Teacher Tales #22 – Mutual respect, curiosity, authenticity and interculturality in the classroom: Alaa – teacher from Palestine who is promoting intercultural, human connections and mutual respect through greater understandings

In this episode, we cross oceans, continents, language barriers and stereotypes to gain wise, profound and personal insights from Alaa, a young man born in Palestine, and who taught English there for 11 years. But then, life carried him on a journey to the “land of opportunity” where he would work as a gas station attendant until he could get his teacher certification here and be hired to teach Arabic in, of all places, Georgia! Alaa shares stories of the culture shock he had to work through as well as the language barriers he had to cross in order to understand his students, but also to be understood by his students. He said that an agreement of mutual respect and compassion made it all possible as he and his students opened their hearts and their minds to create meaningful and caring relationships. He says that they taught him as much about life as he did them. Alaa explains how, as humans, we are learning from each other in every interaction and every communication. He added that teachers are like treasure hunters just trying to dig down deep into the heart of a child and find the hidden treasure, the real gem that is hidden there and that is unique to each child. Thank you, Alaa, as you are a treasure to your students, and you are “paying it forward” from that one teacher that made a big difference in your young life once!