Tag Archives: schools in Dubai

The school lockdown drill

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“Mummy! There’s going to be actors playing terrorists in school tomorrow!” said my older son, the excitement chipping away at the edges of his voice.

Goodness, I said, my brows knitting together. I knew there was a travelling theatre coming to school soon (I’d sent the money in), but this sounded far too dramatic for a class of imaginative eight and nine year olds.

Further questioning revealed that the school had planned a lockdown drill – something all UAE schools are doing this year, most for the first time. Kind of like a fire drill in reverse: the warning sounds and everyone stays inside.

Today on the curriculum: Hiding practice

Today on the curriculum: Hiding practice

Explaining this to children can be tricky, and you end up mumbling something like, “It’s safest to be outside a building if it’s on fire, and sometimes it’s safest to be inside the building instead.” Pushed into it … “If we were in America there might be a man with a gun.” [their eyes expand like saucers] “But not here …” (lest they suddenly decide they never want to go to school again).

Well, it turned out there were no play-terrorists (over-enthusiastic primary school kids really know how to spin it, don’t they?). And, to be honest, it sounded more like hiding practice as it’s not like they were allowed to pile tables and chairs up against the door or anything. But the novelty factor certainly meant Son1 told me far more about his school day than he usually does – and went to town on the sound effects.

The alarm sounded, he said, demonstrating it loudly with siren-like wailing. And all the children had to huddle in the corner of their classroom, with the lights off. “The head then came round banging on all the doors, kind of pretending he was trying to get in.”

I’m trying to imagine all the children and teachers hunkering silently in darkened classrooms away from closed blinds and locked doors, while the headmaster prowled through the hallways decorated with student art and jiggled doorhandles.

“We made two mistakes,” said Son1. “Ms B forgot to turn the smart board off, and left her phone on her desk.”

“But Ms T’s class made the worst mistake,” he added, the corners of his mouth twitching into a smile.

“What was that?” I asked.

“They forgot to lock the door.”

Inside a 9-year-old’s imagination

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Son1 attends an International Baccalaureate (IB) World Continuum School. I have no idea what the ‘world continuum’ bit means, but I do know that there are students enrolled from more than 80 different nationalities, and the importance of diversity and acceptance is hammered home to them.

I have to say, I do enjoy seeing the sea of faces in the playground, and all the myriad shades of skin and hair colour – there are Scandinavian children with the whitest blonde hair, Asian kids with beautiful, dark, almond-shaped eyes and perfect skin, and smiley, dark-haired youngsters from countries such as Iraq and Jordan. Other nations well represented at the school include Germany, France and South Africa.

Four IB programmes are offered, and something that’s quite different from the education I experienced is the focus on presenting their work orally. Besides breeding a new generation of toastmasters, I do think all this speaking in front of the class is instilling a level of confidence in these school kids that’s sure to be valuable in their careers down the line.

A leap of the imagination and you never know what you'll find on board

A leap of the imagination and you never know what you’ll find on board

But it also comes with its fair share of angst. (Being a risk-taker is another key IB ‘principle’, and as my friend put it, if your child isn’t a risk-taker, another system might be better).

Personally, I’ve been really impressed with the IB curriculum, especially by the way it encourages ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking; however, this weekend saw me nervously chewing my lip over Son1’s homework.

The words ‘Prepare an oral presentation (two minutes – not more, not less)’ immediately got my attention – as did the instructions to rehearse the speech, paying attention to clarity of voice, expression, posture and eye contact. Remember, these children are 8, going on 9 – and only cue cards were allowed.

The prompt we used was finding a bottle on the beach with something inside it. Son1 had to continue the story. At first, it was like extracting teeth – he ummed and ahhed, dropped his pencil, half slid off his chair, then ran off to the toilet, his mind a blank. It was only when we hit on the idea of a bottle from the Titanic that his imagination started firing on all cylinders.

