Information on this project
Monday, 31 October 2016
Palestinian history lessons
Saturday, 29 October 2016
PALESTINE DAY 6 AND 7 BACK TO SCHOOL
Friday, 28 October 2016
It's the little things
A community so tight that it is sufficient to give a driver the name of the area and family name.
Palestinian civilians entering an ex-interrogation centre as free people and sleepirng we are e young in the same rooms previously occupied by those who had tortured their people.
A culture where imprisonment of young people is normalised as part of the struggle, and where the estranged receives a classic heroes welcome for daring to throw stones.
A class of students learning about the benefits and uses of trains with the full knowledge they have never seen one on their land.
A people so generous that as well as showing us around their city, they ensure we are well fed, well rested and relatively safe.
A father who witnessed his son's gun riddled body deprived of emergency medicine and then made to needlessly wait hours before being allowed to bury him.
A typical morning line up where students pray together and pledge allegiance to their country and Palestinian cause.
A small 12 year old boy orphaned before his time - yet to meet his imprisoned father, then also made to live through the imprisonment of his mother.
Students so driven to learn they are leading the learning in their classrooms having prepared all their own resources and activities.
Being shown around an interrogation centre by the very people made to kneel for days until the moment they agree to free themselves into prison with a false confession.
Women adorning themselves with beautiful clothes and make up in preparation for weddings and engagement parties.
A poster drawing attention to child marriages and the subsequent meeting of a 15 year young bride concerned about community gossip.
Relaxing on a beautiful beach on the dead Sea then finding out our hosts had attempted to go the previous year but were denied entry as Palestinians.
Prostrating at al aqsa mosque, recognising the multi tiered system that permits us to do so but has prevented others.
Knowing it's olive picking season, when we see the fruit, as well as the line up of armed soldiers on the roadside in anticipation of the farmers.
Countless cups of traditional coffee and sweetened tea served in every office and house we enter.
A boy too young to be join a trip to London, but old enough to be arrested and given a prison sentence.
Palestinian children in the occupied territory of East Jerusalem studying a censored curriculum that denies them basic access to their history, geography and citizenship.
Passing three layers of armed soldiers before entering al aqsa mosque for asr, humbled by the magnificence of a space built for peaceful worship yet acknowledging how empty this mosque has now become.
Wednesday, 26 October 2016
The strong women of Palestine
Starting the residential
Beautiful to wake up to soft sun and friendly faces today, and we did so much this morning. Explored the grounds and looked at the olives and the area. Ate a big breakfast and began our workshops. Started to share and learn and collect questions...so far, so very good
Tuesday, 25 October 2016
Thanks for your welcome
A really big thanks to our teacher friends for their great welcome to their homes and for the very delicious food - what a lot of effort but it was so much appreciated! Yesterday Rudaina and family and today Kefah and family. This picture was after an unforgettable feast!
PALESTINE DAY 5 BACK TO SCHOOL
Saladin's minaret wakes us up at 4 to pray and the mosquitoes follow not long after to berate us for staying in bed. We've grown sluggish in the heat around Jerusalem but fresh falafel and a walk through down town Abu Dis wakes us out of our dreams. Today we have the pleasure of tours around the towns schools, our group heads to Abu Dis Girls School, Abu Dis Boys School, the Nehru School (all state run single sex establishments) and the Arab Institute (a boys private school).
We wait in the headmistress' office of Abu Dis Girls School for the French teacher who excuses her perfect English before translating her stern director's greetings. We hear the same forgettable facts: population, subjects studied, curriculum, pathways, achievements of the students whilst we all pine to see some teaching. We are not disappointed. As we slip in and out of classrooms, down corridors, up staircases we see eyes widen in shock at the rare sight of international visitors, lips mouth muddled greetings in varied languages, guessing our nationality. The lessons we do disturb are a joy to see as a teacher. Polite, engaged students who are excited to greet visitors but also keen to continue their lessons and show their teacher that they are on task and hard working, attentive students. Before our jealousy had time to settle we were whisked into computer labs and libraries as well as into one of our host's biology lab, full of what can only be described as taxidermy misdemeanours. Our visit was epitomised by our visit to the outside canteen furnished with coloured stools made out of tyres and children surrounding their English teacher singing gleefully in all tones and shrieking like some sequel to the sound of music as we approached. The English teacher smiles proudly as she greets us as the song comes to an end. We leave full of optimism about teaching in the shadow of the wall.
Abu Dis Boys is another world. We begin our tour in their 5th Grade, 11 year old stare our at us, ask our names and show off their knowledge of ordinal numbers. Their command of English is impressive and the class seems positive and enthusiastic. As we progress down the corridor and up the years the class sizes increase and the behaviour becomes wild. By the end of the corridor we are at the 9th Grade. 50 boys in a room, or are meant to be. Some wander the halls, some sneak out of the front gate. Order is nowhere to be seen. It's sad to see the difference in education for the boys and we leave feeling deflated.
