A few days ago I was going about business as usual, teaching my class, when a student I did not know opened my door, walked into my classroom, passed the first girl in the row a paper and turned around and left. Now it's important to know that there are several hundred girls in my school, most of who look pretty much the same when wearing a uniform. I would have had no idea who this rude, little, interrupter was, had she not passed her report card with her NAME on it to my students. Angry at the interruption, I took the paper from my student and threw it in the garbage. My students all gasped in shock at this action, because a report card is a pretty important thing, afterall. Thinking twice of this and imagining how the office might dislike me throwing out their school's report card, I grabbed it out of the garbage and said "THIS IS MINE NOW!" to the students who were begging for it back.
I looked at the report card and the mark of 44% in one of the student's classes was circled with a giant WTF written across it. I asked my students who the girl was and they said that the girl was being nice, bringing my student the report card to bring home to her cousin who was sick. Right. Because schools always give out report cards at random to the wrong people...
I told my students I would take the report card to administration and let them call the girl to the office to give it to her. At this, my students started frantically coming up with every possible excuse or bribe to try to get the paper back. "Her father will beat her!" "Her mother is ill and will die if her daughter gets into trouble!" "I'll pay you teacher, please, just give it back!" If I had a dollar for every time my Emirati students offered to pay me to give something back to them, raise their mark or not make them do their work..I could retire. I held firm on my position and took the paper to administration after class. I showed one of the social workers (who, at my school are not meant to actually help, but more to scare the students into submission) and explained to her that WTF meant "What the fuck." Her eyes grew wide and she rallyed 3 other administrators immediately and went to take the girl out of class. They told me to wait for them to return with the girl. When they got back the girl was already crying (maybe out of fear for what was to come, maybe for what they said to her on the way).
I followed the Principal, Vice Principal and two social workers into a small, glass walled room. The Principal headed the interrogation team by waving the paper in the girl's face and demanding she explain. She started to come up with some sort of lie (I assume...this was all in Arabic) and this must have ticked off the Principal wrong-time because she screamed about an inch from the student's face for the next 10 minutes. I had to take a step back and eventually sit down because of the fierceness with which the Principal was yelling...I have truly never seen anything like it. The other admin started to ask her questions and one of them pointed at the big WTF on the paper and was seeming to ask what it meant. The girl looked at me with fear and said, "It means Wadeema, Thoureea, Fatima"...three common Arabic girls names. I actually laughed a little when she said this (gotta hand it to her for creativity) and reassured the admin it meant what I had translated earlier. This blatant lie seemed to only anger them more, as they circled around the girl, taking turns yelling at her. When I left the situation, they assured me that this student would not be a problem anymore. For some reason, I truly believed them.
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