Suddenly, his brain synapses went into overdrive. I could almost see his electrically excitable neurons lighting up, and out of his mouth flowed a (rather inspired, I thought) story about raising the Titanic from the seabed. To paraphrase, there was a magic ball in the bottle that was dropped over the shipwreck site, creating enormous waves that caused the Titanic to come to the surface.

“That’s great,” I encouraged, as he really got into the swing of it. “And was the ship in one piece?” (Yes) “As good as new, really?” “And what about all the passengers? Were they all brought back to life and reunited with their families?” Clearly, I needed a happy ending to history’s best-known maritime tragedy.

“Oh no, mummy!” he said, his eyes shining with story-telling glee. “They had blue skin, and their faces were falling off. They were zombies! There was a message with a handprint of blood, telling me I had to shoot them. All of them.”

If I do manage to make a writer of him, I think it’s safe to say his genre will be fantasy sci-fi.

School narcolepsy

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So from the high that was Amsterdam, comes the bump of real life, and dealing with a problem that presented itself just before half-term.

You know something’s not right when you get a call from school asking you to pop in. I duly did so, the very next morning. And while everyone I spoke to couldn’t have been nicer (or more helpful), the writing was already on the wall.

My son fell asleep (twice) at school.

He denies it, of course. Son2 is not stupid and knows sleeping at school is frowned upon. He has an elaborate story about his friend L telling him to lie down on the grass outside and close his eyes. When the teacher found him snoozing on the little, landscaped hill, he was actually awake and just playing a game, he claims. Hmmm, nice try!

It’s possible, I suppose (a pig might have been flying past too), but I happen to know that the teachers are right; my 5YO is too tired for school at moment, because HE WON’T GO TO BED.

He resists sleep like there’s no tomorrow. Like he’ll get kidnapped in the night by the bogeyman and injected intravenously with vegetables. However tired he is in the late afternoon, at bedtime his eyes snap wide open, as though propped apart by matchsticks. He clamours for attention: “Just one more book!”, “Stay with me, pleeeeeease!”

What should be a fairly quick routine turns into a marathon, and it’s little wonder that there are many bedtimes where I feel like this afterwards…

The school wants him in bed at 6.30pm: I wish!

The school wants him in bed at 6.30pm: I wish!

Sometimes, 45 minutes later, I’ll creep past the boys’ bedroom, treading with a feather-light step so as to make no sound, and notice that Son2 is STILL kicking his duvet around.

What happens next is, because the schools start early here, his owl-like ways catch up with him: we have to literally drag him out of bed and prop him up downstairs. He’s caught up on some sleep over half-term, but mainly by sleeping later in the mornings, which doesn’t bode well for tomorrow, his first day back.

When the alarm goes off, I’ll be yanking him from a deep slumber again – what he doesn’t need to know is that I’ll be as good as sleep walking too.

Wish me luck!

Descending into password hell

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“We’re going to change the way we talk to you,” the school announced by email. A parent portal that mums can access via a log-in password was launched last November, comprising diary dates and all the information needed to ensure our children’s wellbeing.

Now, you’d think an online message board would be right up my street. But (and the irony of this is not lost on me) it’s playing hardball. I’m convinced it’s because the school never sent me the username and password, but there’s a chance these details are floating round my bottomless in-box.

Anyway, it’s causing me embarrassing problems, because, as a result, I’m not on top of what’s happening at school. I get wind of things, like wet n’ wild day, look at your three-year-old’s scribbles day, but don’t have enough information to avoid making a fool of myself.

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I might look like I’m working, but really I’m still trying to log-in to the system

“Is there something going on today?” I chirpily asked the teacher when I realised the mums weren’t hot-footing it to Costa Coffee in their maxi dresses and shades as usual, but were gathering outside the classroom.

“Yes, it’s sports day,” she replied, deadpan. “You need to go to the sports hall at 8.15am.” (*thanks lucky stars LB co-incidentally had his PE kit and I wasn’t dashing off to the office*).

I can circumnavigate this problem by lurking around other mums, particularly the class mum, who probably synced her iCal to her iPhone months ago. By doing this, I learn all sorts of things about how much money I owe for the janitor’s son’s leaving present, but it’s not a fool-proof substitute for actually accessing the damn portal.

