And today's guest speaker is...

This spring I found myself being a guest speaker at three different schools here in Beirut. At the first school I was a ringer since it was one of Amy’s American Literature classes at the university. This semester Amy is teaching a class she created called, “The American Wilderness.” It basically covers ideas of American wilderness as interpreted through American writers ranging from Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden” to John Krakauer’s “Into the Wild”. Part of the class focused on national parks in the US and what better way to expose the students to the national park service than to make them listen to the stories of a bitter, old, crotchety former park ranger from Alaska: me! Amy had each of the students submit a question they wanted answered in regards to the US National Parks or land management in the US before I came to speak to the class.
Many of the questions the students in Beirut asked were similar to questions that I would get from students and visitors to the parks in the United States, such as how has the management of the national parks changed over the years; why do some park rangers carry guns and what can be done about over visitation. These questions are fairly easy to answer. Many of the questions also showed how the students here, just like those in the US, struggle with what wilderness is and why we need to protect it. But then there were a handful of questions that gave me some insight into how things are different here in Lebanon and the Middle East. Questions like: what type of heavy artillery do the park rangers in the US use? Or, if someone were illegally picking a flower and you shot them what would you give as your justification? Bizarre as these questions may seem, they would not seem so strange after spending some time here in Lebanon. Let me explain. To start with, the police in Lebanon do not wear police uniforms like we are used to seeing in the US. They wear the gray, black and white urban camouflage outfits we are used to seeing on soldiers who are engaged in urban warfare. Also, the police here rarely have a hand gun and instead carry an M-16 rifle (the ones you see soldiers going into battle with) or Kalashnikov assault rifles. The police carry these rifles openly as they walk down busy, crowded streets often times with their fingers on the triggers, swinging the gun carelessly back and forth as if it were a loaf of bread. And there are a lot of police here. One day, on my bus ride back from teaching at the refugee camp, we were stuck in traffic due to the police dealing with someone at an intersection. When the guy made a run for it, about six police officers shouldered their rifles and opened fire down the crowded street at the guy. Everyone on the bus ducked way down and the bus driver floored it through the intersection. I never saw the result of this gunfight but would lay odds that a lot of innocent people got hurt that day. It’s easy to see that the police here do not have much training.
Add to that, at most major intersections in the city you will find a group of Lebanese soldiers dressed in the traditional green camouflage uniforms, also carrying rifles, except that they are usually standing around an armored personnel carrier or a tank. The tank is usually surrounded by walls of sand bags and there is always a soldier at the ready of the tank’s or the personnel carriers’ 50 caliber machine gun. Many of the major roads in and out of the city have army run roadblocks on them. Initially it’s unnerving but after a few months of it you barely even notice. So it’s not surprising that the students here in Beirut have an image in their heads of park rangers patrolling through the campground on a tank, running down delinquents who litter or let their dogs run off leash.
All in all the students seemed genuinely interested in the discussion and as expected, there wasn’t enough time to cover all the questions the students had for me. Some of the students stayed after class to ask me some more. After everyone had finally left, the last remaining student asked me how I like the national park lands of Lebanon and then, after a quick look around to make sure none of her classmates could hear, she said, “I would love to come to the US and camp because I’m still a Scout!”
My next guest speaking opportunity came in a roundabout way. An acquaintance of mine who lives here in Beirut had heard about me teaching English at the refugee camp and told me that I should go and check out an elementary school that friends of hers ran. The school, which was called “Marouj” or “Greenfield” School, was located in one of the Beirut neighborhoods near the refugee camp that I taught at. I set up a meeting with one of the school’s owners and asked if I could have a tour of the school. The owner, a Lebanese woman named Rana, said she would be glad to give me a tour and tell me about the history of the school but asked me to bring a resume with me when I came. She then went on to “warn” me that the students at the school were all Shia; in other words, were all from the Islamic minority group known as Shi’a or Shi’ite. This struck me as a strange thing to say since a large number of people in Lebanon and the Middle East are Shia and they are, after all, just children.
After getting a tour of the school, Rana told me that she was looking to hire teachers who were native English speakers. She said that though I did not really have any teaching experience or training she was willing to give me a “trial” teaching day in which I could substitute teach a class of third graders to evaluate my ability to teach. Always up for a challenge, I said “sure.” I asked Rana if I could see the lesson plan of the teacher I would be substituting for but was told that the teachers at the school didn’t use lesson plans. She told me to do half the class on adjectives and the other half on reading comprehension and handed me a copy of a poem about an astronaut going to the moon. While this seemed strange to me, I figured I would still give it a try because, heck, how hard could it be to teach a class of third graders who don’t speak English as their first language! Well, I was about to find out.
