Happy Birthday to ME!

Thursday 5th November 2009
OK, yes, today IS indeed 42 years to the day since I entered this complex place we call "the world". And still I rise, I carry on. I've been down plenty in recently years but HERE'S TO THE PERFECT YEAR TO COME!

Douglas Adams in his famous book, "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy", described the number, 42, as the answer to, "Life, The Universe And Everything". Well, as you may recall, this was the answer given by the super-intelligent supercomputer, Deep Thought, when asked the question.

So that's a good sign. In addition, my age comes between two awkward prime number ages of 41 and 43. A Perfect Age in amongst two indivisible ones! Life has a funny way to reward you and yet to remind you that your fun won't last THAT long.

Did you know, also, that the age decade of the 40's contains more prime number ages than most others? Well, I will have to wait another thirty years to my seventies before once again there are three other prime number ages contained. And THAT'S a wait and a HALF! But I'm quite sure I won't be updating THIS blog when I get THERE!

Well …. WHAT a place to spend a birthday! I mean, birthdays are only much fun for kids in my view. I don't make a big thing of mine and I don't expect much to happen though I like to celebrate in some way. One thing is for sure – my “festivities” will be a lot “dryer” than last year's ones! But that's only a result of where I am, and if I was still in Krakow then I'm sure I would enjoy a similarly “liquid celebration” again.

Of course this will be the only Desert Birthday I'll be having. No repeats of that experience. So what's on the cards today? Well, I'll be going out in a few hours with some teacher colleague friends. Just into town for some coffee and/or a meal someplace. Not much other choice possible. But if there IS one thing you can say about this country, then it is that they DO have a good choice of places to eat out. Well, you only have to look at the SIZE of them to see that!

Been doing a bit of online shopping too. Just one or two things to start a new year with. Unfortunately I will have to wait until I'm next in the UK to get my hands on any of them. I DO NOT and I WOULD NOT risk having anything larger than a letter posted here! The only time I tried out the system to get something posted here (a PC game), it just never arrived. If anyone wonders what it is to be isolated and wants to feel it first-hand, come live in Saudi Arabia! You can't get stuff SENT to you, your only REAL contact is if you have a computer with an internet connection, and as for simple things like PHONE CALLS …. well, you can burn a hole in your wallet on your mobile phone or, better, go to your computer, get a skype account and buy some skype credit. Then phone whoever you want online through skype.

But … you have to hope for a good internet connection. And that varies tremendously depending on where you are, the time of day and what your method of going online is. Mine, the “wireless” USB plug-in modem method, is the best of a bad bunch. I have talked about this before, but most people here are either on the snail-pace modem-and-phone-line or some kind of DSL or ADSL link …. AGAIN requiring installation and a phone line (and, no doubt, delays in getting it all set up).

I used to think that it was my location in this apartment building which was the reason for my bad connection. But now I realise that is nonsense. I have had almost ZERO connection and then other times I have had multiple internet website windows open plus skype video plus downloading and more all at the same time. Like the country I am in, you can't predict it, you can't reason with it and have to take it as it comes. And YEAH it frustrates the HELL out of you!

Well, I don't care much for this place any more. I have my sights set on my Exit Plan and all I have to do is negotiate the last few steps.

Ahh – speaking of that, if we assume that 10th February is the Day Of Departure, then it means I have less than ONE HUNDRED DAYS TO GO to the end. But before we jump too high, it is not confirmed WHEN this will happen yet. But it will be sometime between 10th February and 13th March, which is the last day of my job contract. But, as I said last time, it is looking like I will have 23 holiday days remaining which, counting back from 13th March, will take me to around mid-February.

A long time still left, though not so long considering what I have done already.

Now, to the classes. Well, things livened up a little this week in he 21-hour class. The “problem” with this class is the divide between abilities. There are four or five VERY low-level students, and there are around three much higher level ones. Well, it is not unusual to have a class with different abilities in it, that's true. But in MY class the problem is that the good ones go too fast and the bad ones go too slow. You start them on, for example, a grammar exercise from the book and a few moments later you hear, “Teacher, I'm finished!”, from the left-hand side while those on the right of the classroom haven't yet started writing or are still looking for the right page or are tapping away at their electronic dictionaries (which, actually, they overdo and only distracts them).

