So
once again, this week has been pretty uneventful. In fact, I was really focused
on school and preparation for the week. This week there was an accreditation
group that came in to survey the schools on every level. They went to observe
the majority of classes in action over the course of 3 days and then gave us a
rating at the end. We were told not to expect them to come in until the 2nd
day at least and that I probably shouldn’t expect them because only two of my
classes were English. We were told that we had to show off the best of what we
do and make everything highly interactive and fun to watch as well as have good
classroom management. I was told they really only wanted to see the “major”
departments of English, Math, Science and Arabic and see about the efficiency
of the school for tardies and absences as well as for interactive lessons. Of
course, they came into my class the first block of the first day they were
there. It was a work day in Speech; they were working on their speeches.
Awkward. The lady that came in walked in about 20 minutes late and then sat
there for about an hour and took notes. I was already walking around and
answering kids’ questions about their speech and the outline so it wasn’t too
bad, but she missed the beginning when I gave them instruction and she left
early at the end so she missed the announcements I had for them. She only
talked to me to ask about what grade levels were in class and which class it
was at the time. She ignored me for the rest of the time it seemed like and she
looked at the things on my walls and made notes about it. She also walked
around the class and asked students what they were doing, why it was a mixed
class, and looked over their shoulder to see that they were actually on task.
Overall, it was just more of a headache to have them there and also pretty
pointless. From the little I have heard from their review, they said they saw
the same problems that the teachers have been complaining about all year like
attendance. The rating scale is from best to worst:
Outstanding-Good-Satisfactory-Unsatisfactory. We got ranked as a Satisfactory,
so basically we’re barely average. We got ranked Good last time. Welcome to
MKS. The only good thing about them being there was that stuff got done, like I
got a whiteboard installed the day before the accreditation arrived. Still
missing a garbage can, but I have a whiteboard. (Update: I just got a garbage can today!)
After
QQA (the accreditation team) left, the entire school was really dreadful
because of the rating and we all believed we deserved better. A lot of the
teachers, from what I’ve heard, will be hardly teaching for the next month just
because of the rating. At the end of the week, most of the first and second
year teachers went to brunch at the Four Seasons. It was a very formal event
and we all had to dress up in suits and dresses just to eat so much that we
couldn’t fit into them anymore. I started off Friday morning by waking up about
3 hours before we would leave and took like an hour to fully wake up. I then
spent the next hour actually getting ready and making myself look like a girl
(believe me, that’s hard to do with all the girls I was going with) before
going to my neighbors’ room and joining everyone for some coffee with Bailey’s
before going to brunch.
Skipping
ahead, when we got to the Four Seasons, we had to find our way to the right
area and then had to wait about 10 minutes before we could start eating. We
were sitting in the lobby feeling all fancy and getting stared at by some of
the other brunchers and hotel guests. We were all very hungry when they finally
let us down the stairs to sit down and begin our meal. They sat us down at one
really long table (there was 24 of us) and poured us a glass of champagne, pina
colada, and stilled or sparkling water. We started going through the kitchen
where all the food was but a lot of us had to walk around completely before
deciding what we wanted first. There was a lot to choose from-anything from
sushi to cheese and crackers to chocolate fondue to stir fry to scallops to
prime rib to fresh honey to soups. There was so much to choose from that we
stayed the whole four hours we were allowed to stay for just to sit and digest
everything so we could get up and eat more food. It was such amazing food and the
drinks were even better but I paid about $100 so I don’t think I will do it
again unless it’s cheaper. We rarely do these brunches but it was a lot of fun
to just sit and chat with everyone because I don’t see many of them anymore
with all of us being constantly busy. While everyone was chatting and
drinking/eating, there were a few of us who decided to be funny and take the
worst pictures we could and it ended up being my highlight for the day.At the end when we couldn’t eat or drink anymore, a few of us went out onto the patio they had to watch the sunset. I went out simply to enjoy the weather and the view. It’s becoming cooler in Bahrain so it’s actually bearable to be outside for more than 10 minutes now and the Four Seasons was right along a bay and also had one of those pools that goes right up to the water. We obviously didn’t get into the water but it was nice to be standing along the edge after such a long afternoon of being dressed up and eating. There was a bouncy house over the shallow part of the pool and some of the group decided it would be fun to get in. That quickly ended when someone fell over the side and into the pool in her dress. After that, I came back with a few people and just relaxed the rest of the night in the apartments watching movies and TV shows but a lot of people did go out. We, however, were party poopers and too tired.
Monday
night I went to a senior dinner with a few other teachers. There were select
few that could attend as not many teach seniors and this was strictly a dance
and dinner for seniors. Kate and I decided that we should dress up again
because even though the invite said semi-formal, we had heard that students will
look like Arabian princes and princesses. So we had a few friends come do our
hair and my friend/hairstylist/makeup artist, Maris, obviously did everything.
I was lazy and I didn’t want to do it again ;) We got to the dinner and there
were few seniors there but we found a few of our students and said hi to them
and everything. They were all impressed at how dressed up and fancy we looked
but they looked very beautiful and handsome too. Not nearly like the princes
and princesses we were led to believe they would be, but it was still cool to
see them outside of a school uniform and with their friends and all dressed up.
Except for the three boys who wore shorts...
Anyways,
the conference hall was decorated with black lights and glow sticks because of
their Glow theme. It was really cool until people started losing their phones
or glasses or anything because then all the lights came on until someone found
whatever was missing. And you couldn’t really see the food in the dark. That
was a problem. The food descriptions/names sounded good though? No, I did not
take any pictures as I would have felt awkward asking my students to take
photos with me and I would have felt
rude but it was really cool to see all the different styles. Think of this
dinner/dance as like a high school homecoming in America. Yes, you dressed up
in dresses or button-up shirts but they were more conservative because of the
culture. Few dresses were shorter than the knees and even fewer showed bare
shoulders. I thought it was even more interesting to see how girls wore a hijab
to cover their head and still dress up and make it look fancy. Occasionally you
would see a girl or guy in full-out robes to fully cover themselves or to stay
traditional but overall, it was awesome. Not just the clothes either, just in
general. A teacher I sat beside and talked to for the first time, Jude, and I
would make comments to one another about how different everything was like the
dancing-guys danced in one area and girls danced in another area, the type of
dancing-usually some sort of terrible line dance in which no one was doing the
same thing even during the Cha Cha Slide where it tells you exactly what to do,
and the girls walking in high heels-which was obviously rare to happen outside
of fancy dinners like that. We danced only to the Cha Cha Slide and showed off
our awesome dance skills.
We
were technically there to chaperone, but we left before most of the kids and I
went to bed right when I got back as school was still the next day. Tonight we
went out to eat for dinner because it was a fellow teacher, Ben’s, birthday
today so we went to the restaurant of his choice. Other than that, nothing else
has really happened so I’m going to sign off and do some work before bed. On a side note, this post included some pictures of my last vacation that I just got a hold of. The one to the upper left has to do with my failure at sand boarding--it's my last attempt to ride it like a sled before I gave up on it. Good
night!
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