When I returned a week later, I brought with me my worksheets on adjectives that I had used teaching the children at the refugee camp. I made copies of the astronaut poem and was ready to go. When I walked into the class, the children were already in there sitting down and listening to another teacher talk to them. There were about 25 students, all wearing blue and white school uniforms. When the other teacher announced that I would be the substitute for the day, the children all perked up in their seats with smiles on their faces. They looked SO excited that you’d think they were just told they were going to Disneyland.
I started off with the poem and had each one of them take turns reading a verse. When they were done I started asking reading comprehension questions to see if they understood what they had read. I was surprised and how many of the kids raised their hands. I would learn quickly, though, that just like my students at the refugee camp, there was a disparity in the abilities of the students to speak English. Some were as fluent as any American third grader while others were struggling with the language. I also found out quickly that not all the students were raising their hands to answer my questions. Some were raising their hands to ask me questions, especially this one boy who was sitting in the first row. He spoke English well but his thoughts were obviously somewhere else. He raised his hand for every single question and every time I called on him to answer a question, he would instead ask me a question. I felt like I had been set up. That maybe this kid had been paid off to break me. One time he asked, in reference to the astronaut poem, why we could see the moon at night but not during the day. Keep in mind, I’m being evaluated on teaching English, not science and the owner of the school is sitting in the back of the class taking notes the whole time. Though it wasn’t English related and we were running behind schedule, I felt it important to answer the kid’s question. I also didn’t think it was healthy for me to tell him not to ask such questions. I answered his questions and immediately noticed the owner jotting down notes in her pad. Damn, the kid trapped me, I thought. One time he asked me if I liked Adidas sportswear and another time he asked me if I considered metal to be gray or silver! He was getting the best of me and I noticed half way through the class that I was sweating. The teaching was tough. It seemed really difficult to get the concepts and thoughts through to the children, not to mention I felt like I was always way behind on what we were covering especially when I found myself answering completely unrelated questions. I barely got into adjectives by the time the bell rang. I felt like I had just gone 13 rounds with George Foreman. Surprisingly, once class was dismissed, all the children rushed up to me to ask excitedly if I was going to be their new teacher. It was so sweet. I told them we would have to wait and see.
After the class, I had a follow up meeting with the owner where she gave me my evaluation. When asked, I told her I didn’t think it went so well. She said that she thought I spent too much time answering children’s questions that had nothing to do with English. I agreed and thanked her for the opportunity to teach the class and got ready to head for the door when she offered me a job. What?! Yes, you heard me right, she offered me a job. She said that while she could see that I had no formal training as a teacher; this was the most talking she had heard the students do in English than with any other teacher. Which isn’t surprising since all of the other teachers are Lebanese and English is their second or third language. She said she wanted me to teach third grade English for a few hours a week, like maybe 15 hours or so. She told me to think about how much I wanted to get paid (this is how deals are done in Lebanon, they don’t tell you a salary, you tell them a number and they work you down) and to set up a meeting with her brother who handles the business end of things.
In a daze I worked my way back home trying to think if I wanted this job or not and what number I was supposed to tell them I wanted to get paid. I knew the pay would be really, really low, as in not just below US minimum wage but probably just enough to cover cab fare to and from work with a little left over. Which means I’d be working for free, which I reminded myself I was already doing at the refugee camp.
A few days later I was back down at the school for a meeting with the brother to talk money. While I waited in the hall, a group of three or four little third graders came over to me to say hi and asked if I was now going to be their teacher. Talk about pulling on the heart strings, these kids really know how to work you! The brother showed up and told me to first meet with the woman who was in charge of the academic program, she would be my boss should I take the job. He also told me that he hoped I didn’t mind that all the children were Shia and of the “same color”. I found this to be a bit offensive and prejudiced at this point, not to mention bizarre since I had just finished teaching a class of these sweet little kids and they were all the same color as him! I’ve quickly learned that in Lebanon, people’s prejudice against other religions runs deep enough that they start to see people as a different color, when in reality they are not.
During my meeting with the academic head, I learned that they intended for me to teach a full schedule, five days a week, from 7:30am to 3:30pm and that I would be teaching Science and Math along with English. I would also be required to oversee two after school projects with two groups of kids from different grades. This may not sound so bad to those of you who teach as a profession, but keep in mind, I’m not a teacher and there are no lesson plans to try and mirror. I would have to make up these classes myself. On top of that, this schedule would not allow me to volunteer at the refugee camp anymore, which to me was the biggest problem. The final blow came when I met with the brother again to discuss money. I asked him about getting me a work visa, which would cost the school a few thousand dollars. He said they would look into it but that it might not be necessary. Now let me tell you about the two British teachers who were volunteer teaching at a school outside of Beirut who were recently arrested for working without a work visa and were still being held in the Beirut jail. I told the brother that I needed more time to think about it and headed for the door. I would meet with Rana, the owner, a few days later and decline the job offer letting her know that I decided to continue my volunteering at the refugee camp instead. She told me to give her a call if I change my mind, which was very nice of her. I still get pangs of guilt when I think about those little kids in that classroom. I feel like I bailed on them somehow.
