Searching for a school

I had the option of living in Jerusalem or Ramallah. The commute is not that bad between the two, but I'm all about simplicity in my life, and simplicity would mean living in Ramallah. So the most urgent task at hand was finding a place to enroll my son, an entering first grader. Public schools in this part of the world are severely over-crowded and under-resourced with out-dated teaching methods and poorly trained teachers and administrators. Teaching methods are almost exclusively wrote learning, with no emphasis on building critical thinkers. Basically, they are everything the schools where we are coming from are NOT.

So my only viable option seemed to be the private school route. But given the condition of public schools, complemented by the high value all parents place on education here, finding a spot in a private school was not going to be easy. Private schools, to my great surprise, also suffer from the same issues as public ones. I found this even more disturbing than the stark state of the public schools. In my very-American logic, if a school is charging students a large fee for attending their school, would the school not be responsible for ensuring their teachers are trained in up-to-date teaching methods and providing the best, competitive curriculum? I guess as the demand from students outstrips the supply of schools, it is not really a "buyer's" market.

I hit an all-low point in my search when I visited a school that had been established by an American couple some 20 years ago. I became suspicious from the minute I walked in the door. First, the windows in the doors of the first grade classrooms were covered with black construction paper, making it impossible to see what was going on in the classroom. And my requests to see the classrooms or meet the teachers were met with a firm no. Only after 1 hour of charming the administrators, did they let me briefly visit the classroom which consisted of wooden benches and chairs and a teacher standing in front of a blackboard with chalk and a pointer. One of the American founders of the school then tried to sell me on the curriculum. A web search on the curriculum revealed that it was a home-schooling, full-on christian-based curriculum which lacked creativity. Wonderful! I then learned another important fact - secular education is almost non-existent in this part of the world, even if most student bodies are mixed-religions.

I tried to remain open to the possibility of sending my son to the school until the last 15 minutes of the visit when the director repeated a half of dozen times, "I know your child will be very happy here." Oddly enough, it reminded me of a guy I recently dated who kept imploring that he could make me very happy. How can another being possibly be sure of the fact that they will be able to fulfill your happiness? And if they failed, how would they deal with that? I vowed to run from anybody ever attempting to make such promises. So, with that, I checked off this school from the list of possibilities.

After another round of visits to a handful of schools resembling that one, I then expressed to the universe at large (in the presence of a patient colleague), that what I really desired was to visit a school where children at the elementary level were seated around round tables and not at wooden benches and desks. It seemed like such a trivial request. But I was also becoming worried that I wouldn't be able to find a place where I knew my son would be safe and well-taken care of (being academically challenged in a creative environment seems a little too much to ask for here, so I'll have to provide that at home).

A colleague told me about a private school were his three children had just enrolled and seemed very happy. He also mentioned the facility had an indoor swimming pool, at which my son's ears perked up. I decided to give the school a try, even if the curriculum was mainly in Arabic. The school is located on top of a open, green hill in one of Ramallah's more posh neighborhoods. I was greeted in a friendly manner, with everybody immediately wanting to interact with my son - asking him his name, his age, etc.. My request to visit a classroom was granted immediately with a thorough tour of the entire premises. They opened the door to one of the first grade classrooms, and there sat a bunch of smiling, young faces around a series of round tables. I smiled back, and my colleague (who accompanied me for translation purposes) whispered in my ear, "They have the tables you wanted!" And with that, my decision was made!