Part Two: A Rocky Start to the School Daze

The Fix Is In – And Guess Who It Is

My faithful followers will have no doubt noticed by now a significant gap in the narrative of my new job: I disappeared right after the start of Fall semester when everything seemed to be going wrong. At the time I promised to tell how it was all made right. The fact that there’s an 8-month gap in the narrative just might give a hint as to what happened thereafter.

Dress for success: it works!

I have never owned a business suit in my entire life—before this year. I bought four at the thrift store the summer before I left. (In general, people dress a little nicer in Saudi.) So the first day I ever wore a suit, I made the biggest career leap in my life. Talk about dress for the job you want . . . .

Promotion

Fall term had begun, and one week in things weren’t going well: most of the previous year’s teachers never came back, including the program Director. About half of the new teachers hadn’t arrived yet. Many student complaints were pouring in about being placed in the wrong level. Ostensibly the interim leadership was trying to put out all the fires, but no new leadership had been named yet.

Labor Day in the US corresponded to the second day of classes at Alfaisal University. I got a call from the Dean: would I be willing to assume a leadership position in the UPP? He didn’t have many more details, but wanted to know if I was willing. While surprised at the offer, I nonetheless told him yes. After all, a chance for career advancement was one of the reasons I had come to Saudi Arabia.

On Tuesday of the second week of classes I was called to a meeting in the Dean’s Office. I had previously met, albeit only briefly, most of the people in the room; soon we would know each other very well. The Dean was forming a new leadership structure to lead the UPP: Dr. Joseph, a personable Muslim convert from Michigan, would be the new Director. He would be assisted by two Co-Directors: Dr. Mohamed, a Physics professor from Sri Lanka, and Dr.  Tamrika, a Georgian-American English professor. The new Science Coordinator would be Dr. Amjad, a warm, witty Palestinian Chemistry prof. And the new English Coordinator? That would be me.

After one and a half weeks on the job, I was in charge of 457 students, 16 faculty members, and the entire ESL curriculum. Our first task: reboot the English program.

The Great Reboot

My partner was Ms. Gada, the Dean of Women’s Studies, who had been serving as Interim Coordinator of the UPP. (Ethnically she’s Libyan-Turkish but culturally she’s 100% New Yorker.)

We huddled into a “conference room”—aka book storage closet—to reorganize the entire program. Gada and I looked at comparison charts of various placement exams (TOEFL, IELTS, CEFR, etc.) and triangulated new cutoffs for each level. We hurriedly developed a plan of action:

• Eliminate the lowest levels (Levels 1 & 2); subsume those students into Levels 3 and 4.
• Come up with a new placement rubric based on the most recent TOEFL scores to calibrate the new level assignments.
• Re-place all the students in the program. Create or eliminate sections as needed.
• Reapportion the teaching assignments, including a double load (sorry!) for the teachers who were covering for faculty who hadn’t arrived yet.

The Great Reboot almost killed Glen

Finally we strategized with our IT guy, the inimitable Mr. Omran (Jordanian), who helped us figure out the new placement mechanism. Every student in the program would be disenrolled from his or her current class; every student would be placed in a new class and/or level. About half the teachers would be reassigned.

So at the start of Week 3 of Fall semester, the entire program started over. By this point all the female teachers had arrived; we were still missing three male instructors (or half of the staff)--two arrived within a couple weeks; one never came. It felt a lot like doing a transmission job on a car while it’s driving down the highway: we didn’t crash, but it was rather harrowing nonetheless.

Teacher, Teacher

One result of the reboot was a second section of my class, PENG (Preparatory English) 7, was created with 34 students, and my own section of PENG 7 went from 23 to 32 students. The enrollment limit is supposed to be 30, and we try to keep the class sizes to 20. The teacher who was supposed to take over the newly created section had not arrived yet. (In Saudi Arabia, the answer to virtually any “when” question is “Next week—inshallah.” Inshallah translates to “If Allah wills it” or the rough equivalent of “God willing”.) When is the new teacher coming to relieve me? Next week—inshallah.  