We stroll over to the the Arab Institute, a private boys school with accommodation for orphans and absent (often imprisoned) parents. We meet the headmaster and an 11year old boy with both his parents in jail before meeting some of the students who have prepared a presentation about the various Palestinian Ids. The boys here are so articulate and passionate that the Abu Dis Boys School has fallen out of our thoughts. It seems like it's fallen out of the thoughts of the educational authority as well.
After our lunch at Al-Quds University we plan twinning links with our Palestinian colleagues through broken English and cod Arabic. We hear about broken promises and ignored letters and make assurances that we will be better. Over dinner phones buzz with pictures and plans and we settle in to long conversations and thoughts for the future.
Playground at the Arab Institute
Sweet boys (said the teachers who gave them flowers) and a tear gas cannister (a new type we were told) that the Israeli army shot into ye playground a few days before.
Monday, 24 October 2016
Sebastia...
A long day today but that didn't stop us accepting the invitation by Abu Yasser to breakfast in Sebastia... and so glad we did. A memorable breakfast with everything tasty and good, and then a look at the Roman ruins.
Tom was the most excited! Or maybe I thought that he must be as he's a classicist. But all of us loved being there and in the dreamy Palestinian hills in the autumn sunshine.
And then confronted with the current occupation reality: settlements. GROWING. EVERYWHERE.
PALESTINE DAY 3 CONTEXT
The days are melting into each other in the levantine sun. As we roll through another valley of olive trees and past another armed checkpoint to another town covered in posters of murdered youths - some with guns, some without - the normalisation of violence begins to sink in.
For us this is a shock. For our guides this is their life. We meet a man working for the Educational Authority in the Jalasa refugee camp whose son was shot dead by Israeli soldiers in Nablis whilst working two years ago. Every day a new story of violence and death. Yet the men in the refugee camp do not call for blood, but understanding and peace. They want their voices heard, voices frustrated by consecutive United Nations resolutions which have been ignored (181 - the partition of the two states in 1948 - and 302 - that UNRWA was to continue to help the Palestinian people until they had returned home or their issues had been settled - to name the two stuck in my mind).
We arrived in Anata late. Today was also the first time we have seen the wall. It's shocking. A 20 foot high wall pressed right up against Palestinian towns villages and refugee camps whilst on the other side spacious, green settlements flourish. The sheer display of inequality would be enough to shock most but the fact that these settlements flagrantly contravene the Oslo agreement and international law is baffling. Here is a barrier put up to allow the Israeli government divide the Palestinian people and to cut up the land which they are allowed to live on. It makes it more difficult to visit relatives who live in the different areas (A, B and C) and even more so Palestinians with their different coloured IDs (blue - Jerusalem: you can travel anywhere in Israel or the West Bank; green - West Bank only; orange - Gaza Strip only) who can be cut off from travelling to see friends and families.
And this is where children are brought up. Inside a cage where you are a second class citizen from birth. No opportunity to contact or even meet with your neighbouring counterparts. As we go to sleep after a long day of meetings, tours and discussions and we hear what may have been a few bullets in the background you can't help but feel helpless. What can you do when a wall stands so firm against any positive building of relationships? What happens if that's our guide's son?
Sunday, 23 October 2016
A moment to reflect
Saturday, 22 October 2016
Waiting waiting
When we eventually got through the airport at Tel Aviv, three hours had passed and our electronic slips wouldn't open the exit gates. "Why were you so long? " asked the man at the gate. "You'd better ask them that," we said, referring to the security. We don't know what they had in their mind. During the three hours, we'd seen some people denied entry and others had waited 6 hours; we'd seen one young woman really stressed by being on her own, interviewed for ages; we'd been shouted at in an unnecessary way by security; and we'd been asked to promise we wouldn't be going to any demonstrations (as we aren't, that bit's easy). Then suddenly the passports came back - just after we took this picture - and we met our bus and set off into the dark and into Palestine.
Amazing work going on
Today teachers from the UK and Palestine are comparing their work in their countries (after lots of presentations over 2 days). Amazing stuff going on, so interesting... How do you manage without many computers... Talking to the kids about meeting soldiers in the street... How do we plan our lessons? ... How do children cope with the arrests of their classmates? ... Real excitement in the air... What a brilliant group of people, sure they're all great teachers (lucky students). Looking forward to the work on school twinning.
PALESTINE DAY 1
I'm writing this to you from a bent road in the back of a van taking us to Nablis. The man in the front is our leader and self proclaimed captain of Palestinian Football - but we're still to get to the bottom of that one and I'm sure my pigeon Arabic is to blame.
