REACHING ACROSS CULTURES
training teachers in Yemen

AFT Trainer Richard Herriges with Syndicate Field Leaders

This past February the AFT Educational Foundation organized two back-to-back training seminars with the Syndicate of Yemeni Teachers. The first seminar, attended by the Syndicate’s national and regional leaders focused on capacity-building skills – democratic leadership, coalition building, planning and organizing. Participants at the second seminar were drawn from the ranks of school level leaders. "Train-the-trainer" was a key element of the seminars, thereby assisting the Syndicate build up their capacity to educate new activists in the principals and practices of democratic unionism. In all 50 Syndicate leaders participated in the seminars.

Anne and Richard reported regularly back to their Education Minnesota colleagues on their experiences. Below are excerpts from those emails along with pictures.

We have just finished our third day of training. It took us 34 hours to get here with the weather delays so we jumped right into work once we arrived. We met with the leaders of the Yemen Syndicate to talk about their needs and concerns. Many classes have over 100 students. The nation has a literacy rate about 60% and about 30% for women. Almost half of the population is 14 and under. They have many challenges and few resources.

The first two days we met with the national leaders, much like our Governing Board, elected and appointed representatives from specific regional areas across the country. It is made up of 30 men and one woman, who arrived fully covered in black except for a slit for her eyes. We spent time talking about what it means to be a union and a leader within the union, how to set goals, developing an action plan and several other items. They are absolutely intrigued by the way we train. Several commented that they expected us to lecture at them for the entire week. They have loved the chance to talk to each other about their work and challenges. They had a spirited debate about whether the union's first priority should be improving teacher qualifications by providing training or working to raise salaries (a difficult task when there is no collective bargaining system).

Seminar participants plan model organizing campaign

Ahmed al-Rabahi, Syndicate President with Anne Krisnik and participants

Today, 20 union field leaders joined our group. Most intriguing to me was the addition of ten women. The gender interactions and roles add several additional layers to the group dynamics. We are hoping to arrange a luncheon for me to talk with the women alone. Richard would love to meet with them but, as one of the women said, that would be impossible. The men are incredibly respectful to the women, even pointing out when one them raises their hand and we do not immediately call on them.

To a person, we have found them to be thoughtful, insightful, emotional and fun. There is one major difference between this group and any group either of us has ever worked with before. When we ask a question, every single person wants to answer and gets upset when we don't call on them. It is a wonderful problem to have, We have adjusted by having them report in groups and then have a single reporter for each group.

Sabah Al-Khire (good morning)

Today was graduation day. We said goodbye to the 33 national and regional leaders we have worked with for the past four days. We spent the day working on how to handle problems in the schools. They have no collective bargaining or any type of grievance procedure. They loved having a form for gathering information and came up with some very creative ways to address concerns. It seems that the most effective way to get school administration to change its mind is to be from a powerful clan or tribe.

We spend the day training and then come back and work for several hours preparing. We are starting to feel exhausted but look forward to each day. Tomorrow, we start working with field leaders who will be helping train teachers throughout the country.

After our training, I took the women to lunch. It is a bit of a jarring experience walking with 10 women totally dressed in black. I wore my long black skirt, a simple white blouse and a scarf and felt like a neon sign.

We went to a restaurant that had a private room for women. This meant they could remove the covering from their faces. All except two did - they ate and drank (with a straw) under their veils.

It has been a challenge to make a connection to these women - no ability to see their facial expressions at all. It is wonderful to eat with them and see them laughing and joking. However, if the door opens (with drinks or food) or they hear someone outside the door, all of them immediately pull their scarves over their faces in case a man may be walking by and might see them.

I asked them about their schools and their lives in the union. All of them said that women have no difficulty getting elected, however, they have real challenges getting women to want to run for offices. All of them felt that their opinions were respected by the men.

After lunch, we went to one of the women's houses to talk. We talked more about the Syndicate and then they asked me all kinds of questions about America - my life there, my children, what they see in the media. One of my favorite questions went like this. "I see Americans in the movies and on television. They never talk to anyone on the bus. Why are they so unfriendly?" The Yemenis are very friendly - I can see why this would amaze them.

There were more serious questions too, about the US support for Israel and the Iraq war. Several of them told me they still liked America and the American people.

(Anne)

We have had a busy weekend. The Yemeni people only get one day off - Friday - so we worked through Saturday and Sunday again. In fact, we haven't had a single day in which we weren't working.

We have been preparing our report to the Syndicate President on what we accomplished during the training and what is left for them to do going forward. We thought this would be a good time to give you a brief outline of what we have done in the past 11 days.

With the Syndicate leaders, we worked to identify the top goals of the union. We identified three - educating our members about their rights, increasing membership, and providing training to members to become better teachers. For each goal, we developed measurable targets, realistic timelines for implementation and the resources needed to be successful. For several of them, we also identified possible coalition partners to help the Syndicate reach its goals.

We worked to identify the core duties and roles of the Union Field Leader (much like our field staff). After identifying the key qualities of these leaders, we suggested ways to foster these characteristics in the existing leaders.

We developed a bank of model letters for the field leaders, ranging from requests for a meeting with the headmaster, to summarizing a union meeting, to notification of a significant legal or union development.

Most interesting to us was a project on Union membership. We worked with the field leaders to identify the reasons teachers don't join the union. High on the list was fear of the government's (headmaster's) action. Amazingly, almost half of the teachers in the country belong to the Syndicate, clearly viewed as the reform union and the only union that accomplishes anything here. Once we had the list, we had members develop responses (what we would call talking points) to use during recruitment discussions.

We worked with the leadership to develop a survey for their members and prepared material for a new column in their monthly newsletter dealing with effective teaching practices. In addition, we did training on diversity, running a democratic union and resolving conflict.

We managed to have some fun, as well. Late Friday night, we went to the home of one of our teachers, Boshra, a devout Muslim who lives right in Old Sana'a, the walled city. We are sure it looks much like it did 2000 years ago - very narrow streets, spice dealers selling spices from bushel baskets filled with ground spices, men hand-forging handles to knives. The smell of the city takes you immediately to a different time and place.