Life got better when all the teachers arrived:
with Andrew, Glen, & Justin

The upshot: I was assigned to both sections by that treacherous new Coordinator (me). So I was now responsible for teaching a double-load of over-enrolled classes which literally met at the same time in two different rooms. Moreover, I got two additional sections (for a total of four) of the dreaded Study Skills class added to my schedule. And I was now in charge of the whole program. I was told that eventually I would have a reduced teaching load as a result of taking on extra administrative duties. The irony: initially I ended up with a double teaching load.

My classes met every afternoon from 1:00 to 4:00. I had to figure out how to be in two places at the same time. My solution: one class got me for the first hour and a half, the other class got me for the other half of the class. I combined the Study Skills classes into giant sections. This had to last for two weeks. My relief, Justin, arrived just in time for the two-week Hajj Break, four weeks into the term.

The Challenge Ahead

We inherited a program designed by someone else who wasn’t even around any more to guide it. Thus, we were left with a lot of gaps: No policy handbook. No procedure for student complaints. No policy for substitute teaching. No means for faculty observations and evaluations. No method for handling student discipline problems in the classroom. No process for students to challenge their placement—which meant that every Tarek, Dalal, and Homoud would land in my office demanding to know why he was placed in Level X!

So, our new Admin Team set about righting the ship in the midst of a hurricane. I am happy to report that we weathered the storm. We’ve made a lot of progress. We have more changes in store for next year.

I have a very simple but ambitious goal: I want Alfaisal University to be known for having the finest Preparatory Program (IEP) in Saudi Arabia: the students are progressing, the teachers are fulfilled and effective, the program operates smoothly and efficiently. Can we get there? Stay tuned.

Saving Grace: Awesome Students

In the midst of all this insanity there was one constant: the student of Alfaisal are awesome. The student body is about 60% Saudi and 40% expats from elsewhere in the Middle East: Syria, Jordan, Yemen, Palestine, Libya, Oman, etc.

Saudi students are very welcoming: Khaled & Abulrahman
(for the record, these two never cheated). 

Arabs are most famous for their generosity and hospitality. They are very welcoming—especially to Americans. If you can connect with them on a personal level, they tend to perform for you on an academic level. My students are funny, lively, slothful, and clever (too clever sometimes—they find cunning ways to cheat). Many of them are extremely bright and motivated. Almost all of them are academically undisciplined and underprepared: they often show up to class without books, pencil, notebook—never without their smart phone—and then look at you blankly when you ask why they didn’t bring them.

Students here use a variety of honorifics for their teachers. The most common is Doctor (pronounced more like ‘doke-tore’ said quickly with a rolled r), as in “Dr. John, is the quiz open book?” More accurate and almost as common is Mister: “Mr. John, can I go to my car and get a pencil?” Virtually every employee of the university is addressed this way: title + first name: Dr. Faisal, Mr. Brent, Ms. Alanoud, etc. Often the honorific titles are used without the name, as in Doctor, Mister, Sir, or Professor.

The Syrian students can relax--occasionally. 

My students want to talk about religion: “Mr. John, you’re a Christian, right? What language do you think Adam and Even spoke in the Garden of Eden? It was Arabic, wasn’t it?” Errrr . . . . They represent the heart of the present-day Saudi dilemma: how do you stay religiously conservative while trying to live in a modern world? Most of them are desperate for change while still wanting to hew to “the party line.”

I have a special place in my heart for the Syrians, who form the largest contingent of non-Saudis. Most of them grew up in Saudi Arabia as expats and went to private high schools in Riyadh (only Saudis are allowed to go to the public schools). The Syrians have a mature spirit and earnest warmth to them; they are the most highly motivated students as well (almost overly so). This lovely energy is in stark, tragic contrast to what is going on in Syria right now, so they carry the added burden of a broken heart for their home country, their friends, and their relatives. Most of them want to go to med school. Some of them are even planning to return to Syria one day to practice. I hope for their best.

