Day 4: Stop, drop, and pray?

 

Today was the second time I heard the call for prayer and to my surprise no one that I saw stopped to pray but rather carried on with their day.

The first call came as we were visiting the schools. The visit began with a meeting with an inspector at the district office; he took us to visit a public high school. The Principal runs the school which houses anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 students by himself. I was asking about what are some of the challenges he encounters from his students and the issues are the same world over apparently: attendance, lack of motivation, large classes, and lack of resources.



Headmaster

The teachers have class sizes of about 50 or more students. The students are leveled by ability (the students are not made aware of which is the lower or more advanced group) which led me to ask if they use groups in the class and differentiated instruction, and what surprised me was the response I got from the inspector who said we want to see groups and encourage groups, however it does not happen often. The principal interjected the teachers prefer to put them in rows because of the large number of students…for those who oppose small group instruction there is no escaping the push for it.

The private school which cost about $150.00 a month is attended by upper middle class students. Their class sizes are much smaller and they are provided with a bus. It was funny to see all the students raising their hands saying “teacher, teacher” hoping to be called on. The students in the English class welcomed our group formally and sung a Katie Perry song for us.

After lunch at a Syrian restaurant the group visited a teacher training school. The foreign language department puts so much effort in preparing and providing ample opportunity for their students ranging from exchanges abroad to participating in conferences hosted by professional organizations all across the country.

ACCESS Students

The scheduled day concluded with a visit to an English language learning center were students go afterschool to learn English. It was wonderful to see their enthusiasm about learning the language. They were all actively engaged and eager to respond. The students had a chance to ask us questions before carrying on with their review. We met with teachers of the institute after the classroom visits one of the instructors, a young guy, is from Tampa, FL.

After returning to the hotel Libby and I walked to the palace. We stopped to ask for directions and of all the people the city we found a man from Spain who was able to direct us. As we made our way we ran into the director of the language institute, unfortunately visiting hours were over but I got to see more of the city. Tomorrow Leanne and I head out for Tiznit, in the south of Morocco, seeing as how we will be taking a bus we should get to see a lot of the country.