Teacher from Morocco Offers Leicester High Students a Taste of Arabic
SOURCE: TELEGRAM
BY: BRIAN LEE
LEICESTER – After the first day of school, a motorist saw a new teacher walking and yelled, “Ostatha, m’a salama.”
The educator, Bouchra Ait Msguine, was thrilled because the kid in the car had been in her class earlier that day, and she was obviously listening.
Ms. Ait Msguine said it meant, “teacher, goodbye,” one of the first Arabic terms to which she exposed the students.
A secondary teacher from Casablanca, Morocco, Ms. Ait Msguine is spending this year at Leicester High School teaching students to be conversant in Arabic. She was hired through a competitive grant that the district received.
During a lesson this week, Ms. Ait Msguine held up a card with a picture of a potato (“bbatis”) and vegetables as her class of a dozen students repeated the words in Arabic.
After the lesson, 17-year-old Alexei Orloff said he’s enjoyed the class and opted to take it because it’s different than the usual foreign languages one thinks of, such as Spanish and French. Alexei said writing in Arabic is a challenge, particularly connecting letters.
“You’re not used to doing that in the English alphabet – you write letter by letter – you don’t connect them,” the senior said, adding that the “whole backwards thing” in Arabic also takes getting used to.
His teacher explained that part of the challenge is “there are similarities between Arabic and Hebrew, but some (Arabic) sounds do not exist in English.”
Another senior, 18-year-old Jordan Hellstrom, said she opted to take the class because the school no longer offers Latin, and she’s enjoying her exposure to Arabic.
Jordan also said writing in Arabic is a struggle, but memorizing vocabulary is not. She said Ms. Ait Msguine had the class sing during their introductions, “and she makes us dance a lot.”
The quest to bring Ms. Ait Msguine here also was challenging, according to Leicester school officials.
Leicester High School is in its second year offering Arabic through the Teachers of Critical Languages Program. It is a layered cross-cultural program sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.
It recruits and places English as a Foreign Language teachers from China, Egypt and Morocco in American secondary schools, teaching U.S. students their native language and culture.
Principal Tracey Hippert-Kenny said Leicester High School was chosen as one of only 26 schools in the country to get the program. It pays for the teacher’s salary, while the district pays for Ms. Ait Msguine’s housing, according to superintendent Marilyn Tencza, who notes the district had a positive experience last year with teacher Yasser Hassan of Egypt.
It is a two- or three-year program, although not every district opts for a second year, Ms. Tencza said.
Ms. Ait Msguine’s mentor, foreign-language teacher Kelley Southwick, said the TCLP grant is as competitive as admission into Harvard University for both the school district here in the U.S. and teachers from Morocco, China and Egypt.
Leicester’s reasons for pursuing it date back a few years, according to the principal.
Ms. Hippert-Kenny explained that Leicester entered a partnership with Cambridge College in 2012 to explore a relationship with China. She spent two weeks in a China school setting observing its education system, while a Chinese administrator came here.
“We were able to share many of our educational ideas,” the principal said, “and we started to bring exchange students here to Leicester from China, and that expanded to a few other countries.”
That experience exposed them to the grant.
Ms. Hippert-Kenny said the district applied for an Arabic teacher because officials believed their chances of receiving one was higher, given that Mandarin is in high demand.
“One of the reasons why we were a good candidate for the grant is because we don’t have a lot of diversity,” she said. “And in the grant we were able to explain what we can do to expose students and the community to a global world, a global society and different cultures.”
On the day of the T&G’s visit, Ms. Ait Msguine said she spoke about independence day in Morocco, which served as a forum for the Leicester students to speak about their own celebrations.
“They were so proud to talk about their own heritage and history,” Ms. Ait Msguine said.
Meanwhile, the teacher said she’s taken the students to a cooking room to have them prepare Moroccan pancakes, called baghrir, and Moroccan tea. She said they were excited to learn of the ingredients and flip the pancakes in the air.
Ms. Ait Msguine said she also had the students give presentations. They were surprised to learn there are 22 Arab countries. “Now they know where the Arab world starts and ends, and the differences between each country,” she said.
The principal, on a personal note, said she has two daughters in the school who are taking Arabic.
“The kids all know how to make their phones have the Arabic keyboard, so I’ve gotten text messages from kids in Arabic,” Ms. Hippert-Kenny said. “I write back, ‘I’m assuming you’re telling me “I love you.” I have no clue what you’re saying.’ ”
The principal and mother went on to say “it’s really neat to hear them” communicate in Arabic.
“They have conversations outside the school, and I’m sure they’re making fun of me or my cooking,” she said.
Ms. Ait Msguine said it’s evident her students have taught other students, because after she exposed them to Arabic numbers, she noticed students who were not in her classes giving high-fives and saying it in Arabic.
There are 45 to 50 students taking Arabic this semester. The goal is simply to expose them and have them appreciate the culture, the superintendent said.
“Arabic is a very difficult language to learn,” Ms. Tencza said. “To write it would take a couple of years.”
Ms. Ait Msguine, 33, is in her 12th year teaching. She has spent the past six in Casablanca, where, on the flip side, she teaches Moroccan students how to speak English. Before that she taught in southern Morocco six years.
“I have learned a lot, especially about the educational system and how schools are run” in the U.S., Ms. Ait Msguine said, noting that she’s participated in many training sessions and conferences about teaching strategies.
Ms. Ait Msguine said she is hopeful some of her students or people she’s met in the community might become interested in studying Arabic, as there are university courses on Arabic culture here in the States.
“This morning I played a video of an American teacher, and they were astonished with her level of proficiency (in Arabic). They said, ‘She’s like us.’ ”
The educator also said she would like to maintain her relationship with Leicester schools, maybe even build a sister-school relationship with her school in Morocco, work on themes and hold video conferences, although the six- to seven-hour time difference might pose a challenge.
Ms. Ait Msguine is also present in the community, giving presentations about Arab history, attire and food, among other things. Last week she visited the senior center and middle school.
“I encourage everyone to do this experience because it’s really interesting, and I’ve been not only learning simple things, but it’s also an experience to learn about one’s self,” she said.
Asked to elaborate, she said, “The capacity to adapt and then how much I can cope with new things, new environment, new everything.”
“New weather,” one of her Leicester colleagues said, less than a week after the region’s first snowstorm this fall.
“It snows in Morocco, but not in Casablanca,” Ms. Ait Msguine said.
Her Leicester colleagues noted that it hasn’t taken Ms. Ait Msguine long to grow accustomed to coffee.
“Yes, I love iced coffee,” she said.
“With like 100 packs of sugar in it,” Ms. Hippert-Kenny said.
It is still to be determined if the district will bring the program back for a third year, according to Ms. Southwick. In Year 3 the district would have to pay the visiting teacher’s salary.
“We have until January to see if the budget will allow us to go forward,” Ms. Southwick said.
“The thing about TCLP is, they provide the structure, they find and vet the candidates and choose them, so you know they’re the best teachers. Then they bring them to America for extensive training in Washington, D.C., in August, with follow-up training in the fall. We would know that the teacher would be an excellent teacher that would be coming, which is just a great benefit to us. So we’re hopeful.”
At least for the time being, Leicester is the only district in the area offering Arabic.
According to state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education spokeswoman Jacqueline Reis, 11 schools in eight Massachusetts districts offer it. In addition to Leicester, they are Arlington High School, Boston Arts Academy, Boston Latin Academy, Charlestown High School, Cambridge Rindge and Latin, Medford High School, Norwell High School, Sharon High School, Watertown High School and Watertown Middle School.