Epilogue: The “Happy” Ending

So here I am at the end of my first year. It’s virtually impossible to recount all the numerous ups and downs of the past year (fodder for future posts, indeed). It has been characterized by great colleagues and friends, wonderful (and frustrating) students, and lots of hard work. As Booker T. Washington said: “Nothing ever comes to one, that is worth having, except as a result of hard work.” That’s been true of my year as English Coordinator: We worked hard and worthwhile things followed; other things will probably never change.

Time to close the book on Year One and go home. Back in August for two more years.

Two happy students, Amer & Obada: The first year is over!

One If by Land, Two If by Sea

Out to the Ocean and Into the Desert

Finally heading out of town . . .

The entire country of Saudi Arabia enjoys a two-week holiday every year to allow Muslim pilgrims to perform the Hajj and celebrate Eid Al-Adha, the second most important holiday in the Islamic calendar. About 2 million people descend on Mecca (Makkah) to perform a series of prescribed rituals; over half of them hail from outside the country. (Thus, good luck to anyone else trying to get a visa during that time: at Alfaisal University we had at least one teacher and two spouses hung up in channels waiting for the deluge to subside.) Most of the country empties out—I estimated maybe one third of the normal traffic on the road—as most Saudis head for Dubai, Bahrain, Istanbul, Boston, wherever.

This last year the break fell at the end of September and into October. I took the opportunity to finally get out of Dodge—er, Riyadh—and go in opposite directions: out to the sea and into the desert.

Two by the Sea: Lifelong Friends Who Had Never Met

When I was first offered the job in Saudi Arabia, the first thing Sue and I did was try to find contacts who were living or had lived there to ply them with questions. Fortunately, through work colleagues I connected with several CSU alumni, one of whom was currently living in Jubail on the Persian Gulf. Denise Wright Murray had gone through the same masters program as I, and had even held my job at CSU about eight years prior. When I contacted her via email, she replied with pages and pages of helpful information about life in Saudi, much of it aimed at Sue, describing life for a woman here. Obviously she was successful in offering us the needed reassurance, as we decided to come.

Long-lost Best Friends: Mark & Denise

Denise and her husband, Mark, have lived in Jubail for over 5 years now, after having also spent time in Kuwait. They offered to pick me up from the train station in Dammam. The Saudi Railway Organization has big plan to cover the entire country in a web-like railway network, including a bullet train between Jeddah and Mecca and then on to Riyadh. The reality: they have one line operational between Riyadh, the capital, and Dammam, the heart of oil country in the east. Dammam is actually a trio of cities made up of Dharan and Khobair: it’s headquarters to Aramco, the huge Saudi-American joint venture started in the 30s that now drives the entire economy of Saudi Arabia.

They have a spacious 3-bedroom apartment about a 10-minute walk from the beach. Denise works for Jubail University, which is run by the Royal Commission. Indeed, everything in Jubail is run by the Royal Commission. This is a special zone cordoned off by the Saudi government under the special auspices of this organization. Imagine if the US Government created a special enterprise zone under its own rule called the Independent Jacksonville-Seattle Commission, connected by a huge pipeline across the country, in which they also own everything in both cities and anything within a 5-mile swath of the pipe. That’s the Royal Commission, which controls the hospitals, the shopping, the apartments, the university, the streets, etc. within its territory: a veritable modern-day fiefdom. And what they say goes, period. Some things are positively feudal here.

The Corniche along Fanateer Beach in Jubail

Jubail is an interesting mix of nationalities: with the giant oil industry and the desalination plants, the demographics are odd: it’s about 1/3 Bangladeshi, 1/3 Saudi, and 1/3 Westerners. A walk along the Corniche confirms this.

