“Do you think you can find your way back?” asked Mariam, a Palestinian woman from Bourj Al-Barajneh refugee camp who worked as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency’s Women’s Center Coordinator in the camp.
Mariam had just finished showing me and seven other American ex-pat teachers the way from the Women’s Center, which was on one side of the camp, to the city bus stop which was clear on the other side of the camp. Now it was time to turn around and find our way back.
As we stood at the opening of one of the many narrow alleyways that entered the refugee camp, I looked down at the make-shift map I had scribbled on a scrap piece of paper and said, “I’ll give it a try.”
Down into the maze I went keeping one eye on the alleys and the other on my little map. After a while, the alleys and forks all started to look alike, so I focused on the map, counting cross alleys, doorways and footsteps. A turn here, a flight of steps there. Is that the same cat? Couldn’t be. Wait, I recognize that graffiti. A few more turns, then a long straight-a-way, through a dark tunnel and before I knew it, there it was: the Women’s Center. One of the ex-pat teachers patted me on the back and said, “You really were a park ranger, weren’t you?!”
I heard about this volunteering opportunity through one of the other volunteers I worked with on the Qaderoon project. A teacher from one of the local private Beirut high schools had set up a meeting with Mariam and several of the ex-pat teachers to see if they could arrange English classes for some of the adults living in the refugee camp. Even though I wasn’t an actual teacher, they let me tag along. When we showed up for the meeting, we realized there were enough people wanting to get English tutoring that everyone of the teachers would have a class, including me. Since all of the teachers worked during the week, they all set their classes up for the same time on Saturdays. That way they could all commute down to the camp together in a minibus provided by the private school they worked for. And since I was a man of leisure, I was able to set my class up for during the week on the days I wasn’t teaching the 5th & 6th graders at Qaderoon. This allowed any of the adult students who couldn’t make it on the weekends to still be able to come to a class. This also meant that I would not be able to catch a ride in the private minibus with the rest of the teachers and would have to figure out how to get from my apartment to the camp via public transportation. Hence, the walk with Mariam to see where the city bus would be letting me off.
The bus ride, as it would turn out, would take about an hour to get from my neighborhood down to the refugee camp, followed by a 20 minute walk through the maze of the camp to get to the Women’s Center. After a couple of weeks of teaching at the Center, I got to where I no longer need the map to navigate my way through the camp and it only took me about 10 minutes or so.
The bus ride itself wasn’t necessarily long distance-wise, it was just that the bus moved incredibly slowly and would make multiple stops on nearly every block. Instead of having people wait at a bus stop every few blocks, people were just scattered along the city streets waiting for the bus. The bus would stop to pick up each one of them and no one would walk to where anyone else was waiting to reduce the number of stops. Frequently, the bus would stop to pick someone up on the street and then a hundred feet later, someone else would ring the bell to stop and get off. I guess when you’re paying 60 cents for a bus ride you want to make sure you don’t need to walk any further than you have to.
Once in a while, while walking through the camp to the Women’s Center, I would hear someone yell “hello” and turn to see one of the school children who I was teaching English to at Qaderoon waving at me. They’d run over to me and shake my hand or put their arm around me and walk with me for a while. It made me feel good to see those kids and to think that they still wanted to say hi to me after making them stay after school and read bizarre children’s stories.
Unlike Qaderoon, the teaching we would be doing at the Women’s Center was not part of a larger program and there was no oversight or guidance in what or how you taught. Qaderoon had a minimum amount of this guidance but at least there was someone there from the program to help out when your class devolved into a riot. Once the initial meeting was over, each of the teachers, and I, was in charge of figuring out how and what to teach in our own classes. This was easy enough, I’m sure, for the other 7 people who were professional teachers but for me, someone who barely made it through high school English myself, it was going to be a challenge. I spent endless hours online looking through English as a Second Language (ESL) websites trying to figure out what to do. And endless more hours borrowing, pirating and downright copying worksheets and stories from these online sites.
