Nasser Rides Again

   With apologies for my cyber-ignorance, I'll post photos as soon as I can, once back in Maine on May Day.  I won't bother with the reasons, but know it is I, not my laptop, that is the stumbling block and stumbler.  There, I feel better already.
   Monday, Khitam and I headed for Azareya, where Nasser's new school is.  Not far from Jerusalem, Azareya is a busy town with a middle school that has kids from a Bedouin camp, a refugee camp, from the town itself and from neighboring villages.  The students are a very mixed population of twelve to fifteen year-olds who do not normally socialize; to put it another way, a good setting for a Palestinian production of West Side Story...East Side Story.
   Here's some essential background.  Nasser had been the sole counselor for several years at a middle school in Adahya, near heard my friend Khitam's home.  The last two years when I've been here, I've done some work with Nasser at that school.  Last year, the Palestinian Ministry of Education announced this year's postings and Nasser discovered he was being moved to another school.  The community around the school in Adahya rallied to keep him here.  Nasser urged the Ministry to let him continue his work in Adahya where he had developed programs that were successful keeping kids in school, committed to doing their work and not causing trouble.  He was working with students from difficult surroundings: single parent homes because the father had been killed, was in prison, or had given up and left the family; families with drug and alcohol abuse; families with domestic violence.  The answer was no and Nasser was moved to Azareya.
   New school, new problems, new community: Nasser went to work.  The principal, Mohamed, was new, a former chemistry teacher in his first principal's job.  His predecessor had been there a long time and had had no interest in change.  Mohamed recognized he had a leader in Nasser, one who could make a real difference in the school if he supported him  He also needed him; Nasser's experience would be very important to this new principal.  Soon Nasser had enlisted a few teachers to  join his merry band of reformers.  "I thought it would take me three years to make progress here, but now, seven months into the school year, we already see change," he told me.  He was right.
   Palestinian schools do not receive the support Israeli schools get.  It's complicated.  Some schools for Palestinians are under the jurisdiction of the Israeli Ministry of Education, and some are not.  Some receive funding from Palestinian NGOs; some receive funding from European, or American  NGOs.  Some receive extra funding from the Ministry for special projects but not without jumping through several bureaucratic hoops.  In general, Palestinian schools are underfunded.
   Nasser does not receive extra pay for extra work.  As far as I could tell this week, he is the last educator to leave the school, not because he has nowhere to go.  He is married and has five children, including the family's first girl, born while he was in Maine last summer.  Nasser is the last to leave and probably often the first to arrive because he has a lot he wants to do.  Tuesday, parents prepared a small banquet for us - Nasser, Khitam, Nabil (a science teacher who is an early convert and in some ways Nasser's right hand man), five BA and MA candidates at Jerusalem University who are doing on the job training at the school and have become "Nasser's Army," (more on them in another blog), and me.  Nasser began telling me about his dream and how he has started on it.
   "Do you remember last year when I told you the dream of having a space where teachers can do workshops. learn new methods, meet to plan new work?  We talked about finding some money to rent a space."  At the time, I thought the dream a good but unlikely one.  Finding money for such a project is difficult anywhere and especially difficult here.  Then he said: "We have a space!  One of the parents is donating it to us.  He has a building near here."
   I was amazed and delighted, almost as excited as Nasser was.  He reminded me: "Remember I told you if you have a dream and believe in it, you will find it."  If you build it they will come.  So we began to discuss what can happen there.  "I want to be partners with The Theater Project and The Telling Room.  We will be separate and far away from the Ministry of Education!"  Bureaucracy be damned.  He wants to encourage child centered learning which is not the tradition in Arab education, though it is practiced in some Arab schools.  He wants people to do workshops in the arts, in new ways to use technology, in teaching techniques and styles.
   This man is ahead of his time here and he is timely.  He is also tireless and I think eternally hopeful.  He doesn't approve of the alternative.  When he returned from his two weeks in Maine last summer, he flew into Amman, Jordan and then took a bus to the Jordan River, the border with the Israeli occupied West Bank.  Jordanian Security quizzed him on where he'd been, why he'd been there, what he had done.  He told them he had been in the States visiting a theater and looking for non- violent alternatives for raising Palestinian children to become good Palestinian citizens.
   When he crossed the Allenby Bridge onto the West Bank, Israeli Security asked him the same questions.  He said: "You can put your gun down.  I'm not a violent person.  I had experience with violence when I was young and now I want non-violent ways to raise our children."  The Israeli said he agreed.  Nasser said: "Good.  We don't have to be enemies, but I can never agree to your occupation."  This is the gist of what he told me; my faulty memory allows me only approximate quotes.
   Then Nasser went home to rejoin his family and meet his new daughter.
   Welcome to Palestine.