After two hot dusty months in Riyadh, my one goal was to go to the ocean every day. The Persian (or Arabian) Gulf is a 10-minute walk from Denise and Mark’s apartment. The Corniche along Fanateer Beach stretches for miles along the beachfront: a wide pedestrian walkway, lovely lawns and picnic areas, fishing piers, jogging paths, and swimming beaches. But it was still hot—only this time with killer humidity.  I couldn’t get 20 feet from the door without my shirt clinging to my back with sweat (ewww).

It was a delightful change from conservative, uptight Riyadh to be at the Corniche in Jubail and see Saudis actually letting their hair down (figuratively—certainly not literally): some gals in abayas were even wading into the surf!

Promised myself to go to the sea every day -
a nice change from dusty Riyadh

Denise, Mark, and I spent an enjoyable week in each other’s company: we felt like long-lost friends who had never met before. We joked that if anyone asked, I was Denise’s brother, as it was technically illegal for me to be staying there as a non-relative. By the end of the week, we felt like real siblings.

After a rejuvenating 6-day stay their driver returned me to the train station in Dammam for the trip “home” to Riyadh. Farewell, ocean, humidity, and friends—for now.

One If by Land: A Trip to The Edge of the World

One week later, while most of the country was still away for Hajj Break, I had my second opportunity to get out of Riyadh city limits. The InterNations group I had joined had scheduled a trip to the Edge of the World, an escarpment about 2 hours northwest of Riyadh in both the literal and proverbial middle of nowhere. Ironically enough, you can find it on Google Maps.

Tamrika (Georgian-American) and Abdullah (Syrian)
are among my new expat friends in InterNations

[InterNations.org is a terrific collection of ex-pats and locals with chapters all over the world. I joined the Riyadh chapter after I went bowling with the group at the Strike Bowling Alley in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Very clever of them to hide low-key recreational opportunities inside of luxury hotels.]

Our eclectic group of expats rendezvoused at some specified location in Riyadh before loading into our caravan of four 4x4 vehicles for the trek into the wilderness. (We have to do a little cloak-and-dagger secrecy occasionally to avoid the scrutinous eye of the authorities who frown on “mixed” groups—i.e. unrelated men and women fraternizing.) My friend Abdullah offered to drive his Toyota Landcruiser to the desert. Abdullah is an engineer from Syria. Like a lot of Syrians, he has lived in Saudi Arabia his whole life as an expat; unless you’re born a Saudi, you can never become a citizen, even if you marry a Saudi wife. Women who marry a Saudi man can reap all the benefits of citizenship, however.

The first hour zooms along the highway northwest toward Qassim; the second hour veers off the highway onto a gut-jostling 4-wheeling journey across a rugged desert landscape, through a sandy dry wadi, and over rocky bluffs.

Abdullah and Friend: Camels here are black and white

Along the route are camel camps owned by the Bedouins—an odd cluster of dark tents and wooden corrals, in which there are camels of varying sizes and ages and colors. The camels here are always black and white—like sheep—not brown or tan like in the zoo back home. The word is that camel-herder is actually a very lucrative profession. They make very good money off of the milk, meat, fur, hide, etc. (We found out later that camel brains is actually considered a delicacy here—yuck.) At one point our car caravan came across a camel caravan—new frequently meets old in Saudi Arabia, come to think of it.

After an hour of bone-bouncing pleasure, we at last reached a non-descript wall of sandstone. The women were quite happy to ditch their abayas once we got out of the vehicles. We watered down and geared up, and walked up the trail about 150 feet: suddenly the world dropped away practically from under my feet. While the name is a bit exaggerated, The Edge of the World is nonetheless impressive as you stand on the edge looking westward over a vast expanse of desert opening up below you and on to the horizon, where the sun was heading toward its final descent for the day.

Watch your step! (or Be a dork!)

We arrived about an hour before sunset; the view of the setting sun off the edge of the cliff managed to blaze through the dusty haze, transforming the landscape into a panoply of dusky hues. We struck various goofy poses jumping or falling off the cliff (real original, I know) and collecting photos in random groupings.