It was on Tuesday after maybe Lesson 2 or 3. A normal type of lesson, a normal type of day. On this day we had been studying nouns and whether you need to put “a” or “an” in front of them. I had explained this a few weeks ago, and repeated this again on this day that it is NOT the LETTER that the noun starts with but the SOUND at the start of the word which determines whether you use “a” or “an”. For example, (if you are not a teacher or not aware of this) we say “a dog”, “a horse”, “an animal”, “an umbrella”, but then we say “an hour”, “an honest man”, “a unique person” and “a university”. Well the higher ability students got this OK, but those at a lower level struggled. They had been told (as many students ARE) that it was words STARTING with a VOWEL (a e i o u) that required “an” and words beginning with consonants begin with “a”. And perhaps also, they were told something like “This is the rule but here are the exceptions”.

Too much time as a teacher can be spent “undoing” what other teachers have mis-taught before either through error or not so good understanding of how grammar works. Well, I don't claim I know the whole 'Grammar Book' and I don't say that I am any better a teacher than my colleagues. But such problems of “teaching and un-teaching” DO and WILL come up and I cannot know what students have had before appearing in MY classroom.

OK, so during that lesson part there WAS this difficulty with getting the concept of that it is vowel SOUND and not vowel LETTER that determines “a” or “an”. I thought I got through it reasonably well. There was even one student of the high-ability side of the class who tried explaining all this in Arabic to those who weren't getting it. Some teachers would shudder at such a thing happening in the classroom and feel that ONLY the teacher should do the talking. I maintain that the class is a “team” and that we all work together AND that it is a GOOD thing having a mixture of abilities because they can help each other. This helps and, I think, motivates and makes people feel more a part of “the learning process”. As the teacher, I initiate, I guide but I do NOT dictate how the lesson goes. There is something called “Lesson Flow” which MUST be maintained. What is it? Well, as its name suggests, it is that the momentum of the lesson needs to be maintained for it to be successful. There are things like the teacher stopping the lesson to explain a word or the lesson being “on hold” because some students understand while others do not need to be ironed out. These things INTERRUPT the Lesson Flow if not sorted out quickly. The way to do THAT is to involve the students in their own and each others' learning. Why do you, the teacher, feel the need to keep control of everything?

Anyway, I digress slightly. Back to the lesson. So one student had been explaining how the a/an thing worked. Then it was break time and out the students went. I tidied a little then went out myself only to them all standing around in a group having one of those famous Saudi “heated discussions”. Hah! And YOU thought it was only the military lot that did this! Well it was certainly creating a stir, and even though it was break time there were students in other classrooms looking out their doors at what was going on. At the centre of this was the man who had been the “explainer” in the lesson and all were having a go at him.

Now, you never quite know how serious they are since they do not show angry faces and it all seems to be rather non-serious. But some of them said to me, “Teacher, teacher, we want him out! He talks all the time and doesn't let us!”

I didn't take this too seriously, though there obviously WAS a problem. After break time and back in the last lesson of the day and we had a few things to resolve. The lower-level students felt that things were going too fast for them. Well, I had noticed this of course before. I told them that I did not want to go too fast and did not want to go too slow either. But we did agree that things needed to slow down and that from tomorrow would be the start of that. Perhaps this means less of the specialist science and medical book stuff and more of the basic English grammar and writing practice.

Now THERE'S a thing – I've never had a class who said they want to do MORE writing! But Arab students DO need it more for obvious reasons of having a different script to come from, difficulties of writing on the line and the change from right-to-left writing to our left-to-right way of doing it. NOT small problems! Even the better students in the class have BIG problems of keeping their writing ON the line and is more often than not sinking down or bouncing up off the line.

Look at this – me talking about teaching here in a normal and fairly positive way! Isn't THAT an achievement?

Speaking of such things (and sorry, but I'm going to end on a low now), I went into class on Monday for the start of my 9.30am lesson. It was break time so the students were all outside. But scrawled on the board in large blue letters were the words, “We love teacher David!”

No, of course this was NOT anyone in my current class. Can you guess? Yes, the idiots were back. Not in MY class but they are in one of the neighbouring classrooms. When I came in the back door way, there were a number of those old army boy students sitting and standing around. I ignored them as best I could and carried on in and then saw THIS on my classroom whiteboard.

I knew instantly who had done it. Who else could be so primitive and so juvenile? IDIOTS really!! Put me in a REALLY bad mood for the rest of that day! Why can't they just f***ck off and leave me be? Well ….. for the same reason as they couldn't do it before – because it amuses their tiny minds of course!

Anyway, this is my Birthday Blog so we'll have NONE of that negativity HERE please!