It just seems that EVERYTHING is password-protected these days. I try to use the same combination of initials and birthdays for everything, but this doesn’t work. “Crap” the dialogue box says, after assessing the strength of my password and finding I might as well have it pinned to my forehead. So I hurriedly invent a new one, and promptly fill my mind with other stuff.

Then, the next time I log in, that TORTUROUS box pops up asking for the 2nd, 9th and 23rd letters, and it’s like playing a game of roulette, in which – as we found out the other day – if you don’t win, you’re locked out of your life savings.

Just as frustrating was last week’s eye-rolling run-in with the website airbnb.com due to a password issue. After much teeth gnashing over an ‘invalid’ password, I contacted customer services – who told me they couldn’t help in case I was a fraudster (“you could try guessing the password,” they helpfully suggested), and then signed off their response with the words “Peace and long life”.

*Runs into the desert screaming*

Why kids LOVE the lunar calendar

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Despite the fact the two-month summer holiday is hurtling towards us like a steam train, Son 2 is now on half term. With only 15 school days left until the end of term, springing a half-term holiday on us now does seem a little unnecessary. Unless you’re a teacher, I suppose.

I’ve mentioned this before, but expat children have so many days off school. Once you’ve transferred your life savings, taken out a bank loan and sold a kidney to pay the school fees, you can expect your little darlings to be actually taught for a grand total of 179 days a year. Not even half the year!

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C’mon moon: I really need the kids back to school

It’s because children in the UAE enjoy the best of both worlds: Christian and Muslim holidays. Even though they’re not Islamic, my boys get time off for all the major Muslim festivals – the exact dates of which we don’t always know until just before, due to the fact Islamic holiday timings depend on sightings of the moon.

In our household, our calendar is further complicated by the fact our sons, who are in different schools, often have different holidays. It’s no wonder I get it totally wrong sometimes.

This list of holidays that parents in the UAE have to contend with cover with childcare doesn’t include all the extra days off given for teacher training and for unexpected shut-downs, thanks to problems with the water / flooding / earthquakes / chemical fire (yes really, see here) or SARS/MERS-like viruses.

– Winter vacation (18 Dec-6 Jan)

– Prophet Mohammed’s Birthday (24 Jan)

– Half Term (10-11 Feb)

– Easter vacation (24 Mar-7 Apr)

– Lailat al-Miraj (Ascension of the Prophet) and half term (4-6 Jun) circa*

– Summer vacation (27 Jun-2 Spt)

– Ramadan (predicted start 8-10 Jul): A month-long period of fasting for Muslims. If schools are in session during Ramadan (which they’re not this year), the school days are usually shortened by a couple of hours. It’s followed by the Eid al-Fitr holiday

– Arafat (Haj) Day – the second day of the pilgrimage (14 Oct)

– Eid al-Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice) (circa* 15 Oct) – rolled into a five-day half term

– Al-Hijra – Islamic New Year (4 Nov)

– UAE National Day (2-3 Dec)

Circa* = Moon-sighting committee confirms the date nearer the time, so published dates can be off by a couple of days

In my next life, I’m coming back as an expat child.

The homework battle lines

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homework picture

I dread it each weekend, I really do – knowing that my 7-year-old has three sets of homework due the next day and that the only way it’ll get done is by brow-beating him into it, breathing down his neck and practically jumping up and down with excitement when he completes each task.

Quite honestly, extracting his teeth would be easier (and quieter).

Back in the dark ages, when I was 7, I’m sure we didn’t have homework. Maybe there was a library book each week, perhaps a reading book too, but I really think that was about it until secondary school (or did I completely miss something?).

But times have changed, it seems, because children these days, even those who are only knee-high to a grasshopper, have enough homework to sink a mummy ship. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, just that if you have a son who’d rather scoop his eyeballs out than sit down and do homework, it becomes a tedious – indeed painful – chore.