My third gig as a guest speaker came from yet another acquaintance who told me that I really must go see the campus of this private school that his friend had started. He said he would set up a meeting for me with the principal who was an American ex-patriot who had started the school about 4 years ago.
Initially I worried that I would end up in another situation like Greenfield and have to talk my way out of a job or worse, that people would start to wonder why I was spending so much time hanging around the children at elementary schools. I set up a meeting and tour with the principal, Dr. Marj, and sent her a copy of my resume which seems to be the standard procedure here when meeting people. Fortunately I received a reply that she would be glad to give me tour of the school but that there were no positions open now, especially not for anyone with my lack of teaching credentials. I breathed a sigh of relief and made my way to Dr. Marj’s school which is called Wellspring.
Wellspring was located on the grounds of a former convent which had been renovated to be a wonderful, warm learning setting. There was actually green space and trees in the center courtyard of the school. During the tour, I mentioned to Dr. Marj that I had moved to Beirut from Alaska. I saw a light go on and she said, “Wait, you’re the park ranger, right?!” I told her it was true and she said, “Our third graders are doing a project on water conservation and the fifth graders are doing a big project on deforestation. You’ve got to come talk to the class! In fact, you need to go on the field trip with them next week to the Cedars Reserve in the Lebanese mountains!!” The Cedar Reserve is one of Lebanon’s last stands of old cedar trees which used to cover most of the country. Due to a couple of millennia of over logging they are now almost all gone. This reserve is to Lebanon what Sequoia National Park is to America. Pass up a trip like this, I think not. I jumped at the chance to go on the field trip and then to come speak to both classes a few days later.

Before I knew it I was on a school bus full of 5th graders, who to pass the time on the long drive there sang songs in Arabic. Though I could not understand what the songs were about, I was pretty sure none of them was, “100 bottles of beer.” As we wound our way up into the mountains, we came across a rural house that was burning its trash and dead brush in a pile. Some of the children got all worried that they were burning the cedar trees. It was cute to see the kids’ concern but also gave insight into the view of forest fires in the region. Forest fires are still seen as a great evil in Lebanon and have been aggressively suppressed for years. This is the same fatal mistake that the United States had made for well over a hundred years. “Smokey’s Lie” as it is now referred to was the US Forest Service’s ad campaign and policy to suppress any and all wildland fires, no matter where they were. This suppression of natural fire lead to over a hundred years of dead and down tree branches and leaf litter being built up on the forest floors which would in turn lead to the massive wildland fires that we see today. Scientists in the US had warned for years that natural fire needed to be allowed to work its way through the forests to clean up and keep a balance of the dead tree debris that covered the forest floor. They also warned that some trees, like the Sequoia trees in California, needed forest fires to help release their seeds from their cones. All this was generally ignored until the 1970’s and 1980’s. Slowly the National Parks and Forest Service started to conduct “control burns” in the forest or manual thinning of dead trees to reduce the build up. This practice is only just making its way to Lebanon. I now knew what one of my classroom topics for the kids would be.
Lebanon is surprisingly mountainous. The coastal area along the Mediterranean is rocky and occupied by the country’s main cities. This coastal stretch quickly rises to foothills that are dotted with dozens of rural villages and towns and then the terrain continues up into the mountains, some of which are over 9,000 feet high. This mountain range, which runs north-south, then drops down into a fertile farming valley known as the Bekaa Valley. These mountains use to be covered in cedar trees, but as early as the time of the Egyptian Pharaohs, the trees had been logged to be used for things such as boats, homes, charcoal and the building of the pyramids. The logging of the trees in this area is even referenced in the Bible. Now, most of the trees are gone with a few areas reserved for their protection.
It was pleasantly cool and quiet in the reserve. As quiet as it can be with 35 fifth graders, that is. The cedar trees grow in rough and rocky soil up on the slopes of the mountains. Off in the distance we could see a terraced slope where new cedar trees had been planted in an effort to reforest the area. It was a nice effort to see, if not strange since the trees had all been planted in rows and looked more like a farm than a forest. The kids were so enthusiastic about the trees and the outdoors. They were full of good questions as the guide from the Cedars Reserve took them on a tour. After the tour, they broke up into smaller groups to collect scientific data about the trees, like trunk size and branch lengths. It was cute to hear them yelling at each other to “not step on the baby cedars!” when anyone came close to stepping on a sapling. I could tell that many of the children and even some of the teachers held the cedar trees in reverence, which seems only appropriate since it is the symbol on their nation’s flag.

