Studying in the Arab world might vary from country to country, but some teachers are the same everywhere you go. Here are 10 types of teachers you’ll encounter wherever you go to study in the region:
1) The English Teacher Who Doesn’t Know English:
They keep mixing their B’s with their P’s, their tenses are all wrong and they mispronounce at least 50% of the words they know. How they got a job teaching the future generation one of the most common languages in the world, you’ll never know.
2) The Teacher with the Weird Dialect:
Put a teacher from Tunis in a room full of students from Syria, and what will you get? NOTHING, they’re basically speaking two different languages, how are they supposed to understand each other? The teacher might as well be speaking Sanskrit!
3) The Motherly Teacher:
This teacher loves her class like she loves her own children and, most likely, the students love her back. She might use the terms “habibi” or “mama” more often than usual, but she will go above and beyond her subject duties to teach you more about life. Don’t make her mad at you, she is just as good at being a loving mother as she is being a stern one!
4) The Grandfather:
This teacher is ANCIENT. He has probably taught you, all your older siblings AND your parents (and maybe even studied with your grandparents)! He can be a little forgetful at times, and might bore you with the many, many, MANY stories he’s collected throughout his life, but you love him nonetheless. He’s so adorable!
5) The Forgiving Islamic Teacher:
You like this teacher for one reason: he always looks away when you’re cheating in an exam because he knows it’s irrelevant to know how to calculate how much “Zakat” you need if you had a flock of sheep. Who deals with sheep anymore???
6) The Angry Teacher:
These teachers come in different forms, or they could be all combined in one. You get the feeling they hate the entirety of humanity. They won’t let you in if you’re 3 seconds late to class, they think laughter is a sign of disrespect and if you ask them a question, they’re always right even when they’re wrong and they’re going to fall into fits of rage for being inattentive, even though they asked you if you understood the topic in the first place!
7) The Fashionable Teacher:
This teacher makes education look so good! She dresses so well and speaks so proper she basically inspires legions of girls to become teachers when they grow up too!
8) The Pastry Teacher:
This teacher wanted to be a baker in another life. Whether it’s Eid, the winter break or just a really sunny day, every chance she gets, she will bring you homemade goodies to eat, and sometimes she’d ask you to bring in sweets of your own (maybe to compare).
9) The Teacher Who Decided to Teach Just Because They Have a Degree:
Congratulations, you just received your Math degree! What are you going to do next? You decide to be a teacher, even though you hate kids and hate teaching as well. Hmm, probably not the best idea, but what else are you going to do with that degree, amiright?
10) The Teacher Who Used the Middle Finger to Point at the Board:
Is it by accident? Is he/she secretly insulting us? Do they know what that sign means? Should we say something? This is both very awkward and very funny, and it’s probably going to happen all year round.
Have you encountered all these teachers in your life? Who do you think should be on this list? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
