Teaching in Sha'ab

Recently, I began teaching English once a week at a high-school in Sha'ab. Sha'ab is an Arab village that was captured in the 1948 War that is now in the north of Israel. 

Something that some people may not know about the Israeli school system is that the schools are segregated between Jews and Arabs. So the students at the Sha'ab High School learn mostly in Arabic, which makes it sometimes difficult to teach as my Arabic is nowhere near my Hebrew, which makes for some funny moments. The interesting thing is that while Jewish students are not required to take Arabic for more than a few years, Arab students must take Hebrew until they graduate. 

Unlike Jewish students who go to the army after high school, Arab students follow a trajectory much more like students in the US who generally go to college when they are 18. It's interesting to sit with these kids, who are all around the age of 16, and talk about their futures and what they want to be when they grow up. Many of them want to be doctors or surgeons, study science, computers, which makes sense because those are some of the best ways to make a living in Israel today. IBM, Google, Intel, Yahoo, and Microsoft all have Research and Development centers in the country, specifically in Haifa, where I live. 

 

 The students I teach share a love of music, action movies, books, and surprisingly enough Enrique Inglesias. Many of them live in houses with their entire families, and many of them will probably never live any other place than Sha'ab. When I told the students the first day that I'm Jewish, many of them were surprised that I had any interest in helping them out.  But I think I have gained most of their trust over the past couple of weeks, and they seem to be more open to me the longer I work with them. 

The students are a lot of fun to work with, and as we get into some deeper and more political discussion topics in the classes, I'll be sure to post some interesting viewpoints on the blog here.