As the sun set we made a camp out of blankets and pads around a crackling fire. Someone produced a guitar, and we sang American pop songs while coffee, tea, and snacks materialized and were shared among the group.

Before heading down to the 4x4s again, we took a group photo of leaping expats celebrating the moment. As it has become one of my fondest favorite moments in Saudi Arabia, I’ve made it my background screen to my Facebook page. 

Our eclectic InterNations group on The Edge of the World

From Limbo to Turbo: A Rocky Start to the School Daze

Part One: The Harsh Start

In April of this year (2014) I accepted a job at Alfaisal University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to teach English in the University Preparatory Program. Sue and I had a number of reasons why we decided this would be a good move for us, both personal and professional. One of the professional reasons was that I wanted to finally take my 25 years’ worth of English teaching skills and experience and use them overseas. Another reason was the opportunity for career advancement, which the Dean who hired me had held out as a future possibility. The future came much quicker than anticipated.

Alfaisal University: My New Home

King Faisal, who ruled from 1964-1975, is known in Saudi Arabia as a great modernizer: he put the country’s oil wealth to good use, abolished slavery, and fostered education. Many of his kids are US-educated and hold prominent government positions today. To Americans he’s probably most (in)famous for the 1974 oil embargo. He was assassinated in 1975 by an allegedly insane nephew. To this day many Saudis firmly believe his murder was a CIA-orchestrated plot as revenge for the embargo. After his death his family started the philanthropic King Faisal Foundation. One of its most important projects was starting Alfaisal University.

Test Day in Mr. John's Class. Note the balcony for the gals.

Alfaisal University is based on the American model of education; the instruction in all the courses is in English. It currently has about 2500 students, divided among four colleges: Business, Engineering, Medicine, and Science & General Studies. While it’s technically a liberal arts education, the Humanities aren’t emphasized (interestingly, they do include Islamic Studies). By Saudi law, there is no such thing as a co-educational university; the sexes cannot mix—ever. Usually this means that there are women’s colleges and men’s colleges. However, there are two universities who have been granted an exception to this; one is Alfaisal. Generally speaking, the women stay on the top two floors, the men on the bottom two floors. (Both female teachers and female students are allowed to come to the male areas if they have a purpose for being there.) However, all of the classrooms on floors 2 and 3 have two levels: men on the bottom level with the teacher, women up in a balcony (like at a theatre), where the teacher can see them, but the male students can’t. Women cannot teach men, but men can teach both males and females.

Somewhere under the General Studies Department is the UPP: The University Preparatory Program. The UPP is responsible for taking about 450 academically under-prepared students and getting them ready for university study. The focus is mostly on English, but also includes math and science. It’s very similar to the community college model of “developmental” education: covering the material students were supposed to get in high school but didn’t. At its heart, it’s an intensive English program. While we’re somewhat peripheral to the institution, we are also essential to it as the UPP takes students who otherwise wouldn’t be eligible for university study and giving them an avenue of entry. So we are the feeder institution for the rest of the university, and therefore vital to it.

That is the admirable goal of the UPP. Little did we know what a basket case of a program we had just stepped into.

Red Flag Warnings, or Lando Calrissian Comes to Alfaisal

The hardest adjustment to life in Saudi Arabia was that the English Preparatory Program at Alfaisal University that I came to was in complete disarray when I arrived, if not outright chaos. And the “solutions” involved the teachers getting the shaft. In The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader tells Lando Calrissian, “I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further.” Like Lando, we kept muttering to ourselves, “This deal is getting worse all the time!”

"I am altering the deal."
(This one's for you, Emmy K)

With less than a week to go before the Fall term was slated to start, none of the new teachers had received any communication whatsoever about class assignments, syllabi, textbooks—nothing. We just kept being told to be patient. I had never met most of the female faculty I’d be working with, and we were still awaiting four more male and five more female faculty to arrive. That was the first of many Red Flags.

