My first glimpse of Abu Dhabi Schools

March 9,2012


I just finished a full week of shadowing an English Medium Teacher at the Al Emam Muslim School in Mussafah, Mohammed bin Zayed City on the mainland of Abu Dhabi.

I shadowed one of the Grade 2 EMT's named Miss Hiba.  The students call their teachers by their "good" or in other words their first name.

The Head of Faculty (HOF) was a wonderful British woman named Sara. 

The Principal is Du Bubba.  She was a gorgeous and gracious Emirate woman who welcomed us with great support and hospitality.  The tradition here is that you begin a gift to your principal and HOF; which we all did.

These are public schools and the wall are adorned with country pride.







All of the schools are air conditioned.





This particular school is all boys from Grade 1 to Grade 5.  Half the teachers are Arabic and the other half are English Medium Teachers.  And yes they have school buses too.








And just like in the USA,  boys drop everything just where they stop.







Most of the school have 2 floors and are divided into wings.  Grade 1-3 is in one wing and Grade 4 & 5 are in another.  There is a courtyard that connects the two and the children have lunch and recess there.





 
 
This is Miss Kelli. She teaches Grade 3 and is very cool.

During the our week at school,  it was also the beginning of the 18 week student teaching session for Arabic teachers.  There were  about 10 of them in the school.  This is Miss Fatima grading spelling tests.  They spend time with the EMT's and the Arabic teachers.









During my week with Miss Hiba and the boys, they began to work on designing dioramas of Animal habitats.  This group had the Arctic.








This group had the Desert.








This group had the Ocean.

And the group below had the Jungle.  They all did a great job.  That is not to say they are angelic.  Far from it.  They poke each other with pencils.  Hit each other.  And during the week they lost recess twice.  But they were wonderful.

The hardest thing will to be learn all of my students names.  In Miss Hiba's classes there were 9 Mohammed's, 6 Sultan's, 4 Ali's and 7 Abdullah's.  Most of them have 5 or 6 names in their full name.  So you might have to go to their 3rd name to make the difference; such as Mohammed Ali, Mohammed Abudullah, or Mohammed Mohammed.

Well hopefully soon I will be showing you pictures of my own classroom.