I figured I would start with the basics and spent a fair amount of time during the first few weeks just going over things on the dry erase board and running through grammar and sentence structure. I had 8 adults in my class, all of whom were women. Their ability to speak English varied from advanced down to non speaker. I came to realize that the biggest challenge was trying to go slow enough for the non English speakers without boring the more advanced students. Unfortunately, I wound up doing both and my classes ended up being geared towards the group of the middle. It was not uncommon for me to look over the class from the dry erase board and see some of the students writing notes, a couple with completely puzzled looks on their faces and a few who were chatting with each other to stave off the boredom. At one point, while covering different types of verb tenses, one of the advanced students asked, “Why would we use the Past Participle form of a verb when we could just as easily use the Past tense?” I won’t lie to you and tell you that I had an answer for her, what I can tell you is, that I quickly moved onto irregular verbs. I would then get hit with more unanswerable questions like, “Why is that verb irregular?”
Which I would answer, “Because it is an exception.”
Which would then be followed by, “Yes, but why is it that way?”
I considered telling the student that it was all the fault of the Brits, but thought better of it and moved onto Adverbs.
After a few weeks, the more advanced students and the non speakers dropped out and were replaced by others who fit more or less into the middle of the group. After that, there was very little continuity of students in the class. Each week that I would come in would bring new faces, which made following a set lesson plan difficult and giving homework impossible.
On occasion I would email one of the professional ex-pat teachers from the high school and ask advice. He would recommend trying to keep the students talking. I realized I was spending too much time at the board and decided to switch my strategy to having the students read stories out loud. I didn’t want to have them read children’s books since I felt they were more advanced than that but they weren’t ready for advanced literature. So I settled on some childhood to young adult short stories. Some of the stories I had them read were American Tall Tales, like “John Henry”, “Pecos Bill Rides a Tornado” and “The City Mouse & The Country Mouse”. After they all took turns reading I would review vocabulary with them. This was a lot harder than you would think. Especially with Pecos Bill, where everything in the story is fantasy. It was surprisingly difficult to explain vocabulary words when the students don’t understand any of the synonyms or other vocabulary words you are using to describe the word in the story. I ended up resorting to drawings and charades. Try drawing or acting out the word “Makeshift” or “Slave” let alone why Pecos Bill would be purposefully on top of a tornado. I’m pretty sure the women in my class thought I was nuts.
One of the best days of teaching at the Women’s Center came on a day when I could tell no one wanted to read another story about Jack and the Beanstalk or the Tortoise and the Hare. After laboring our way through a story, the women just started asking me questions about life where I grew up and I in return asked them about their lives. I found out that a lot of women there get married at an age that we would think of as young, like late teens, early twenties. I found out that both women and men wear engagement rings on their right ring fingers and then switch it over to their left hand after the wedding. I found out that the English classes being taught in the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) schools, (the only schools in the refugee camps) were being taught by teachers who were not native English speakers and that classes consisted of a teacher telling you about English in Arabic. One of the women said, “We get about 10 words in Arabic to every half word of English”. Apparently the Norwegian People’s Aid School, a non-profit in Beirut, is the school that teaches the best English to the refugees that can get in. When I asked if there was anyone they could practice speaking English to at home they all told me that English was discouraged from being spoken at home by older family members. I also found out that one of the women is really into Mickey Mouse, so much so that she wears a big 4 inch diameter silhouette of Mickey’s head on a necklace that hangs down like a rapper’s jewelry over the front of her head scarf and Hijab covering. I learned that many extended families live together in small apartments and many apartments share bathrooms with other neighbors. I learned that even if you were born in a refugee camp in Lebanon and so were your parents, and you know you’ll never leave that camp or see where your grandparents were from, you still identify with where your family originated and refer to yourself as “Palestinian”.
That day, as I snaked my way back out of the camp and then took my long bus ride home, I couldn’t help but think about how my life differed so much from the students I was teaching. I couldn’t help but think about how the United Nations (which our tax dollars fund), volunteers and non-profits are left to clean up after and try to fix Israel’s mess and Lebanon’s neglect. How long ago, these ladies’ grandparents fled Palestine as educated people or people with trades and skills and now, 60 years later, due to some horrible legal policy they have been de-educated generation by generation. And even if they could get a proper education, they could not get a job since Lebanese law states that many of the country’s jobs and the right to own property are forbidden to “people who do not carry citizenship issued by a recognized state.” And if you’re a refugee, you fit conveniently into this category. It’s so very targeted, so very prejudiced. It made me realize that while many people support what Israel does and many people turn a blind eye to Lebanon’s legal policies, and think for whatever reason it’s all for the best, they shouldn’t be surprised when the people in these refugee camps get pissed off and retaliate violently or (gasp) back the politicians from Hezbollah on election day this year.
