1990's that helped me to love and grow as a teacher. It is the kind of evaluation system that makes sense. Unfortunately, it is not the type of evaluation system that is now being used in most public schools in the USA right now, and that is very unfortunate. Good teachers are leaving the public schools in part because they have a punitive evaluation system held over their head. "Put on a dog and pony show for the observation so the administrator can check off all the proper boxes to give you a decent rating" "We have a new evaluation system this year, so if you were highly effective last year, don't expect to be this year. The public does not think we can have so many highly effective teachers, so this one is made so it is nearly impossible to be highly effective" It's stressful. Anxiety is high. It does nothing to make you WANT to improve as a teacher since you know that with each new evaluation system it will become more and more impossible to get high marks. The people who are elected to our School Boards, the ones who are supposed to be there for the good of our children, should be fighting to get back to a model of evaluating teachers with the main priority and goal to help their teachers improve and grow, not to be used primarily as punishment and as a way to try to force teachers to take on more and more responsibility. We want better teachers, not scared teachers, right? Shouldn't the superintendents use their collective power to say NO to the politicians and powers that are pushing such nonsense systems? Shouldn't parents be demanding this type of evaluation system for teachers? I'm not being overly dramatic - here is a newspaper article that came out yesterday. Survey says, Michigan Teachers Demoralized
While the school uses the common core as a general guideline, teachers are free to be as creative as they would like and do not have the crazy paperwork and checklist that teachers had to do to prove they were following the CC in Michigan. Students are evaluated with the NWEA Maps once a year and the Fountas and Pinnell once a year. Neither test is so long that it makes children cry. Funding is not tied to the test results, but results are used to drive programming.
So, how about the nitty-gritty facts and figures? OK, here it is:
School Size: Approximately 320 students
Student make-up: Mostly Egyptian students, especially in the elementary school. Most have English as a second (or third) language, but are supposed to be fluent in English upon entering the school. Because the Egyptian pound is so low right now, and Schutz is an American school and parents must pay tuition in American dollars, only the wealthiest of families can send their children to our school. One seasoned teacher put it in perspective for me when she said, "You have to realize that there is a very real possibility that one of the students in this school may someday be the leader of Egypt."
Class size: Between 12-20 students., pre-K (3 year olds) through 12th grade. K-5 teachers each have one full-time arabic and English speaking instructional aide in their class. 6th-8th grade teachers share one instructional aide. There are 2 classes each of k-3rd grade, one for 4th-12th. The school is working on increasing their enrollment and adding one class per year (next year should have 2 classes of k-4th grade) To accommodate more teachers, 6 brand new 2-bedroom apartments are being built on top of the elementary school.
School Week: Sunday through Thursday because the Holy Day is on Friday. Half-days are scheduled once or sometimes twice a month to allow for Professional Development time.
Instructional Day: 8am-4pm. The elementary school operates on 6 day rotation with approximately 45 minute class periods. Students have recess, art, music, pe, and arabic classes outside of their general ed classroom. The Middle School and High School operates on 90 minute block scheduling in the mornings, rotating between "blue days" and "white days". Afternoon classes are 45 minutes long. Every teacher has between between 2-4 periods of preparation each day. Classes end at 3pm, but on Sundays, Mondays, and Wednesdays, teachers are to stay from 3-4 to offer tutoring to students or to coach a team of some sort. After 4pm, students are to leave campus and the pool, gym, workout room, etc is again available to the staff. On Tuesdays, teachers have staff meetings from 3-5pm. I have to try to keep track of all of the different schedules, including things such as "Meet every "Day 2" at 10am with so-and-so, unless it is a Sunday, because every Sunday is a meeting with this other group. Oh, and if a half day falls in the schedule, it is neither white nor blue, but I am not sure if it is considered part of the six-day rotation or not. It is very confusing and I am doing my best to keep track of everything, but I've already made mistakes!
