Bahrain school's atmosphere enhanced
by national diversity of student body
By Ron Jensen, Stars
and Stripes
At one DODDS school, Saturday is Monday and Wednesday is Friday.
The Bahrain School in the capital city of Manama operates on the Islamic calendar,
which means classes will begin Saturday, when most other Department of Defense Dependents
Schools start the school year’s first weekend.
"You never get used to it," said Terry Preston, who teaches U.S. history and
sociology, among other subjects.
Preston, starting his fourth year at the school, said he still often tells students on
Wednesday, the week’s last day of class, that an assignment for the weekend is
"due Monday."
The students smile, knowing he means Saturday, the next day the class meets.
"Not one of them will correct you," Preston said.
Such an adjustment is outweighed, Preston and others said, by the special environment
at the school. Sandra Daniels, the principal, said she expects 840 students to answer the
bell for the first day Saturday, from pre-kindergarten youngsters to high school seniors.
Plus, she said, the student body includes students from about 30 nations. They come
from as far away as Japan and Spain and represent various Arab nations, and many are
children of ambassadors, international business leaders and bankers and, of course, U.S.
military members stationed in the small island nation jutting into the Persian Gulf. About
40 percent of the student body is American, she said.
"There is no better place to be a principal or a teacher than this school,"
Daniels said.
There might be better places to plan school calendars, however. The school honors Arab
holidays, which are based on phases of the moon and are not official until the government
approves them.
The school will not know when, for example, Eid Al Adha, a three-day holiday following
the pilgrimage to Mecca, will fall until the government makes the announcement.
Daniels, who is the DODDS-Europe secondary school principal of the year, said holidays
such as Easter and Christmas are easily accommodated by scheduling in-service days for
teachers, which allows students to be home with their families.
Some holidays are easy.
"Thanksgiving is always a Thursday, which is a Saturday for us," she said.
The school, which began in 1968 and falls within the United Kingdom DODDS district,
provides the curriculum for an American high school diploma, but also gives instruction in
the international baccalaureate.
Daniels, starting her third year at the school, said the cooperative environment among
the children from different cultures and nations is encouraging.
"I always say to the parents, ‘If only the world was as kind as our hallways,
the world would be a perfect place,’" Daniels said.
When India and Pakistan were recently involved in a dispute, Preston said he looked at
two members of the school’s cricket team — one Pakistani, one Indian — who
are friends and teammates.
Judy Byrd-Masters, who starts her eighth year as a math teacher at the school this
week, said she remembers watching two students — one Greek, one Turkish — who
were best friends despite the continuing animosity of their two home countries.
"It’s a wonderful environment," she said. "It’s like a model
United Nations. The kids learn to get along. We’re growing the leaders of
tomorrow."
Preston said the school is a great place to dispel misconceptions, especially about
people of the Arab world.
"We have the misconception — and I did, at first — that these people are
fanatics," he said. Instead, he has found them to be kind, gentle and pretty typical
teen-agers.
"You teach them," Preston said, "but they’re teaching you,
too."
Yousif Al Alawi, 16, starts his junior year Saturday, his 11th year at the school. The
Bahraini citizen has met Americans, he said, who arrived thinking Arabs still ride around
the desert on camels.
But with such beliefs quickly pushed aside by the modern city, the students quickly
learn to mix together, he said.
"There are no separate groups," he said. "It’s not Americans on one
side, everybody else on the other side. Everybody gets along."
Abdulla Almoayed, 17, will be a senior when he starts his fourth year at the school.
The Bahraini citizen said he, too, meets Americans with false impressions of Arabs, in
general.
"As soon as they get here," he said, "they realize what they thought is
much different from how people really are."
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