• Article Listing
• |
• Search Articles
• |
• More Articles in Qatar
• |
• More Articles by Carol Fleming

An American Shares Her Experiences of Teaching in Qatar

by Carol Fleming - 06/09/2010

"In this article, an American expatriate shares her candid experience as an EFL teacher in Qatar."

An American expatriate woman who has been working for 19 years as an EFL teacher agreed to candidly answer questions on her experiences. For the past 9 years she has been working as an EFL teacher in Qatar.

Please provide some perspectives on what it is like as a teacher to work in Qatar?
Working here is both frustrating and rewarding -- as it would be anywhere. You have students who astound you with their eagerness and effort, and others who disappoint you with their lack of progress or interest in improving themselves. Generally speaking, I find that you are respected more here as a teacher than you would be back in USA. That said, if you teach local boys, you often face far more behavior problems than you would imagine.

And particularly as a female teacher?
This culture generally defers to men more than woman, and teaching will only reinforce that fact. I have had a few students/parents who refused to shake my hand on religious grounds (no touching of the opposite sex). Mostly you just need to make sure you're dressing modestly and appropriately and that you're not inadvertently engaging in any innocuous flirtations with older male students.

What are the pros and cons?
Pros: usually good money; tax free; benefits included in your contract; beach weather most of the year; chance to travel the globe
Cons: more behavior problems than you'd probably have in a similar classroom back home; lower standard of academic performance (grade level wise); students have far less sense of personal responsibility

What is best?
Teaching here is a unique and memorable experience. The Qataris are generous hosts and polite to a T. If you get to know any of them on a more personal level, consider yourself lucky (most expats don't get that chance).

What should an expat teacher know in advance of taking a position in Qatar?
Students here often times come off as being far more sophisticated than their western counterparts because they are world travelers and have access to many new things, etc. But in some other aspects they are far less mature than their western counterparts. Most have never held a summer job. Most live in a society where having servants is the norm -- so even simple acts of responsibility like the experience of doing the grocery shopping, washing their dad's car or helping their mom cook dinner can be foreign to them. They have nannies that carry their backpacks for them, and if they forget to bring in something, they will blame her instead of realizing that it is THEIR job to take care of those things. This lack of personal responsibility is often reinforced by mom/dad at home.

Parents often employ after-hour tutors to assist their kids with their studies. Often it is best if you liaise with these individuals rather than with mom/dad regarding a given student's performance, because they are the ones who are actually aware of what is happening at home with homework, studying, etc. At the very least, you should try to stay abreast of which students get at-home tuition so that you can ensure the tutor is reinforcing important concepts with them.

Threatening badly behaved, under-performing students with talking to their fathers will often elicit amazing results and turnarounds (because most fathers will tear their kids a new one if they are creating problems at school!). Talking with their mothers will usually do little improve things, because most moms are softies.

There is a great deal of emphasis on superficial appearances here. What matters to many is not the learning, but the certificate they get at the end of a class. This can sometimes be hard to accept and deal with as a teacher. Depending upon where you work, you may also face pressure from admin to change grades or pass a student who hasn't met the necessary requirements.

Related to this, you should always conduct yourself appropriately at all times, both inside and outside of class/work. You are assessed by how you dress, speak and act. Who you hang around with, where you work, what car you drive -- all of this is used to make judgments about YOU.

Qatar is also very small -- so don't burn your bridges. You may find that the person you yelled at in the supermarket last month is the father of your new transfer student next week.

This is a culture based on relationships not rules. Who you know matters more than what you know. You will see this in many facets of life here.
Because rules are not hard and steadfast, everything is up for negotiation. Deadlines will be missed, and then a student will plead for why they need an extension after the fact. Grades will be given, and then a student will approach you to "give" her a few extra points so that she can get a B instead of a C. There is little understanding that grades are what a student EARNS based upon THEIR performance.

You will generally find that female students outperform the males. Expat Arabs (Palestinians, Jordanians, Egyptians, etc.) outperform the locals.

There is a much more laid back attitude towards cheating and plagiarism here. The culture reinforces the fact that they should help one another, and letting someone copy your homework or look at your test paper is just another way that this happens. Many students grow up believing that Wikipedia is an excellent source to copy/paste from for research papers.

Government schools have done little to prepare the younger generation to become savvy, critical thinkers. This is improving, but again they are still very behind their western counterparts in this regard. They are not skilled at evaluating resources (they will go to a website on Islam to find information on what Christians believe, rather than finding a website from a Christian organization).

Bias in the media is something that needs to be taught because there is also no freedom of the press or freedom of speech here. People generally seem to subscribe to the notion that you should not discuss negative aspects of anything in public.

They will quote from the Koran as proof for their argument, and then get confused when they receive a poor grade because of a lack of adequate supporting evidence (this happens at the university level obviously because high school kids don't write research papers!).

Most have no idea how English rhetoric operates and is different from Arabic argumentation. They will initially think of what they want to say in Arabic and then try to translate it into English, failing to realize that it won't make much sense to an English speaker.

During Ramadan, everything becomes less grueling because people are fasting. School hours are shortened and teachers are expected to give less homework (despite the fact that fasting should be an additional hardship on top of one's regular routines, that's not the way it happens in Qatar/the GCC).

Qataris in general lead a very easy life. Pampered some would say. Local students carrying designer handbags, arriving to school in cars that cost three times your annual salary, texting on the latest mobile phone -- this can be your experience, depending upon where you teach.
This easy lifestyle is reflected in their approach to academic work in that they generally don't have much "intellectual stamina". By this I mean they won't struggle with a problem, trying to figure it out on their own. At the first sign of difficulty, they either give up or they will ask and expect the teacher to lead them through a task to the correct answer. They regularly ask for confirmation of their answers, even in testing situations.

Carol Fleming

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5