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April 30, 2010
Last night the full moon was like a great naked Daliesque eye watching Kabul with a kind of amazed curiosity. It was of course the negative of an eye, the pupil being white and the whites black. The iris, though, was an olive green washing into a periphery of russet-gold, a haloed iris that sometimes I’ve seen in my own when I dare to look, when I'm in a certain mood. What this moon-eye saw was a carpet of twinkling lights draped across silhouetted valleys and mountainsides like fallen stars, a city of how many human spirits it is impossible to know, just as it is impossible to gather the dead and their numbers. Some say 3.6 million. Some 5. These numbers stead for both categories. It was such a silent night for so many lives in one place, there was only the eye and those stars. Perhaps this is why I speak more of the moon than the sun. In the day Kabul is another story, but when the shocking appearances begin to look normal, vibrancy fills the streets as if Panacea herself has come down from the Hindu Kush with her bag of remedies. The hoards making a few dollars a day are determined. They push their carts of wood, cucumbers, or scrap metal, they dial up the tinkling music box of their ice cream coolers, they “shush” their meager herds of fat-bottomed goats through the city’s arteries, and somehow they get that extra dollar. They endlessly chip away at the rubbled buildings, raise bricks by the thousands, and turn graveyards into shops. They shovel the pile of sand into a mixer, sludge from the gutter, garbage from its heap. Hundreds of youths, girls in their black coats and white scarves, boys in their mauve collared shirts, bustle to and from their schools, and university student in their version of western stylishness, the women in complex prints, makeup, heels, and the men in tight slacks and gelled hair. People complain about traffic, like other cities, and they squabble over prices and gather in parks. This is the condition that Prometheus kept hidden in Pandora’s box; hope, be it blind or visionary is a drug like any other. It gets us through another day. This week aside from classes I have been organizing a pilot program establishing a relationship with American University of Kabul (considered by locals to be the best university in town). Six professors and administrators are going to teach English twice a week at Sitara I, II and Mehan. They are the first wave of a transition period, in many respects the basement floor of Andeisha’s vision to have a school of her own. We are establishing a tailor-made curriculum that is culturally meaningful but also does not re-invent the wheel. These professors will each be teaching two-hour classes twice a week. They will work with 130 children ages 5 to 11. The aim here is to establish a foundation of learning now so we do not have to play catch-up later. This gives me a tremendous boost as a teacher and coordinator. I can devote myself to intensive, lengthy sessions with the older kids in groups of four or five, preparing them for the kind of exam TOEFL will give them in a few years. When the younger children reach 13 they will be so far ahead of their peers in the government schools that preparing them for a future will be that much more doable. It is a given that second language learning is cake for younger children, and that window of opportunity must be seized. Two of the AUK staff Anna and Grant, both veteran English teachers, both Australian, are giving me professional advice. They are light hearted, go-getter types, Grant with his ruddy cheeks and endlessly stroking his beard and rattling off ideas as one who must be patient with slow thinkers like myself, and Anna a smooth easy-going talker, as well as an amputee with a heck of a sense of humor (Sorry, how rude of me not to take off my shoe!) These two will knock out a curriculum with me, and in one week begin a new chapter in AFCECO history. There are very strong rumblings of graduating from this to a fully funded English immersion program for all the orphanages. Meanwhile my classes carry on. Grant told me about something called C.L.I.L. It stands for Content and Language Integrated Learning. It is big in Europe. It is basically a naturalistic approach to teaching a second language, and is wonderfully affirming of what I have been drawn to do in my classes here in Kabul: I teach history, astronomy, geography, fables, cooking, singing, photography, and even soccer strategy. The point being that everything is a learning opportunity, topically interesting, while learning a language. This was no flash of brilliance on my part, the children and the circumstances naturally pushed me to teach in this manner almost from the beginning, a year ago this month. This of course is no substitute for grammar, and for two and a half weeks I have been pounding the children with it. They do not balk, nor yawn. It is easy to make grammar learning more like a sporting event, a contest, a puzzle to solve. I am pleased to teach it because, as I’ve always maintained if you want to learn something, volunteer to teach it. The girls are all very motivated. I give quizzes every class. They find this exciting, even though they call me names and cry and weep and moan. If they get a 94 % they become