Our first faculty meeting wasn’t a meeting at all, but a software training session. But at least we got to sort of meet each other for the first time. An affable but pedantic British guy based out of Istanbul explained to us how to use the online companion software that supplements the reading book used in Level 3. He kept talking about, “As you’ve seen in the textbook, this part of the website goes with the content in each chapter.” We hated to break it to him that none of us had ever seen the textbook before, and this was the first time we had even been told what textbook we would be using. (PS: The software sucked: poorly designed and lousy pedagogy.) This wasn’t boding well: Red Flag #2.

The came another rude shock: None of the three returning male faculty from last year were actually coming back. The program director, who was long overdue at this point, sent his resignation from the US. Moreover, the teacher with seven years seniority with Alfaisal resigned: a kind, intelligent, soft-spoken man named Mark, who had been unfailingly helpful to Glen and me since our arrival. The third faculty member, officially still listed in the schedule, had been keeping everyone guessing as to whether he was coming back or not. They guessed wrong: he decided on the day before classes started that he wasn’t returning.

That left the program with no leaders and only half the teachers in place. On the male side, therefore, there were no returning faculty to mentor us new hires. Plus, that left 7 teaching positions to be filled by 3 brand-new faculty: Glen, Brent, and me. On the female side, they had 10 teaching positions, but only 6 of the faculty had arrived as of the start of classes. If you’re noticing a 2^nd-grade math problem here, then you’re apparently way ahead of the interim administrators who had taken charge of the program in the wake of all the departures. (Red Flag #3: What the hell is going on with this program? Why were we left with so many vacant positions at the 11^th hour, right before the school year was set to start?)

Testing, Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3 . . .

Four days to go, and none of us still had a teaching assignment. And now we had MIA faculty without a clear plan for coverage.

So at last we had a teacher meeting with the interim administrators. They revealed our teaching assignments, passed out the syllabi, and divided us into teams according to which of the four levels we would be teaching. I got Level 7/8, along with two faculty on the female side.

Alfaisal had decided the previous Spring to double the enrollment of the UPP by adding two additional lower levels. The strategy was admirable: we would capture more under-prepared students who were intelligent and motivated enough to make a success of the university, but whose high school background had left them horribly unprepared in the sciences and English language study. (Un-Fun Fact: Most Saudi high schools are horrible: half the school day is devoted to religion and Arabic history, leaving not near enough time for the three Rs or English.)

We finally got our first look at the new and “improved” syllabus that “they” (who? not sure) had been working on, including the syllabi for the two new levels. 80% of the syllabus was devoted to quizzes and tests; 20% was devoted to whatever else. For anyone not in education or ESL, let’s just say that this is inordinately heavy on assessment. There’s a popular fallacy that standardized testing = educational improvement. It doesn’t. Most of us detested the syllabus we’d been handed. But with four days to go, there was little to be done about it. Because of our hue and cry, they backed off on the part of the syllabus that required us to administer a quiz at least once a week in each competency area (listening, speaking, reading, writing, and grammar).

Tamrika, Glen, & Brent: Lucky you:
you're teaching an overload

But they still hadn’t revealed to any of us how they were planning to handle the courses for which there was no teacher assigned. The students showed up on campus for Orientation Day on Sunday, August 31. The first day of classes was Monday, September 1 (just like Harry Potter). That Sunday evening at 6:00 pm, they sprang the cruelest surprise of all: several teachers were informed that they had to teach a double load: as of tomorrow morning, they had to prepare a three-hour lesson for an additional class at a different level, in addition to starting their own assigned class for the first time. That left them overnight to prepare six hours worth of lessons for two different classes they didn’t even have the textbooks for.

I only narrowly avoided landing in the same crappy predicament: I would have gotten assigned extra work too (either university composition or preparatory English), but they couldn’t find a course for me that didn’t conflict with my existing schedule. I dodged that bullet—temporarily. But fear not: My turn was coming—and how.

Next Post: Part Two: The Fix Is In – And Guess Who It Is