If this sounds like BS to someone, it probably isn’t. From my time in Iraq, this sounds rather spot on. They’re a very spontaneous people, and if they feel they need a refresher they’ll take it. I’ve never seen banquets spontaneously erupt anywhere else on earth. One person will decide their mood doesn’t match what they’re doing and will break out their lunch and the rest will see that and do the same. Often they’d just throw all the food in the middle of a circle, and they’d share and people would eat whatever they wanted from what’s there. It was pretty interesting.

I once had an English teacher who was Indian (on a high school in The Netherlands). He used to work for the embassy but stayed here until his kids finished school. He did multiple university studies in his life, like 6 or 7. He didn’t speak Dutch. But he wanted to do something he loved until his kids were old enough to live on their own.

Often we had English right after gym class. He thought we were way too restless, so he ordered us to sit on our desk, folded legs, eyes closed while he put on meditation music from India and told us the most amazing stories from when he was young. About his first girlfriend, seeing the first steam train with her after waiting a whole day, and much more beautiful stories. End of the class: “oh by the way, this is your homework”.

If you didn’t make your homework or failed a test, he would never get angry or anything. But you could see on his face he was disappointed, while he said he knew in his heart we could do so much better, and that he believed in us.

Best teacher I’ve ever had. Such a kind and warm hearted man.

No one ever skipped his class. Everyone did their best to study, as we all felt he deserved our effort. He wasn’t shy to tell us we made him proud, something my parents never said.

I’m sure there weren’t any socially awkward people that never dance in that class at all.

I hope the class does something nice for him in return

I’ve had multiple teachers do this. I guess it’s a brown Asian thing.

Makes me think of acting class, where we always started with a brief physical warmup - a few seconds of jogging, shaking our hands and feet, shouting “Wooo-oooo” etc. The teacher always had a different student lead it. It really gets your brain going, and I remember thinking ALL classes should start that way.

I like this and I appreciate it, but I also immediately thought of Matt Damon on SNL just a couple weeks ago… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuMFryxHmD0

best my teacher can do is punish me for reading in class 🙄

my mu3allim only went on rants over the house of sa3ud, whenever possible. dancing would’ve been more fun. thumbs up!

best my teacher can do is punish me for reading in class 🙄