By
Olivia Alabaster
JBEIL:
At 22, Lebanese-American Dahlia Rizk had moved to Chicago, was about to start a
master’s in clinical psychology and had found an apartment and a job. But after
one month, she returned to Beirut to embark on training to become a teacher at
a rural primary school in a disadvantaged area.
“I’d
always been encouraged by everyone to move to [the] States as soon as possible,
as I had joint citizenship. People used to always say, ‘Shu badik bi Lubnan?,’
(‘What could you want from Lebanon?’),” Rizk says.
“But
I just became really sick of people saying that you can’t make a future here. I
had this thing pulling me back to my country.”
For
Rizk, who graduated in psychology from the University of Balamand, this “thing”
was Teach for Lebanon, the national branch of Teach for All, which operates in
24 countries around the world.
The
program recruits fresh graduates from a variety of majors and provides
intensive training before assigning each new teacher, or fellow, to a school
for two years. Each country program focuses on specific issues: In Lebanon this
is the high drop-out rate among fourth graders in rural areas.
“At
first my parents were devastated,” Rizk recalls. “They had also been educated
in the U.S. and they thought I was coming back for a boy or something. But no,
I just want to do something for my country. I want to change the system a bit,
and I can’t do that on my own, so it is good to do it as part of a program such
as this.”
Salyne
al-Samarany, Teach for Lebanon program manager and herself an ex-fellow,
explains that while children are legally required to stay in school, this is
often not enforced, and for a variety of reasons many students in rural areas
drop out of school around the ages of 6 to 8.
Often,
she says, teachers in rural areas do not remain in the job for long periods of
time, or are themselves not very motivated. Also, Samarany adds, parents “are
not exposed to how education can change a child’s life.” And “a child who is
repeatedly failing is often just pulled out of school by his parents,” as, even
in public schools, the cost of books and uniforms can be a huge burden on the
family.
TFL
started in 2008, and this is the third year that fellows are being trained
(last year fundraising issues meant the program couldn’t go ahead). Over 250
applied this year, with 15 currently undergoing the six-week intensive training
period, which has seen them spending the mornings teaching at Al-Hajj school in
Jbeil and using the afternoons to reflect and plan for the next day’s lessons.
TFL
mainly focuses on primary level education, and makes it a priority to fill
certain gaps in the school’s curriculum or needs, and never replaces current
staff.
The
training, Samarany says, is “Not just educational, but it’s social,
communicative and psychological.”
Sami
Azar, 24, a political science and public administration graduate from the Notre
Dame University, has always been interested in educational reform, and this
attracted him to TFL.
He
also believes it is important to introduce children at a young age to different
concepts and ideas. “Clashes between different communities often happen because
people have been raised and taught in a certain way,” Azar says. “So to solve
the problem you really have to start from the roots.”
Richard
Alam, currently support manager for the program, was teaching English at the
British Embassy in Beirut when he decided to apply to become a fellow in 2010.
Placed
in a school in Akkar, a region he had only visited once for a hike, Alam soon
found his whole life packed up in his car. “And I drove up to Akkar, and I
lived there for two years. I loved it. It was different, it was challenging.”
Although
he gave up a higher salary, and a certain lifestyle in Beirut, a city he had
always lived in, Alam says people who are attracted to TFL “are looking for a
sense of achievement and satisfaction that probably does not come from a better
paying job.”
The
biggest challenge he faced was the children, and dealing with new situations.
“Sometimes you are faced with kids who are being beaten by their parents, and
parents who don’t necessarily believe in education in the first place.”
Often,
he says, he was the “the only exposure they’ve had from the capital.” But just
as he did not know Akkar well, and the children did not know Beirut, the
program, Alam says, “is not only you teaching them, it’s them teaching you too.
You learn so much. You learn about yourself and about your country.”
For
Nadim Haidar, a 23-year-old politics and philosophy graduate from the American
University of Beirut, and one of this year’s fellows, this aspect of civic
engagement was one of the main draws of the project.
“It’s
a cyclical relationship, whereby I will learn about my country and my people
and my language and these areas I’ve never been to. Not only that, but to teach
myself their values and traditions, and in return I will be teaching them
English.”
After
spending the last four years collaborating with activists on a variety of
different issues, Haidar was also driven to engage in a different way.
Much
of the activism, he says, “was frustrating because I never really saw good
results. It had this very self-seeking, self-interested feeling to it.”
Teaching
in this program, he believes, allows for a more immersed and organic form of
activism, which will also allow him to “give back, in whatever way I can.”
Haidar has also seen how
education can change lives. “Education saved me. I came from a not so rich
family, and the only way I got out of my situation was because I got a good
education ... it’s not the way out, but it opens doors.”
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Local-News/2012/Aug-01/182920-ngo-puts-top-notch-teachers-in-rural-areas.ashx#axzz22GWCoYal