Instructional Year: 177 student contact days
Support Staff - Besides the administration (two principals and one superintendent) and secretaries, our school has a Curriculum director, a school nurse, a school counselor, an English Language Learner teacher, two technology integration staff members, and me (Learning Support Coordinator/Teacher)
Technology - Schutz has 1:1 Chromebooks for grades 6-12, and about 1:2 Chromebooks k-5 (4 Chromebook carts are located in the elementary building) My understanding is that we are the first school in Egypt to have 1:1 technology. Every class has projectors and document cameras. The amount of technology at our school was no easy feat. First of all, you need to understand that power outages in Egypt are quite common. Off campus, the commercial internet that is available is very slow (like at our apartment). Somehow, someway, our brilliant technology director, Scott Tombleson was able to navigate all of this and really brought our school years forward in technology from where they were just 3 years ago (from my understanding). The school's internet is at least 10 times faster than it is at our apartment. In addition, just importing that many computers into the country took a lot of paperwork and permits- cost a lot in import fees, and then the laptops were held up in customs while they got sprayed to "debug them"! (I guess they take that "computer virus" thing quite literally! All classrooms and apartments have wifi - and because the buildings all have concrete walls, setting up the wifi was amazingly complicated, too. The decision was made to only allow Chromebooks, and to be a 100% google school. Many other schools are going with a bring your own device system - but the issue with this is that the teacher then has to try to navigate all kinds of platforms when issues come up. If everyone has the exact same device and uses the same apps, then when problems come up, someone in class will know that system and that device and be able to help. Quite a smart approach, in my opinion. Unfortunately, the same approach is not taken when it comes to a streamlined place for grades and homework. I do not know why it was chosen, but the gradebook program that is used is the most difficult one to navigate that I have ever seen - and I have seen programs come and go since schools first got computers and grading programs! Supposedly our online gradebook is the place where teachers need to go to find parent and student contact information, to write emails, and to put in grades - but they can also leave homework reminders there as well. For my position, where I need to keep track of the progress and homework of many students, it would be okay if all of the information could be found on this one program, even though it is difficult to manage. However, that is not the case. Since I am not the student or the teacher, I have been unable to see how the students grades or missing homework. In addition, most teachers record their homework assignments on other websites, so I need to keep track of where each teacher posts their stuff. I feel like this stems from a school history where everything has just been through word of mouth. When I arrived and wanted to find out information about students, I assumed there would be cumulative folders for each kid, kept in a central location - where all report cards, assessment results, student work samples, parent contact information, psychologist reports, OT/PT reports could be found. Instead, for each kid I inquired about, I was told "Just talk to the teacher they had the year before", or "Files? Oh, just ask their teacher - they should probably have something" or some other such answer which would have me chasing my tail all over the school to try to find any data that might be available on the 20 kids I was told were the highest priority concerns. Hopefully that is one area I can improve upon to make it easier to find data on students in the future.
Special Education Needs - By policy, the school has not accepted students with disabilities in the past because they did not have any special education program or services. Even today, it would be challenging to accept anyone with a physical disability because there are stairs everywhere and no elevators! Certainly Egypt is very behind when it comes to making anything accessible. Within the school, very few kids have a professional diagnosis of a learning disability or ADHD, but it is quite clear that many students would benefit from getting a diagnosis and services. Unfortunately, this is a touchy subject in Egypt. It is my understanding that in the past in Egypt, if a child was born with a disability of any kind, all of their legal paperwork was stamped "defective" and that person was never allowed to attend school, drive a car, get married, or have a job. While this is certainly not the case today, that fear is still present. For some families, there is a shame associated with having a child with a disability of any kind. There is a superstition, even among the well-educated, that having a disabled child means that you have been cursed in some way. Thank-goodness this is quickly changing among the younger parents, but it has impacted how special education services are approached at this point. I did not expect to be told that my communications with some parents would need to be carefully worded - that just the idea that a special education teacher might call them could make them very upset. I have found that talking in terms of learning support services that can be offered has been helpful, and once a parent understands that their child is going to get more attention and help, they are usually very pleased. I am not one to recommend talking to a doctor about medication to help a child focus unless their focus issues are clearly impacting their ability to learn, even with the best accommodations. However, I know that conversation is coming and it is a much harder conversation to have here in Egypt with a parent than it would have been in Michigan. There is no speech and language teacher here, yet we are quite sure we have students who would qualify. So, we do the best we can with what we have available to us.
Culture - Egypt is a very nocturnal society. Probably because of the heat, people wait until the sun goes down to go out. Therefore, going out to eat or shop happens after 8pm, weddings start between 10pm and midnight. I stopped at a pharmacy to buy a scale and asked how long they would be open - 3am! Anyways, all this night-life takes a toll on children who have to be at school by 8am (some travel for over an hour to get to school!). Some parents sleep in while their children are woken up by their nannies and taken to school by their drivers - and then they are very sleepy in school. This is a very socially verbal society as well. Teachers are challenged to find ways to teach kids when it is appropriate and not appropriate to talk. Yes, this is true of children worldwide, but it is taken to a whole new level here in Egypt. Though I have yet to go to the movies here in Egypt, those who have told me that it is not worth it. Egyptian adults will talk through a whole movie - even taking phone calls while the movie is going on - loud enough that it is impossible to enjoy the movie. In general, more children here enjoy talking with adults than children I have encountered in Michigan. They don't have that "I'm too cool to be seen talking to a teacher" complex that is common in the USA. The children are also very sweet and worry about the same things that kids worldwide worry about. When walking through the elementary school I read student posters that said things like: "I want kids to like me" " I hope that we learn to be kind to each other" "I want to be a better student" Most Egyptians tend to have great respect for teachers, especially if they have a lot of experience (I don't want to call myself "old") Each time I say how long I have been teaching I hear a bit of a gasp from parents and they usually tell me how genuinely happy they are that I have decided to come to their school to teach. They seem to listen so intently and hang on my every word - which makes me feel a bit self-conscious about what I say. ( I am not the most eloquent speaker - often mixing up my words or totally blanking on what I want to say, or remembering a great piece of advice 5 minutes after they walk away. ) The other part of the school culture is club memberships - many of the families are members of the local sports club, as well as many other clubs. Some kids go to the sports club from right after school until bedtime. At the club they can be on a golf team, swim team, equestrian team, soccer team, etc. There are also many teams at the school, especially at the middle school and high school level. Some of the kids are overscheduled - but this is not much different than kids in the USA today.
So, what did I miss? If there is anything else related to the school that you are interested in knowing, please leave me a message in the comments section and I will try to answer your questions. You can leave questions anonymously, too - no need to add your name! (unless you want to!)
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