On the Road in Morocco -- March 16th - 17th (Part II)

Our last two days were working with teachers and students back in Beni Mellal and nearby schools. Ms. Skarsten and I presented workshops for teachers of English on Professional Learning Communities and Service Learning. Professional Learning Communities are an idea that means that teachers work together to plan activities, rather than just working independently. It also means that teachers work together to have a plan when students are not learning. During the workshop, the teachers were able to create a plan to help students who were having trouble with writing essays. We also asked the teachers to think about obstacles that they faced if they decided to have PLCs in their school. The biggest problem that they could foresee was a lack of time. Our advice was to try to set up PLCs in small steps, in other words, to solve one little problem at a time, rather than trying to solve big problems right away. Hopefully, that is good advice to solve any problem.

The next presentation was a lesson that Ms. Skarsten prepared for the students about climate change. Students and teachers from the school participated together the lesson, and then the teachers stayed when students went to their next class. Then I presented a workshop on Service Learning. The idea is that if students are studying a problem in class, there might be a chance to actually do a service project related to what is being studied. So for example, if students are studying climate change, what kind of service could they do to actually help reduce global warming?

We also had the opportunity to visit more classes during our last two days. We saw a literature class, a Spanish class, and spent more time with Ms. Massaq's English class. We were very impressed that the literature class was answering difficult questions regarding a novel that they were reading, and that almost all of the students were participating. Since the class was taught in French, I was fortunate that one of the students was whispering the answers in my ear (in English). The Spanish class was also impressive. It was taught completely in Spanish, rather than translating things from Arabic or French, which were the languages that the students knew. However, the teacher was also putting English and Italian on the board, just to show how all those languages were connected. It was definitely a stretch to keep up for me, but the students seemed to expect it.

One of the more interesting things that we were able to see was on our visit to a private school. While the teaching in the public school classes we saw was excellent, there was no way getting around the fact that the classrooms were very spartan, classes were crowded with 40 students crammed into a class, and students often had to share books. There was no technology in classrooms, no heat or air conditioning, and often broken windows. The computer lab was not state-of-the-art. Yet, teachers were teaching and students were learning. The private K-12 school was very different. In fact, they looked like a U.S. classroom. They were bright, had bulletin boards on the walls, nice desks, and were definitely less crowded. The technology center was more up-to-date with computers and internet access, and there was also art instruction going on, which was not available in the public school. Equity in schools is an issue in the U.S. as well as Morocco. Even though learning does not require all kinds of fancy buildings and equipment, it's important to think about whether it's fair that some children have more advantages then others? What do you think? And what is the solution? Would you take things away from schools that have more or better facilities? is that fair? If our country spent more on education, who would have to pay for it?

We had the opportunity to have one more dinner at a restaurant in Beni Mellal, which was nice since the rain finally stopped (it had been raining since Saturday). Our final dinner was a delicious couscous with sweet raisins on top, at Ms. Massaq's home. Several relatives were there, and it was a nice ending to the last full day of our trip. After our goodbyes, the only thing left was the trip the following morning to the airport in Casablanca for our flight back home. So that is all I have for now. These notes were actually typed back in California, since I was unable to get online before leaving Morocco. I will also post some final thoughts in a day or two, and add some pictures to the blog posts. So for now, thanks for reading!