As for me, I will be doing my little part by deciding whether to bring “Paul Bunyan” or “Johnny Appleseed” for next week’s reading.
Mariam had just finished showing me and seven other American ex-pat teachers the way from the Women’s Center, which was on one side of the camp, to the city bus stop which was clear on the other side of the camp. Now it was time to turn around and find our way back.
As we stood at the opening of one of the many narrow alleyways that entered the refugee camp, I looked down at the make-shift map I had scribbled on a scrap piece of paper and said, “I’ll give it a try.”
Down into the maze I went keeping one eye on the alleys and the other on my little map. After a while, the alleys and forks all started to look alike, so I focused on the map, counting cross alleys, doorways and footsteps. A turn here, a flight of steps there. Is that the same cat? Couldn’t be. Wait, I recognize that graffiti. A few more turns, then a long straight-a-way, through a dark tunnel and before I knew it, there it was: the Women’s Center. One of the ex-pat teachers patted me on the back and said, “You really were a park ranger, weren’t you?!”
I heard about this volunteering opportunity through one of the other volunteers I worked with on the Qaderoon project. A teacher from one of the local private Beirut high schools had set up a meeting with Mariam and several of the ex-pat teachers to see if they could arrange English classes for some of the adults living in the refugee camp. Even though I wasn’t an actual teacher, they let me tag along. When we showed up for the meeting, we realized there were enough people wanting to get English tutoring that everyone of the teachers would have a class, including me. Since all of the teachers worked during the week, they all set their classes up for the same time on Saturdays. That way they could all commute down to the camp together in a minibus provided by the private school they worked for. And since I was a man of leisure, I was able to set my class up for during the week on the days I wasn’t teaching the 5th & 6th graders at Qaderoon. This allowed any of the adult students who couldn’t make it on the weekends to still be able to come to a class. This also meant that I would not be able to catch a ride in the private minibus with the rest of the teachers and would have to figure out how to get from my apartment to the camp via public transportation. Hence, the walk with Mariam to see where the city bus would be letting me off.
The bus ride, as it would turn out, would take about an hour to get from my neighborhood down to the refugee camp, followed by a 20 minute walk through the maze of the camp to get to the Women’s Center. After a couple of weeks of teaching at the Center, I got to where I no longer need the map to navigate my way through the camp and it only took me about 10 minutes or so.
The bus ride itself wasn’t necessarily long distance-wise, it was just that the bus moved incredibly slowly and would make multiple stops on nearly every block. Instead of having people wait at a bus stop every few blocks, people were just scattered along the city streets waiting for the bus. The bus would stop to pick up each one of them and no one would walk to where anyone else was waiting to reduce the number of stops. Frequently, the bus would stop to pick someone up on the street and then a hundred feet later, someone else would ring the bell to stop and get off. I guess when you’re paying 60 cents for a bus ride you want to make sure you don’t need to walk any further than you have to.
Once in a while, while walking through the camp to the Women’s Center, I would hear someone yell “hello” and turn to see one of the school children who I was teaching English to at Qaderoon waving at me. They’d run over to me and shake my hand or put their arm around me and walk with me for a while. It made me feel good to see those kids and to think that they still wanted to say hi to me after making them stay after school and read bizarre children’s stories.
Unlike Qaderoon, the teaching we would be doing at the Women’s Center was not part of a larger program and there was no oversight or guidance in what or how you taught. Qaderoon had a minimum amount of this guidance but at least there was someone there from the program to help out when your class devolved into a riot. Once the initial meeting was over, each of the teachers, and I, was in charge of figuring out how and what to teach in our own classes. This was easy enough, I’m sure, for the other 7 people who were professional teachers but for me, someone who barely made it through high school English myself, it was going to be a challenge. I spent endless hours online looking through English as a Second Language (ESL) websites trying to figure out what to do. And endless more hours borrowing, pirating and downright copying worksheets and stories from these online sites.
I figured I would start with the basics and spent a fair amount of time during the first few weeks just going over things on the dry erase board and running through grammar and sentence structure. I had 8 adults in my class, all of whom were women. Their ability to speak English varied from advanced down to non speaker. I came to realize that the biggest challenge was trying to go slow enough for the non English speakers without boring the more advanced students. Unfortunately, I wound up doing both and my classes ended up being geared towards the group of the middle. It was not uncommon for me to look over the class from the dry erase board and see some of the students writing notes, a couple with completely puzzled looks on their faces and a few who were chatting with each other to stave off the boredom. At one point, while covering different types of verb tenses, one of the advanced students asked, “Why would we use the Past Participle form of a verb when we could just as easily use the Past tense?” I won’t lie to you and tell you that I had an answer for her, what I can tell you is, that I quickly moved onto irregular verbs. I would then get hit with more unanswerable questions like, “Why is that verb irregular?”
