I just completed my first full day of “TOT,” or Training for Trainers, the new program sponsored by the UNIDO and ISG organizations. It was a great feeling to be back in front of Iraqi students with Wamidh at my side, although very different to only have four of them instead of eighteen. Technically, the first day for them was yesterday, but they had informational meetings with Jeff and Wamidh all day going over EGT policies. I happened to wander into our freshly-completed conference room, a new building now sitting where only bags of concrete, garbage, and dog droppings were 4 months ago. The new building has nice overhead office lights, a tile floor, and a sliding glass door. I sat down in the corner to watch Jeff lecture and Wamidh translate, and Jeff had me stand up, introduce myself to the ~45 TOT students and describe what it was like to be a teacher on the site. I was pleasantly surprised to see four women in the group, and I was told that one of them would be in the IT class with Wamidh and I.

Rain, lightning, and even hail had been coming down on us for two straight days now (the closest Jordan usually gets to ‘winter’), but all of the new students arrived bright and early as collective group on a school bus. I quickly learned that they had a very different mindset than the IRD-sponsored refugees that still make up the majority of the students. All of them are vocational trainers and teachers themselves from the Baghdad area that have been sent by the Iraqi government over to Jordan specifically to receive higher levels of training and new skills from EGT. Some of the training classes will be three months long, and some, such as mine, will only be one month. After their training is done, they will return to Iraq. Three of my four students have been computer teachers for many years, but only with computer software, and not repair. The difference between their general attitude towards education and that of many of my former students was astounding. These were fellow teachers and listened carefully, asked relevant questions politely, and were (almost) punctual after break times.

It’s going to be a little tough to get between Ayn al Basha and Whitman on Mondays and Wednesdays when I have to teach at both, but I definitely want to give these four teachers as much information as I can in the short month that I’ll have them as students. I’m glad that they have a strong base in using Windows XP already, which will help them out when we switch to Windows Server operating systems (UNIDO specified for some reason that they should be taught primarily network-related information).

At the end of the first class; comparing the insides of a computer from 2002 versus one from 2009