depressed. I sometimes set them up to universally succeed, giving a long period of review and then exam, but sometimes I set them up to possibly fail. I do not tell them what will happen when it will happen. They are all exceptional at memorization, but are they really learning? So at times they get a 70 % or even a 60 %. They suddenly have to solve a problem rather than fill in the blank they have rehearsed. As I may have written earlier, the boys are different. Motivating them takes a skilled and crafty approach. I am still trying to figure this out. One thing to teach a group of girls who are liberated and whose world is exploding with possible freedoms, another to teach boys who have been raised to cast away their standing in a misogynistic society, to walk on equal footing with girls. What, pray tell, is in it for them? With all my students I try to cultivate an atmosphere in which the loving palm cradles the iron fist. On occasion they have pushed me and taken liberties. Maybe twice in six months they have seen Ian calmly though fiercely walk to the door, open it and ask one or two students to leave, but always phrased in a way that puts the onus on them, not me, to decide their fate NOW. In other words, they are there not because they have to be there, but because they choose to be there. It is worth mentioning the other tool I use: that of being a volunteer. In the professional realm the relationship between teacher and student gets foggy from time to time, if not erased. Is it the teacher’s “job”, well paid, to educate the child, or is it the child’s job to learn? I have seen a trend in America wherein kids treat teachers like hired hands, reflecting the attitude of their parents. In other words, there is no longer a relationship between teacher and pupil, just as there is generally speaking no investment in a relationship with an accountant, a plumber, a housecleaner, a lawyer, a mechanic, or even a doctor. Fix it, how much does it cost? Thanks, goodbye. As a volunteer, that dynamic evaporates. It is ALL relationship. I cannot stress how much more exciting, human, dynamic the classroom is for both educator and student when learning is an element of a relationship. The classroom can be anywhere we go. We are the classroom. Just as we would be in any environment, I am an adult, they are children, we care about and trust one another and we behave accordingly. What is the single most frightening indicator of a deteriorating society? I’ve heard this from every segment: adults about kids, kids about adults, that people no longer know how to initiate and sustain and enrich a bona fide relationship. Just look at the explosion of “social” web sites that really are the antithesis of relationship. People who know me will think this is the pot calling the kettle black. I’ve had some failed relationships, depending on how failed is defined. I’ve also flitted from corner of the globe to corner of the globe, equally not conducive to sustaining relationships. But I at least can say that I am an expert on initiating and deepening a relationship. I feel this issue is vitally important not only in the classroom, but for our world. Why did it take nine years for the NGOs and military to learn how to have a relationship with Afghanistan and its people? (still in the works, may never happen.) Why, back in the day did our companies start falling behind Asian companies? Why is China successfully sweeping up resources around the world, working with diverse communities in Africa, South America and other parts of Asia? Why are executives in banks and on Wall Street seemingly oblivious of the repercussions of their actions? Who were your favorite teachers? What classes do you remember most, and what information? My second grade teacher, Miss Neal, taught me the benefit of looking for knowledge myself, she littered her classroom with National Geographic Magazine. Mr. Mudry, my 8th grade teacher had me learn the Gettysburg Address and recite it to the class. He taught me that history is often for better or worse revised, like science. In high school my English teacher, DJ, taught me the intricate world of the author, and the magic of creating something out of nothing. My first year of college a Sociology professor, Nancy, inflamed an interest in worlds beyond borders, and Mister Nigel Frith in England taught me the benefits of revision. I have forgotten hundreds of names of people equally prevalent and even preeminent in my life, but never these names. Differences abound between them but for one element: they all naturally developed a relationship with their students. At soccer last night, Parwana called from across the field as I arrived. “Ian-jan, where were you yesterday! You missed our class!” Her face was like that of a friend whose birthday party I had stood up. It was a national holiday, Nasir the driver did not come to work.
“Oh,” she answered, relieved it seemed, satisfied with my answer. “Shambay?” Yes, Shambay I will be there.
“One o’clock!” Yes, yak o'clock.
“Ian-jan we have exam?” I shrugged my shoulders and smiled a mischievous smile. Parwana repeated in a sinister tone, “Iaaan-jaan… We have exam!" Then, with a glint in her eyes she nodded. “Okay, no problem. I will be there. I will be ready for exam.”
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