“Seek education even if it takes you to China,” says an old Arabic proverb. For the International Leaders in Education (ILEP), going to China was not necessary, for cities all over America have opened their doors to the international teachers.

The program is designed to help teachers learn from the tactics of others so they can use the new methods to help their own students. James Madison University hosts the classes and offers the teachers and internship at HHS.

One international teacher, Ragab Hassan, is working with David Loughran to get a glimpse of our process here at Harrisonburg High School. Hassan teaches English at an Egyptian high school and has come here through the ILEP program. He will be staying in the U.S for six months. Hassan says he hopes to take home all the new methods he’s learning.

“[There is] no comparison between teaching here and in Egypt,” Hassan said. “Teachers here are very lucky.They have a lot of resources such as technology and equipment. Schools here have more equipped classes.”

Hassan spoke of how teachers in Egypt have to deal with larger classes, with

some classes reaching up to sixty students each. He said that the amount of students put teachers under more stress than teachers have in Harrisonburg.

“We [Egyptian teachers] exert a lot of effort in the classroom because of the number of students. Here, classes have fewer students so teachers don’t have to exert as much effort,” Hassan said.

Other problems plague the educational system in Egypt, like the methodology of teaching. Memorization, not analytical understanding, is the method most students, and teachers, resort to.

“Teachers in Egypt do a lot of lecturing and emphasize the importance of memorization more than they focus on helping the students understand whatever subject they’re teaching.Students also try to get high grades using that method, so they forget what they learn easily,” Hassan said.

The relationship between students and teachers here is also something that caught Hassan’s attention. While teachers in America have a more correlated relation with their students, teachers in Egypt usually just lecture because of the money they get from private tutoring.

“Here, the learning process is student centered, which means teachers focus more on the students ability, than just focus on the material.The power in the classroom is also shared between the teacher and the students so that the teachers job is to help guide the student and the student helps facilitate the teacher’s job,” Hassan said.

These methods are what Hassan is here to learn , but getting accepted by the ILEP was hard. Each teacher had to apply to the program through the American embassy in their country and wait to see if they would get the chance to come benefit from the teaching methods in America.

“The application consisted of essays and other questions that evaluated our English proficiency. The score was from 670 points and applicants had to score more that 500 so that they are considered for the program. After we got accepted, we had to then apply for a J-I Visa (a visa for exchange students) so that we can come to America. We also had to be interviewed at the embassy,” Hassan said.

The stay in America is just as hard as the process it took the exchange teachers to get here. All teachers are expected to take classes at JMU on methodology, lesson planning, and academic seminars where they are taught new methods that will help them in their classrooms. The teachers also take classes concerning technology that will help them facilitate their teaching process.

These classes will help the teachers excel in their fields, especially when some of their countries’, like Egypt are going through dramatic change in not just education, but in all fields. Education in Egypt has been hindered by the Ministers of Education that were placed by the ousted Egyptian President Mubarak. The last of those ministers, Ahmad Zakki Badr, made education in Egypt even more difficult.

In his last few years as Minister of Education, Badr made tests much harder, changed all of Egypt’s curriculum to fit pro Mubarak propaganda, and neglected public schooling. Teachers stayed underpaid, but now had to teach harder curriculum’s to get students ready for harder tests. And just in a few years, the private tutoring institution took off in Egypt.

“I think private tutoring is one of the main problems that faces Egypt. It hinders the development of education in classrooms to the point that many students, especially in high school, have stopped going to school all together. Instead they resort to private tutoring, where they can get more attention from the teacher and therefore have a better chance at doing better on tests. They [the students] see school as a waste of their time, since they won’t be getting much out of the classroom environment anyway,” Hassan said.

Loughran says he is also benefiting from the internship as he helps Hassan adapt to the new school system.

“I help him understand how our school functions and provide opportunities for him to team teach with me, but he is certainly a capable teacher. I just make sure he’s comfortable as far as the English language goes, ” Loughran said.

Loughran is also interested with Hassan’s cultural background.

“I give him time at the front of the room so he can present to the class things about Egypt, its history and his culture,”Loughran said.

The internship at HHS constitutes as a sort of break for the exchange teachers, because of the hard work they have to go through throughout the week.

“This component of [Hassan’s] program is definitely more relaxing than the rest of his work,” Loughran said.

But either here or at JMU, the exchange teachers are working their hardest to learn how to better their teaching methods. Hassan, especially, is working with a different spirit because of the new wave of freedom in his country. He hopes that the educational system there will change for the better, and that he can help students achieve their goals.