Teacher Training Day

I sat at the table at breakfast time, practising what I was going to say at the teacher training meeting. Most of it was fine, but there were a few words I was unsure of and I was looking them up in the Arabic dictionary. My talk was entitled, “Vision and Values”, but I was still unsure what Arabic words to use for “Vision” and “Values” until I got there and asked someone.

Making up my own job title and contract

After breakfast, I headed off to Canadian Institutes, where I am now the Strategic Development Manager - a job title I recently gave myself when Adel, the college owner said to me, “What job title would you like?”. He also allowed me to write my own job contract document, in which I wrote, “The employee is allowed to take unlimited amounts of unpaid holiday.”




It seemed a bit strange to be giving a talk, telling them what their Vision & Values are, when I’ve only been working with them since just before the summer, but Adel was keen for me to communicate all the things we’ve been discussing recently, to the teaching staff.

Responsibility

I started by telling them about our Responsibility to help our students to succeed in life, in whatever way we can. We are starting a new Job Centre - much like the English one - which will let people know about job vacancies and help them to prepare for interviews, but will not be paying benefits to anyone. Also, we have a new project called Kickstart, which aims to help people to start a small business.

Integrity

The next value was Integrity. We always keep our promises, no matter the cost. We never give certificates to anyone who does not pass the test, no matter who they are or what they offer to pay. I asked them how often someone tries to pay them to give a certificate without passing the relevant exam. “About once a day”, was the reply.

I told them about our plan to combat corruption through our new Key Worker Training Program and our plan to combat software piracy through the Open Source Software Project.

I finished with our Vision, which is “To change people’s lives through training which has a specific goal and a plan for how to achieve it”

I want to cooking pan your teaching

I told them that one of my new responsibilities is to come and observe their teaching to try and see how I could give them ideas and help them to improve their teaching. They all laughed, because instead of saying “hassan” (improve) I said “sahhan” which means Cooking Pan.

My talk sparked a lot of animated discussion, most of which I did not understand, but they seemed to be excited about what I had said. I concluded by telling them that these ideas could do much more than just change a few lives - they could change the nation. “It’s a small seed which can grow into a big tree, but we have to start here in this room.”