Before we knew it, the trip was done and we headed back down, out of the fresh, cool air of the mountains and back into the smog and traffic of the big city. It made me miss the days of being a park ranger for sure. It especially made me miss Kings Canyon National Park and the big cedar trees that grow there.
Like the students at the University, I asked the 5th grade students who were on the field trip to put together a list of questions they wanted addressed when I came and spoke to their class. I also asked that the third grade students, who were not on the trip but were studying water conservation, put together their questions before I came in to speak with them. I looked the questions over a few days before coming in to speak to the two classes. The fifth grader’s questions on deforestation were earnest and pretty straight forward: What causes deforestation? What can we do to stop it? What are the governments of the world doing to stop deforestation? Why isn’t the government doing anything about deforestation?
When I initially wrote down my answers to these questions, I looked them over and realized how grim and pessimistic my answers were: Basically, the governments are doing nothing, it’s going to continue until all the trees are gone, there’s nothing you can do to stop it and you’ll be lucky if there’ll be a tree left by the time you’re 30. Wow, really depressing. The real work came in turning all that info around to a positive set of answers that would inspire the children and not send them screaming into the streets.
The water conservation questions by the third graders, on the other hand, were fun to research even though they had nothing to do with anything I had every worked with. The reason being is that though they were studying water conservation, which I am familiar with, their questions were all about dams!: How big is the biggest dam? How much water does the biggest dam hold? How much concrete is used in the dam? How much water can the biggest dam hold? What was the biggest dam break in the world? I realized that they should have had an engineer come in to talk to these kids, not a park ranger. But, with a little help from Google and Wikipedia, I found out all these answers, some of which surprised me. Like how they divert the river through a tunnel, build the dam where the river used to be and then bring the river back. The most interesting trivia to me, if not the most morbid, was reading about the largest dam break which took place in China in 1975. It was called the Banqiao Dam and it broke after receiving a rainfall amount equal to the normal annual rainfall in one night. It was built to withstand a 1,000 year flood, but unfortunately, that day it was a 2,000 year flood. The breaking of the Banqiao Dam triggered the breaking of 62 other smaller dams and eventually killed 230,000 people. Damn!
I grabbed the answers to the kids’ questions and headed into Wellspring for my guest speaking engagements. Both classes went well and the kids were really into what they were studying. The learning environment in this school is amazingly well set up and it would be considered top notch in the US not to mention cost a fortune to send your kids to. It’s considered one of the better schools in Lebanon and is the polar opposite of the learning conditions down in the refugee camps. The classrooms at Wellspring have what are called “Smart Boards”. I had never seen anything like this before except in science fiction movies. I brought in a zip drive that had some photos on it that I wanted to show the students while I was talking. They loaded them into the teacher’s computer and then the computer’s screen was projected up onto the board in the front of the class. No big thing right? Except that I could touch the board and move things around, open and close pictures with my fingers like I was touching an interactive computer monitor. Every once in a while I’d get stuck on opening or moving photos around an one of the third graders would hop up and help me through it. The kids were so into the stuff they were learning about that the teachers let me stay over about an extra 45 minutes for each class. It was great. I hammered home my lessons about why fire can be healthy for the forests and even worked in some pros and cons of building dams on rivers and let the kids try to decide for themselves which is best. I think I had as much fun as the kids did.
I even got a few thank you letters from the kids, one of which said, “Thank you so much for talking to our class. We learned so much about dams and we were sad to hear about the 230,000 people that died in China.” Lets you really know you’ve made an impact, right?
About a month after I spoke at Wellspring, I received an invitation to come to Wellspring’s Annual Science and Arts Expo which would display the works of the students from that past year. I happily accepted the invitation and went down to see the kids’ work. When I finally got to the floor that had the fifth graders deforestation projects on it, I was immediately surrounded by 6 kids who dragged me over to their exhibit. It was a computer based slide show that they gave an oral presentation along with. Each student had a bit of information to convey and there was a group of anxious parents waiting to for it to start. Their presentation walked the audience through the history, causes and potential corrections for deforestation and even spoke about how wildland fires are part of the natural cycle and can be healthy for the forests! They spoke about the importance of preserving forests not just for the sake of the trees but also for the sake of the people and the planet since the health of our planet will directly affect the health of the people.
I realized that if there were more school programs that taught children the importance of conserving land and water at this young an age, maybe we wouldn’t have such a hard time grasping the concept of preserving wilderness when we become adults.