It's been a long 48 hours. Buses, taxis, planes and shoes. (oh and detention benches but more on that later). Turbulence turns to motorway to unmanaged road, road which reinvigorated a bug inside one if us who is still investigating the intricacies of British mandate plumbing. (or maybe Israeli - we haven't been given the full history of our current residence). As we wind through the shaky hills out of Far'a green and yellow number plates flash past, some with kids hanging out of the windows, staring out of thick glasses, others dodging curbside smokers outside glowing minarets. Despite the long start to our trip the car is buzzing. There is a definite relief in the air. Fourteen teachers, blowing out the double ended candles of a long half term and setting off to the occupied territories of Palestine, intent on exchanging experiences and resources, remembering their initial meeting at the airport, green and clueless as to what the following days would have in store.
It sounds foolish, but like many of my generation I'm ignorant when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Apart from an old professor with a map showing the transition from the region in 1917 to 1993 my knowledge has been through reports and sporadic bouts with Wikipedia. And what does that really bring anyway. Facts can often be so dehumanising, reducing human loss to statistics, which we initially gasp at but quickly forget. No, today we had the hard hitting, knife turning reality of life as a teacher in Palestine. In the UK we talk so much about the safety and welfare of students. We talk about how traumatic home lives can hinder a student's education. How would we act if our students were imprisoned for three months? Or had to miss school because they'd been shot in the legs for approaching a wall built through the middle of their town?
The stories become more and more traumatic as the day continues and the three hours spent held in a detention room whilst some of our group's passports were taken started to make more sense. We were here by the authority of the British council but today that means very little. Our leader can be aggressively harassed and our Muslim colleagues can be intimidated and interrogated whilst other people all around us because of their ethnic or cultural backgrounds are deported through fear. Fear of a variety of things, but fear none the less. It is so sad to see. Even more so because as soon as we enter Tel Asia airport a kindly enployee comes to help us find our bags. Probably unaware of our detention and uncaring about out race, nationality or intentions but a true ray of hope.
Below us Nablis spreads out, fairylit in orange and blue. Tobacco smoke flows back and the night loses the formality of the day.
Tomorrow we will present our schools, exchanging ideas about pedagogy, behaviour and special needs teaching as well as being shown around our accommodation, a former detention centre used by British and then Israeli troops for interrogation and torture.
But tonight we exchange stories about families, students and practise our various languages with a cup or shai or an ice cream cocktail as the fairy lights below us glow.
Travelling east
Talking, sleeping, drinking tea, listening to music, reading... and wondering what this exciting visit is going to be like.
Fara' Camp
We were welcomed by the public affairs committee of the refugee camp next to the place where we're staying.
They welcomed us to the camp and told us that people living here came from 84 different villages in the part of Palestine now called Israel and that the children are all aware of the places their families were from and answer the questions "Where are you from?" with the name of that village or town of origin.
They impressed upon us the British responsibility for the Nakba disaster that befell Palestine, and as it turned out that there were people in the room who hadn't heard of the Balfour Declaration, they explained how the British government had promised a land that wasn't theirs to a people who didn't live in it, and showed that this promise had been a major a influence on the process of Palestinian disposession, from which they are still suffering.
They said that UK teachers have a special responsibility to take their message back to people in Britain and work to make sure (1) that people know about the impact of the Balfour Declaration, (2) that our government doesn't keep taking the wrong position in the UN Security Council, (3) make sure that people know that the Palestinian people love peace and have the right to resist the occupation and (4) that the UK government who had started the problem should join other countries in recognising a Palestinian state.
A political argument ensued in Arabic but the UK teachers were particularly impressed by the input of a local headmistress who said very strongly that "education is our only weapon". She emphasised that, despite high graduate unemployment, young people from the amp work very hard for a good grade in school, a place at university and even for higher degrees.
Thursday, 20 October 2016
زيارة الرد من بريطانيا الى فلسطين تشرين أول 2016
يصل اليوم الى فلسطين ضمن مشروع معلون في مهمة الذي تنظمة جمعية صداقة كامدن أبوديس ودار الصداقة للتبادل الشبابي في أبوديس وفد مكون من 15 معلم ومعلمة من مدارس بريطانيا للاقامة والعمل مع معلمي مدارس ابوديس والتوأمات الشريكة في الضفة الغربية حيث من المقرر ان تصل المجموعة الزائرة الى مركز الشهيد صلاح خلف في الفارعة باستضافة كريمة من المجلس الأعلى للشباب والرياضة حتى صباح الأحد القادم ليعودوا بعد ذلك للعمل مع مدارس ابوديس في نهاية الزيارة سيعقد مؤتمر للتوأمة بين المدارس البريطانية الفلسطينية في قاعة مدرسة إناث أبوديس الدعوة مفتوحة لكل المهتمين بالعمل المشترك بين الطرفين
الصورة من مطار لوتن للمجموعة البريطانية قبيل مغادرتهم الى فلسطين اليوم صباحاً
On the way!!
We'll soon have lots to tell you. Look out for the blog. We'll try and keep it up to date. We know there are lots of excited people and also school students waiting to hear! Special thoughts with Sarah, Tom and Raf who couldn't come ... hope you're well and all's well... #cadfa #teachersinaction 🛫