International Teacher Education Conference 2014 1

International Teacher Education Conference 2014
a shock for [this] community.” Many parents reacted angrily, believing “we are not trustworthy… some of them
[were] shouting, ‘Why are women here? Women are not strong; they cannot control the boys.”
Feminization meant not only a transition for the community but also that every single teacher and school
leader was new to the school. This issue was exacerbated by the fact that the principal arrived in November,
after the school began. Mariam described some of the challenges she faced:
The most difficult challenge was really the school system, the school rules, to put everything in its
place, even with the teachers, even with the children because most of them were new teachers, new
teachers even for the EMTs and AMTs. I was lucky to have English HoF but I did not have Arabic
HoF, so I was with them, was working with them so everything was new so I was running here, there
and there.
Like Hessa, Mariam and her principal seemed to function well together; she said, “We are fine. She’s [the
principal] with us now and we are fine.” Similar to Fatima, Mariam reported resistance from teachers as a
problem but one that she believed that she was addressing successfully. She said, “I will not again go outside
and say I’ve had teacher resistance. Why do they resist? Because they are not satisfied about something. Fix it in
the school, that thing, and they will be satisfied and you will see the wonderful performance from them. It is not
a challenge.”
The idea of caring was a consistent theme in Mariam’s discussion of her own role. She said, “Actually being
responsible in our field [means] that you really care, so responsible mean caring, caring, so you care for those
kids.” Mariam described the children at her school as “really lucky because they have that New School model.
… They are playing, enjoying their time, projects… They early learn how to be responsible and they learn how
to be self-confident.”
Despite her generally positive comments about her school, Mariam described some negative consequences in
her personal life because of her increased commitments as a vice-principal. She described her feelings, stating,
“Only one word, really I felt alone […] …Really I miss my friends, I miss the teachers’ life, the teacher’s lounge
I miss that life.”She also described feeling isolated from her family because of the burden of taking work home,
stating, “I can’t concentrate [around the family], I have to stay alone. So that’s no life.” However, she appeared
to see this as a temporary situation, saying, “I miss a lot of things I know, but I enjoy it Sarah, maybe it is the
first year. I will say I don’t know.”
Mariam described a great deal of hard work and effort undertaken in concert with her principal over the
course of the year to build a school community and to connect with parents. By the end of the year, she said that
the parents, many of whom were very angry or upset at the beginning of the year, “are fine. … Most of them
[now say] Alhamdulillah, thank god that we have mothers for our children. We have mothers, and we need
mothers.”
Electronic Student Information System (ESIS)
All of the program participants who were interviewed referenced the student information system (ESIS) as a
major part of their job responsibilities. Their comments indicated that this system was extremely cumbersome
and several participants expressed frustration regarding the drain on their time and energy, which they believed
was a result of their responsibilities with ESIS. Fatima summarized the tone of the group’s feelings about ESIS,
saying, “ESIS, oh my god it’s a whole different story. ESIS, they have to train new vice-principals how to deal
with ESIS.”
Khawla, Mariam, and Fatima all indicated that ESIS interfered significantly with their family life. Hessa and
Khawla both indicated that they were unable to engage fully with the academic aspects of their job because of
ESIS. Khawla said, “I have to be in the classrooms, not here, sitting on the desk!” Fatima expressed a high
degree of frustration with the system and with the lack of training. She said, “There’s no time that you will take
your time to learn, no, you have to do it, find a way to learn about it and just finish with it. They will not give
you a time.” Mariam said, simply, “You know, Sarah, most of our work now [is] in ESIS.” Program participants
uniformly expressed a high degree of frustration with ESIS, which they perceived to be an inefficient and timeconsuming
system for which they had received inadequate training.
Community Relationships
Another issue, which was a major theme across all of the interviews, was a lack of support from ADEC for
building and maintaining positive community relationships. It is possible that one of the limitations of the
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