I'm gone now, and I can say a few things without risking hurting feelings.
It is an expensive school, so the locals attending have parents who are rich. Often very rich. A large number are over-privileged as a result. Much more so than rich NZ kids, because NZ is a basically meritocratic society and your parents' connections really aren't worth very much. But rich Arabs can rely on connections (called wasta in Arabic) to smooth their way and get positions and opportunities regardless of merit.
It wasn't unheard of for locals to send their kids to the school based entirely on its perceived status, with little interest in anything other than that their kid was learning English and making good connections.
So rather too many of the local kids, though by no means all, were not interested in learning − or in school in any sense.
Cheating, for example, was pretty rife. They did not consider it an issue, even when caught. In fact some took it very badly indeed if you insisted that not doing any work and then cheating was in some way a problem. Their parents paid your wages, and you were meant to not ask too many difficult questions. Indeed the very worst considered that you had cheated them if you insisted on giving them a low grade just because they couldn't do the work. I had one girl who was disruptive and lazy and yet who then asked for a good recommendation for entry into another school − and I think she thought I should give it too!
The non-locals by contrast generally have employers who pay, or are staff kids. They tend to have quite demanding parents, who are hard working and relatively clever themselves and who value education highly. Those students were hard working and keen to learn, often somewhat excessively so.
They did not tend to stay into senior school though, as parents tend (as we did with our kids) to return them to their local system for the secondary schooling. Those that stay tend to be ones with terrible local systems or staff kids.
So while the students were not unusual in terms of the spread of natural ability, they were quite different in terms of work ethic, with a lot of veering towards the extremes. Lots of very hard workers and lots of very lazy. This was made more obvious because the classes were streamed.
I had an (NZ) intermediate year class which had one excessively exuberant young lady in it, but otherwise was an absolute delight to teach. My other junior class had a couple of stroppy and badly behaved boys, but still a bulk of clever and dedicated kids who lapped up everything they were given. Despite being the middle class in terms of ability they absolutely smashed the end of term test.
It is an expensive school, so the locals attending have parents who are rich. Often very rich. A large number are over-privileged as a result. Much more so than rich NZ kids, because NZ is a basically meritocratic society and your parents' connections really aren't worth very much. But rich Arabs can rely on connections (called wasta in Arabic) to smooth their way and get positions and opportunities regardless of merit.
It wasn't unheard of for locals to send their kids to the school based entirely on its perceived status, with little interest in anything other than that their kid was learning English and making good connections.
So rather too many of the local kids, though by no means all, were not interested in learning − or in school in any sense.
Cheating, for example, was pretty rife. They did not consider it an issue, even when caught. In fact some took it very badly indeed if you insisted that not doing any work and then cheating was in some way a problem. Their parents paid your wages, and you were meant to not ask too many difficult questions. Indeed the very worst considered that you had cheated them if you insisted on giving them a low grade just because they couldn't do the work. I had one girl who was disruptive and lazy and yet who then asked for a good recommendation for entry into another school − and I think she thought I should give it too!
The non-locals by contrast generally have employers who pay, or are staff kids. They tend to have quite demanding parents, who are hard working and relatively clever themselves and who value education highly. Those students were hard working and keen to learn, often somewhat excessively so.
They did not tend to stay into senior school though, as parents tend (as we did with our kids) to return them to their local system for the secondary schooling. Those that stay tend to be ones with terrible local systems or staff kids.
So while the students were not unusual in terms of the spread of natural ability, they were quite different in terms of work ethic, with a lot of veering towards the extremes. Lots of very hard workers and lots of very lazy. This was made more obvious because the classes were streamed.
I had an (NZ) intermediate year class which had one excessively exuberant young lady in it, but otherwise was an absolute delight to teach. My other junior class had a couple of stroppy and badly behaved boys, but still a bulk of clever and dedicated kids who lapped up everything they were given. Despite being the middle class in terms of ability they absolutely smashed the end of term test.
By contrast my dealings with Years 9, 10 and 11 were very different because I had the bottom classes. There was a definite sullen and difficult edge to them. They were at least as bad, collectively, as any NZ classes I have had − and I have taught bottom streams at both St Peter's and St John's. Both classes had a block of students who had no interest in work, and their laziness set the tone for the unfortunate good students who happened to be in the class because they weren't very clever or who didn't speak much English.
It was almost impossible to fight the minor behaviour problems, because the school had no detentions or keeping in class as punishments. Students who arrived habitually late, for example, could do so with more or less impunity. I could not even do what I do in NZ for such students, which is lock my door and refuse to let them in until I had set the rest of the class some work, because I was not allowed to leave them unattended.
Seating plans were allowed, fortunately, but I wasn't allowed to seat them separated out, as I would do for a similar NZ class – so they got to chat happily for the whole period if they wanted. The school allowed you to take phones, but you couldn't keep them past the class and there was no further punishment, so there was little point really. Therefore I couldn't even use my standard tool of driving them to do some work out of sheer boredom if they didn't.
It was, to put it mildly, frustrating to know what I wanted to do and not be able to do it because of the way the school worked. I ended up teaching those classes very little (not that they much minded).
I also took some Year 13s for a bit. The bottom (of two) didn't do as much as they should, but obviously by that stage any really lazy students had dropped out. They were very similar to a Year 13 NZ Statistics class. Whereas the top class, who I relieved for a couple of times, was like a really good Calculus class.
The result was that I felt like I was teaching in two very different schools.
It wasn't to the end that I noticed that in my three months I never had to once report an international (or staff) kid. Every single disciplinary action, other than a short reprimand, was for an Arab student! Not all the international students were hard working or nice, of course, but the worst ones were like your average Kiwi student who doesn't cause any trouble even if not terribly diligent. I'm glad that it took me to the end to realise that, because I would hate for it to have affected my teaching to be prejudging based on origin, but there's no way I can look back now and not notice it.
It does show that despite a school's valiant efforts to the contrary − and the school did try very hard indeed to distill a culture of respect and work − the culture our students bring into the classroom is difficult to overcome.
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