August 26, 2004
side-stepping the nitty gritty
side-stepping the nitty gritty
Today is Monday. It is the middle of the week here, as the week starts on Saturday and ends with Wednesday.It is also the middle of April and the weather outside is heating up into the low to mid thirties as we cascade towards another desert summer.I teach two classes at Dubai Technical Highschool. One is a first year class for twelve hours a week and one is a third year class for nine hours a week. That's a total of twenty one hours of teaching a week. The hours and the pay are two of the many many good things about this job. I want to get into writing about today right away but I hesitate doing so at the same time. I feel that if I plunge right into it, most people who have never had the pleasure of experiencing Middle Eastern culture would not believe what I am writing nor understand WHY it is that I feel I must needs write about it. So instead I have written and introductory paragraph that completely sidesteps the nitty and the gritty of the day to day at Dubai technical High....
Thinking too, through a process; a means by which to focus in on where and when to introduce the real subject and in what manner. Therapy, we could tritely say. But, infact, yes it is therapy.I'll begin then with what happened the day before yesterday. I walked into my first year classroom and observed torn text books strewn about the floor in an act of general protest and signaling to us the teachers that April, subsequently the second semester are almost over. I asked who did it with an account of what happened Yesterday. They said third year boys had come in and ripped apart the books however they would not, could not give me any names.
After I assigned the classwork, Mohamed Khalid, one of my first year students said: "teacher why exam every day, why working every day?" "We don't want this!" followed by: "You are Mashara!" (a joke) "You are gandu (a faggot; gay)." After which he grabbed his crotch and acted as though he was masterbating. "Teacher you want go bathroom with me?" I told him no thanks and told him to sit down and shut up and stop disturbing the lesson(And he tries to label me gay just because it's one of the first and few English words he learnt from living in Dubai!). F'ing lil' bastard (he really is a bastard - has no idea who his pop is).
He then took a bulky jackknife out of his pocket, opened the six inch blade, and cockily waved it in my face about an inch from my nose. "Teacher I will kill you" he said in mock seriousness. Not a flinch, not a reaction from me. In a tone of voice that you'd use with a little brother that was buggin' you too much I said: "Moh'd will you just get out of my face and sit down, now!" Then he told me OK teacher just one minute bathroom and walked out the door never to be seen again up to the end of the class. I marked him absent. Normal. Not so bad. Trying to get a reaction out of me and he failed. I did not react. I showed no emotion and this is very much in my favor in this culture.
Today there was a similar episode. Salim Moh'd who is a second year boy burst forth into my first year classroom just a grinnin'. He had a new toy. In his hand a blue strobe within what looked like a cigarette lighter flashed rythimically. In reality it was a personal security electroshock device. Psychiatrists sometimes use Electroconvulsive shock therapy ECT to treat patients with severe cases of schizophrenia or depression. In ECT, 180 to 460 volts of electricity are fired through the brain, for a tenth of a second to six seconds, either from temple to temple (bilateral ECT) or from the front to the back of one side of the head (unilateral ECT). The result is a severe convulsion, or seizure, of long duration - i.e., a grand mal convulsion, as in an epileptic fit.
Most personal security devices put out not less 20,000 volts of electricity. Knowing this, I had to assume that the personal security device Salim Moh'd brought into the room could be very dangerous if applied to the neck or head area of any one of my healthy students, more so if any of them happen to have even a mild form of (managed) epilepsy! So I wrote a report on him.More to post tomorrow when I face the consequence of having written the report.
Today is Monday. It is the middle of the week here, as the week starts on Saturday and ends with Wednesday.It is also the middle of April and the weather outside is heating up into the low to mid thirties as we cascade towards another desert summer.I teach two classes at Dubai Technical Highschool. One is a first year class for twelve hours a week and one is a third year class for nine hours a week. That's a total of twenty one hours of teaching a week. The hours and the pay are two of the many many good things about this job. I want to get into writing about today right away but I hesitate doing so at the same time. I feel that if I plunge right into it, most people who have never had the pleasure of experiencing Middle Eastern culture would not believe what I am writing nor understand WHY it is that I feel I must needs write about it. So instead I have written and introductory paragraph that completely sidesteps the nitty and the gritty of the day to day at Dubai technical High....
Thinking too, through a process; a means by which to focus in on where and when to introduce the real subject and in what manner. Therapy, we could tritely say. But, infact, yes it is therapy.I'll begin then with what happened the day before yesterday. I walked into my first year classroom and observed torn text books strewn about the floor in an act of general protest and signaling to us the teachers that April, subsequently the second semester are almost over. I asked who did it with an account of what happened Yesterday. They said third year boys had come in and ripped apart the books however they would not, could not give me any names.
After I assigned the classwork, Mohamed Khalid, one of my first year students said: "teacher why exam every day, why working every day?" "We don't want this!" followed by: "You are Mashara!" (a joke) "You are gandu (a faggot; gay)." After which he grabbed his crotch and acted as though he was masterbating. "Teacher you want go bathroom with me?" I told him no thanks and told him to sit down and shut up and stop disturbing the lesson(And he tries to label me gay just because it's one of the first and few English words he learnt from living in Dubai!). F'ing lil' bastard (he really is a bastard - has no idea who his pop is).
He then took a bulky jackknife out of his pocket, opened the six inch blade, and cockily waved it in my face about an inch from my nose. "Teacher I will kill you" he said in mock seriousness. Not a flinch, not a reaction from me. In a tone of voice that you'd use with a little brother that was buggin' you too much I said: "Moh'd will you just get out of my face and sit down, now!" Then he told me OK teacher just one minute bathroom and walked out the door never to be seen again up to the end of the class. I marked him absent. Normal. Not so bad. Trying to get a reaction out of me and he failed. I did not react. I showed no emotion and this is very much in my favor in this culture.
Today there was a similar episode. Salim Moh'd who is a second year boy burst forth into my first year classroom just a grinnin'. He had a new toy. In his hand a blue strobe within what looked like a cigarette lighter flashed rythimically. In reality it was a personal security electroshock device. Psychiatrists sometimes use Electroconvulsive shock therapy ECT to treat patients with severe cases of schizophrenia or depression. In ECT, 180 to 460 volts of electricity are fired through the brain, for a tenth of a second to six seconds, either from temple to temple (bilateral ECT) or from the front to the back of one side of the head (unilateral ECT). The result is a severe convulsion, or seizure, of long duration - i.e., a grand mal convulsion, as in an epileptic fit.
Most personal security devices put out not less 20,000 volts of electricity. Knowing this, I had to assume that the personal security device Salim Moh'd brought into the room could be very dangerous if applied to the neck or head area of any one of my healthy students, more so if any of them happen to have even a mild form of (managed) epilepsy! So I wrote a report on him.More to post tomorrow when I face the consequence of having written the report.