BB is in grade 1. Today, I got emails with his French and Maths homework. There’s English language homework each week, too, and Arabic, which we can’t understand and can only watch in amazement as he forms Arabic letters in front of our eyes. On top of all this, they have spellings every week that they’re tested on in class, and they bring reading books home.

It feels like A LOT – and I’m beginning to realise why I’ve heard mums say full-time work is impossible, because managing this kind of homework load in such small children is a job in itself.

I have to admit that, if BB is cooperating, I rather enjoy the spellings and language homework, and have to practically sit on my hands to stop myself grabbing the pencil and scrawling a sentence myself – but I’m no teacher, and the frustration I feel when BB writes backwards / will only write sentences with the word poo in / or can’t be bothered is off the scale.

Behind every little boy doing homework there's a mummy working three times as hard

Behind every little boy doing homework there’s a mummy working three times as hard

And I also grimace with frustration when the homework requires items that I never seem to have to hand. Glue, highlighter pens, newspapers, dice, flash cards, different coloured biros – my stationery supplies always seem to let me down.

So, imagine my dismay when I opened the homework book last week to discover the treat the teachers had set us:

“Make a tornado”

“Please help your child make a tornado by following the instructions…”

Yes, really.

You will need: a water bottle, clear liquid soap, vinegar, water, glitter and food colouring.

I won’t regurgitate all the instructions, but they involved shaking the bottle to mix up the ingredients, swirling it in a circular motion, and adding the food colouring and glitter.

Is it just me, or does anyone else see the mess potential here? (and wonder if perhaps the teacher was getting her own back?)

Bring on the spellings, I say – I’d rather drill BB in spellings than unleash a tornado at home any day.

The transition from work to mummydom

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I’ve come to the conclusion that never mind massages and spa treatments, what I really need after work and before going head first into a long weekend with two small boys is a decompression chamber.

It was nice and quiet down there! Anyone else feel like they get the bends when they transition from work to home?

Maybe it’s just me, but after being in an office where everyone sits still, the computer more or less does what it’s told and the noise levels are fairly muted, suddenly being reintroduced to the demands of two energetic boys is like surfacing too fast from relatively tranquil depths.

The decibels, the goading, the speed at which the boys fly round the house, the way they ricochet off the walls (summer temps mean we can’t exercise them outside), their neediness after my absence – whilst I’m overjoyed to be back home, it makes me feel quite giddy.

So, now it’s the weekend – and it’s a long one because Sunday, when we usually all go back to work and school, is a holiday for the ascension of Prophet Mohammad. And DH is out of the picture because he’s ‘in the Sim’ – airline lingo for training in the simulator, during which they practice fires, engine failures and other such scenarios.

My mind is thinking about something less terrifying but which has left me scratching my head nevertheless – BB’s homework.

It’s that time of term again when instead of doing the usual spellings and reading for homework, he has to complete a project – and present it – for his end-of term summative assessment. All very well, but he’s six. Some of his classmates are five. They’re in kindergarten!

Last week he had to design a ‘mode of transport’, this week he has to create it. There was the option of using Lego, but that would have been too easy. He’s opted to junk model a train, and so I’ve spent much of the week collecting boxes, buying art supplies and wondering how to turn cereal packets and toilet rolls into an express train.

As my working friend put it, there’s no way such young children can do these projects on their own. So when little Johnny comes home from school and says he has to create a solar system, it’s mum who ends up printing off stuff at work, coming up with ideas (styrofoam balls on sticks? genius!), and cajoling a child who can’t sit still for two minutes (heaven knows how mine gets through six hours of school) into completing the project. On time.

And, with all the tiger-mothering that goes on in Dubai (including presentations by seven-year-olds on iPads!), you really need to make sure your child takes it seriously. BB’s told me some of his classmates have brought their projects in early. On display already, there’s a rocket made out of bottles, a flying car and a train with wooden wheels.

By the end of this week, I’m fully expecting there to be 4by4s made from matchsticks, robotic trucks and remote-controlled airplanes.

I’d better get back to those loo rolls…