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No concept of time, no technology… Say what?!

 

My husband and I decided to take the kids to the South of Lebanon to swim and play in the sand. We went to an area called Sour. The further you go out of the city of Beirut, the cleaner the beaches are and the safer the water is for us to swim in. It was about a two hour drive to get there. We reached to my brother in laws house, unpacked our things and headed to the beach. (That’s the view from his balcony.) My kids were so excited and couldn’t wait to jump right in.

I decided to leave my phone at home. I wanted to disconnect from the world, focus on my kids and play with them without being distracted by technology. I only had a week left until my summer vacation would over, and I would be back at school working. I wanted to enjoy those two simple days with them and give them my undivided attention.

We live in a world where technology can easily take up your life without us even feeling it. It seems like we can’t live without our gadgets and connectivity, and yet it distracts us all. We are all addicted to our screens but are barely aware of it.  But why?! I truly don’t understand! Whatever it is, it can wait.  

We reached and ran to the sea and swam. To be honest it felt weird, as though I was “naked” not checking social media nor chatting with anyone. A part of me was missing!

My husband and kids were with me so I knew the world wouldn’t stop without me checking anything for a few hours. We reached there at 1pm and left at 8pm. It felt absolutely amazing; utter stress free time which seemed to go slower than usual. Neither my husband nor I had  a watch on us. When I’d ask what the time was he didn’t know. He left his phone in the bag far away from us. We had no concept of time! Which was simply wonderful. We had lunch, joked, played, sang and went back to build sand castles and swam in the sea. Next thing you know it was 8pm, and the sun was about to set. We packed up and left. It felt so good. Being there with my family and enjoying every minute without technology eating us up alive! My kids had a blast and that’s what was more important, and I was there fully with them, mentally and physically. I actually enjoyed every minute of it with them. I vowed to myself that I should do this for at least an hour each day; put my phone away and enjoy my kids before they grow up and I realize in a blink of an eye that I wasted all that time because of a phone, because of social media. The present moment is all we have, and people say it all the time, but we don’t actually take the time to live it. What are our goals if we lose sight of the reason we have them.

The reason behind everything for me is my family, and I vow to enjoy that beautiful truth to its maximum capacity. Cherish every moment you’ve got. 

 

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PTC Take #1

In November 2015, I was so excited to begin, that I enrolled for two courses when the schedule first came out. I had applied for my US visa and got it for 10 years. I booked my seat in the class, got my ticket, and was all set to go six months before the course even began. I could hardly bear the excitement. After six years of putting it on hold, the time had finally come for me to attend PTC!

In the summer of 2016, I started packing my bags for a 21 hour flight journey on my own for the very first time in my life. Miami was a long way away, so far in distance, and so far removed from everything I knew for 34 years of my life. My emotions were all over the place. I felt overwhelmed, anxious, excited, nervous, scared, thrilled … the list goes on. Ambivalence at its best.

After an arduous flight, I made it to my hotel room and couldn’t wait to check in and rest my aching body. But when I finally walked into the room, I was hit by huge waves of emotions which seemed to come out of nowhere, and I just broke down and cried. It was so quiet. No one was calling out “mom” every second, and no one was fighting, crying or laughing. It was just me and the four walls of my strange hotel room in this strange city where my lifelong dreams were hanging right before of me. I switched on the TV and put on my music to feel the comfort of sound around me, and I began to unpack and settle in. This will be my home for 21 days, I thought, so I had better get used to it.

I had 3 days before my first PTC class began, so I decided to use them to my advantage by getting my jet lag adjusted and also walking around the neighborhood to check out where I could get everything I needed. By the third day I was familiar with most things and seemed to be settling in smoothly, but the feeling of missing my family still gnawed at me tremendously.

Thanks to technology I was able to Face Time with my children daily. I would spend my mornings with them on video calls, and when they would go to sleep, my day would begin. The time difference worked to our benefit.

By the fourth day, it was time to register and get ready for classes, and the process went quite well from the get go. Meeting so many different educators from all over the world was an amazing experience.

By the fourth and fifth days, the pace slowed down a little bit, and I was getting into the swing of studying alongside an extremely diverse group of people. I felt slightly bombarded by the amount of information I was taking in, not to mention the amount of networking there was going on. There were so many different activities to complete as part of the program, which entailed partnering up with others taking the class. And although it was all too much too quick, it was still worth every cent spent on the courses.

The new academic school year began and I started implementing at work what I had learned from the Leadership & Team Dynamics module. Getting us all on the same page was a successful process, and I could already see the positive effects the training had on my work performance. It worked so well that it drove my passion further, and I felt fulfilled. Trying out the team building activities with my team at work which I had learnt from the PTC course took things to another level.

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The Working World

2007 was the first year I joined the workforce as a responsible adult, an experience ripe with anxiety of course. I was an on-call substitute in one school, and applied for full-time work at two other schools. Meanwhile I continued subbing at KG Land for three months every day, waiting for the opportunity to teach full-time. I had two interviews and chose the offer that best suited me, which was at a very good school.One of the top 3 schools in Kuwait. I could not wait to start working there.