Which I would answer, “Because it is an exception.”
Which would then be followed by, “Yes, but why is it that way?”
I considered telling the student that it was all the fault of the Brits, but thought better of it and moved onto Adverbs.
After a few weeks, the more advanced students and the non speakers dropped out and were replaced by others who fit more or less into the middle of the group. After that, there was very little continuity of students in the class. Each week that I would come in would bring new faces, which made following a set lesson plan difficult and giving homework impossible.
On occasion I would email one of the professional ex-pat teachers from the high school and ask advice. He would recommend trying to keep the students talking. I realized I was spending too much time at the board and decided to switch my strategy to having the students read stories out loud. I didn’t want to have them read children’s books since I felt they were more advanced than that but they weren’t ready for advanced literature. So I settled on some childhood to young adult short stories. Some of the stories I had them read were American Tall Tales, like “John Henry”, “Pecos Bill Rides a Tornado” and “The City Mouse & The Country Mouse”. After they all took turns reading I would review vocabulary with them. This was a lot harder than you would think. Especially with Pecos Bill, where everything in the story is fantasy. It was surprisingly difficult to explain vocabulary words when the students don’t understand any of the synonyms or other vocabulary words you are using to describe the word in the story. I ended up resorting to drawings and charades. Try drawing or acting out the word “Makeshift” or “Slave” let alone why Pecos Bill would be purposefully on top of a tornado. I’m pretty sure the women in my class thought I was nuts.
One of the best days of teaching at the Women’s Center came on a day when I could tell no one wanted to read another story about Jack and the Beanstalk or the Tortoise and the Hare. After laboring our way through a story, the women just started asking me questions about life where I grew up and I in return asked them about their lives. I found out that a lot of women there get married at an age that we would think of as young, like late teens, early twenties. I found out that both women and men wear engagement rings on their right ring fingers and then switch it over to their left hand after the wedding. I found out that the English classes being taught in the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) schools, (the only schools in the refugee camps) were being taught by teachers who were not native English speakers and that classes consisted of a teacher telling you about English in Arabic. One of the women said, “We get about 10 words in Arabic to every half word of English”. Apparently the Norwegian People’s Aid School, a non-profit in Beirut, is the school that teaches the best English to the refugees that can get in. When I asked if there was anyone they could practice speaking English to at home they all told me that English was discouraged from being spoken at home by older family members. I also found out that one of the women is really into Mickey Mouse, so much so that she wears a big 4 inch diameter silhouette of Mickey’s head on a necklace that hangs down like a rapper’s jewelry over the front of her head scarf and Hijab covering. I learned that many extended families live together in small apartments and many apartments share bathrooms with other neighbors. I learned that even if you were born in a refugee camp in Lebanon and so were your parents, and you know you’ll never leave that camp or see where your grandparents were from, you still identify with where your family originated and refer to yourself as “Palestinian”.
That day, as I snaked my way back out of the camp and then took my long bus ride home, I couldn’t help but think about how my life differed so much from the students I was teaching. I couldn’t help but think about how the United Nations (which our tax dollars fund), volunteers and non-profits are left to clean up after and try to fix Israel’s mess and Lebanon’s neglect. How long ago, these ladies’ grandparents fled Palestine as educated people or people with trades and skills and now, 60 years later, due to some horrible legal policy they have been de-educated generation by generation. And even if they could get a proper education, they could not get a job since Lebanese law states that many of the country’s jobs and the right to own property are forbidden to “people who do not carry citizenship issued by a recognized state.” And if you’re a refugee, you fit conveniently into this category. It’s so very targeted, so very prejudiced. It made me realize that while many people support what Israel does and many people turn a blind eye to Lebanon’s legal policies, and think for whatever reason it’s all for the best, they shouldn’t be surprised when the people in these refugee camps get pissed off and retaliate violently or (gasp) back the politicians from Hezbollah on election day this year.
As for me, I will be doing my little part by deciding whether to bring “Paul Bunyan” or “Johnny Appleseed” for next week’s reading.
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