Come September 2007, I was a homeroom teacher. I had my very own class and a curriculum I had to teach from. I remember how afraid I was and how overwhelming everything seemed, but I loved every minute of it. Getting to know my class, their parents and working in a team of six was a wonderful experience.  By the fifth month, I had formed my long-term goal which I intended to achieve after completing ten years teaching in a classroom. That goal was to become a principal one day in a private school.  I didn’t see myself being in a classroom for the rest of my life. I just got that feeling right then and there. There aren’t a lot of Kuwaiti’s working at private schools, let alone any principals or assistant principals. I wanted to break that trend, and be the first Kuwaiti female to take on the challenge.

I had to have a plan in order to reach my goal by the tenth year of teaching, so I visualized it and drew it out. I knew that to be an assistant principal or principal one needed their masters and a principal certificate. After researching and locating the programs I needed to enroll in, I decided to begin my masters while teaching. The school I was working in at the time offered a Master’s program, so I enrolled and graduated with an MS in Interdisciplinary Studies and Educational Leadership Certification, Buffalo State SUNY in June of 2011. I was so sure of what I wanted, that all the obstacles and struggles it took to get there felt like mere necessity. I was also building a family at the same time, and felt equally dedicated to it.

I gave birth to my daughter, and only two weeks later attended class in order to graduate with the same class I began my Masters program with. Yes, it wasn’t easy at all. Having sleepless nights, new mother and trying to recover after giving birth did NOT stop me and still went to class.  It was a 2-year program and I attended classes after working hours. In 2011, I received my masters and graduated. Now all that was left was my principal certificate.

I asked around and heard about The Principal Training Center (PTC) and The Ontario Principals Council (OPC). I compared the two and chose the most feasible option. However, I put my principal training on hold for a while to focus on my children, whom I gave birth to in 2010 and 2012. Still, nothing was going to stop me from continuing along my path.

So meanwhile, I decided to save money in order to complete my principal training in two summers. I chose to do the training through the PTC in Miami. From 2012 to 2016 I saved up exactly the amount I needed. During that time I was also team leader for third grade for two years, accumulating leadership experience to help pave the way for my principal training.

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The Beginning

For as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to be a teacher. As a child, it seemed as though I constantly held a red pen/crayon in my hand, placing check marks and X’s everywhere. When I had friends over, I always seemed to convince them to play school, and I was always the teacher. I don’t remember ever having an interest in the business world, or anything corporate. All I knew for sure is that I wanted to be a teacher, and that it came naturally to me. 

I went to school and graduated with a major in Education. I graduated with honors, and solidified a teaching certificate as well, completing four years successfully.

It wasn’t always a smooth road however; I remember that during my student teaching stint, I had an overwhelming urge to quit and drop out of college entirely.  My supervisor insisted on me completing my student teaching for three months in a government school, and it was grueling for me because I had been in private schools growing up and found public education to be a completely different world. My goodness what a difference it was.  

When I found that there was no way out of the situation, I didn’t give up. Instead, I went daily for three months without skipping a moment, and completed the three months which felt like three years. But I was done.  I knew that I would never fit into a government school. It simply wasn’t a space I belonged in. But I didn’t allow that to deter me from pursuing my education dream.

 

 

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Kudos

I have to say, blogging isn’t my modus operandi, nor is writing a hobby or passion that comes naturally to me. Writing about the most vulnerable and intimate experiences of my life, and sharing them with the world, is definitely not something I would call a joy ride, because it’s not the way I’m assembled. I’m a doer. I get an idea of what I want to create, and I go ahead and get it done without a lot of fan fair. But this is where I’m blessed; I have loved ones who cheer me on without me even having to ask. My husband and one of my closest friends both yanked me out of my head and pushed me to write about what it means to be one of the first Kuwaiti women to pave this road in education. What it took. How it feels. Without them, this whole website wouldn’t exist. Also, the Director of PTC Bambi Betts, was the third person to mention to me that she believes others would benefit from reading about the journey of a woman who pursued an uncommon path and dream in the Middle East. So here I am, listening to the support system whom without, I would not be the same person. I want to say thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for all the love. I appreciate you endlessly.  

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Get to know me!

Myself in a nutshell. Born and raised in Kuwait. I received my high school and bachelor degrees from academic institutions in Kuwait. Married with two children. My passion while growing up was always to be a teacher. As my aspirations grew, I set my goal towards becoming assistant principal and, ultimately, principal, which I have partially accomplished thus far. Growing up in Kuwait as a minority was not easy. I am ensuring that any negativity I endured as a child is not repeated in school with other students. I take the responsibility of shaping future generations very seriously in mind, body and spirit.

Name : Dana Shuhaibar

Birthday: October 5th

Nationality: Kuwaiti, Middle East

Experience in teaching: 10 years

Experience in Assistant Principal: 3 years and going

Schools I taught in: Bayan Bilingual School for seven years (BBS.) I taught Grade 3 for five years and Grade 4 for two years. I moved with my daughter when she entered KG1 to American International School of Kuwait (AISK). I taught there for three years in Grade 3 and was the Team Leader for two years before becoming Assistant Principal.

Education:

  • M.S., Interdisciplinary Studies and Educational Leadership Certification, Buffalo State SUNY – June 2011
  • B.A, English Education with a teaching certificate, Gulf University of Science & Technology – December 2006
  • HS Diploma, American International School of Kuwait- June 2001

Credentials

  • Principal Training Center-enrolled 2016 (2 courses completed)
  • Principal Training Center-enrolled 2017 (Graduated)
  • TESOL Kuwait Conference –November 2013
  • PYP “Introduction to the PYP Curriculum Model” Certificate – October 2013
  • ICDL Certification – January 2009

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