Life at the School
An interview with Ghada Issa, school administrator
Interview with
Other pages in this introductory section:
History, organisation & funding
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The Hope Flowers School is an independent peace and democracy school in Bethlehem, in the West Bank of Palestine. The school was founded in 1984 by Hussein Issa, a refugee who had grown up in the Deheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem, after his family lost their lands in the 1948 war. Hussein is now deceased, and the school is run by the Issa family. It is a world pioneer in peace and democracy education, prompted by the situation Palestinians have been through in the last 50 years. |
 PAGE SUMMARY Here, Ghada talks about the curriculum and atmosphere at the school, links and exchanges with schools in Israel, France and Germany, school numbers, fees and finances, state support, the attitude of other Palestinians to the school's work, the psychological support program for children, and challenges and problems the school faces in being in a conflict zone.
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Ghada, what kind of education does the school offer?
Education here is divided into two parts. The first part is the nine mandatory curriculum subjects as specified by the Palestinian Ministry of Education. These subjects are English, Arabic, Religious Education, Mathematics, Science, Arts, National Education (history and current national issues), Computers and Civil Education (citizenship).
The second part is extra-curricular activities. This involves three sections, for teachers, parents and children. We must educate the adults first because they play such a part in educating the children. The teachers receive training such as empowerment training, compassionate listening, peacemaking, interfaith activities, democratic education (for example, handling violence, consensually difficult situations and setting exam systems in a democratic way).
These extracurricular activities are supplemented with other activities such as agriculture, where they learn how to plant and grow produce and learn the science around it, and how to take care of their environment - plants, land, diseases. We do drama, dance, folklore dancing, handicrafts, music and performing arts, where children can explore their potentials.
We try to make them feel as safe as they can be, because safety and security are not always available at home, due to the current situation here. Some children's fathers have been killed, or the father or big brother is in jail, or their home has been bombarded or forcibly entered at night and sometimes wrecked. So many children lack a basic sense of security, and we try to give it here.
We explore these issues particularly through drama, handicrafts, folklore studies and so on, where they can concentrate on something creative and forget the more difficult parts of their lives outside school. We do performances for the wider community too. At the summer school, lasting up to one month, we do a celebration on the last day where we invite members of the community and officials to watch the children do a performance they have devised and developed.
Do you have dialogue with other schools?
Each year we participate in the international democratic educational conference, giving experience to teachers and students, where we learn from other people from other parts of the world about their experience and perspectives. We try to fit what we learn from this into our policies here.
We do programs with European and Israeli students in which people come from schools from different parts of the world, and we visit them to learn about other people's cultures, ways of life and intercultural dialogue. At the moment (summer 2005) there is a group of six students and two teachers in Germany.
In 2003 twelve students went to Friedrichsgymnasium in Frankfurt-am-Oder in Germany. In the first part we sent them to a camp with German students outside Frankfurt-am-Oder (to keep them together, so that they don't just disappear into the crowd!). On the last two days of the program they stayed with German families, and the families chose what they did with their guests.
You used to have exchanges with Israeli schools, didn't you?
Yes, but this is not longer permitted, by law. We now like to send the children to other countries, as much as we can. We have started a new partnership with a French school in Paris, and last April we organised a four-day meeting with their teachers, to discuss how to set up a program for the students, what kind of activities we could do, the program's aims and its procedural issues.
We discussed starting with Internet contact, followed by a summer camp in France. In the Internet contact, the students discuss what 'peace' means for them, from their different perspectives - from a place of peace like France and a place of tension like Palestine. We do this in English, with the help of translators.
During our visit we spoke about what the students would do when they visit, and what topics to cover. Teachers suggested options and then the students made their inputs and chose their topics. They had to make the decisions so that they would be properly self-motivated. We called it 'Lexicon for Peace', and the students decided to create a booklet arising from the experience, about their local communities and how the people in the other country responded to their presence.
Such exchanges are, in the end, a question of financing. On these exchanges, the method and financing varies. In the French project, the French school paid my own air fare. In one case a link-up conference invited one teacher each from seven French, seven Palestinian and seven Israeli schools, and each school paid for their own teacher to go, while the accommodation was provided by the hosts. In the German case there was a fundraising effort in Germany, plus funding from the German Ministry of Culture, so the exchange was well funded. Airfares are expensive, especially in July!
How do you get to other countries from here - you can't go through Israel, can you?
Usually we travel via Amman in Jordan, not via Israel, since West Bank Palestinians are forbidden to enter Israel. This adds more difficulties. For example, in July the border is busy between Jordan and the West Bank, so it is overcrowded and people have to wait long hours for transit, and it is really frustrating. So travelling through Jordan is a kind of burden that everyone prefers not to go through. In the end these exchanges are good and valuable, so people put up with it, and we make it work. It is a bit easier now (2005).
Once I took a group of students a few years ago, and the situation was more difficult than now. There were travel restrictions and border closures. We wanted to get out of Bethlehem, and we had to get to the checkpoint by 3am so that we could avoid queues. Eventually we got to a checkpoint and it was closed. We tried to speak to the army, but it was horrible because they didn't want to speak to us and closed the checkpoint, preventing everyone from leaving.
We had to find another way round. In the end we climbed a mountain to find a way out of Bethlehem, at 3.30 in the morning. There was a fence blocking all movement, but we raised the fence and got underneath it, with our luggage too, and it was difficult, scary and dangerous. Travelling via Tel Aviv in Israel would be easier, but we are not able to do that.
What age-group are the students that you take?
The students we take travelling are usually 15-16 years old. It is hard with younger students. When we have a group of overseas teachers or students visiting Bethlehem we open it up for people of all ages.
Do you seek to further develop these contacts?
We are interested in developing contacts with other schools, such as in England, to extend our exchange program. This would be invaluable. We do a lot of Internet contact, by arranging penpals and friendships, such as between our school and a school in North Carolina in USA. But we have had some technical problems with our Internet connection at the school. The children seem not to have language problems - the penpal arrangements are largely private and self-motivated, but facilitated by us.
Tell me about exchanges you used to have with Israeli schools.
In 1999-2000 we had an exchange between the third and fourth grades of our school and an Israeli school, and this was well documented and filmed. It lasted two years, and the students met twice a week. On Sundays they would meet in the zoo to learn about animals, and then they would work on handicrafts. On Wednesdays they would meet in a garden near Jerusalem to do gardening work together.
They did it all with their hands and hand tools, and they took care of the garden, grew some grain, made flour, baked the dough and ate it together. They saw the whole growing process throughout the year.
When they met for the first time they were anxious and scared and couldn't even talk to each other. The Palestinian students sat on one side and the Israelis on the other, without communicating. By the end, they were really friendly and communicative, teaching each other Hebrew and Arabic. From that experience we proved that the children would always find a way to communicate, even if they don't have a common language.
What age are the children who attend Hope Flowers School?
The age-groups we cater for are 4-13. After 13 they go to other public or private schools of their own choice. We are not at present in a position to teach students older than this, mainly due to funding and facilities. We keep contact with older students through our extracurricular activities. With summer schools we invite these graduates to participate and draw in other students. We keep in touch with them. When we have a training, a seminar or workshops, we invite them to come.
We teach the children Hebrew, but the problem is that the Hebrew language program depended on Israeli volunteer teachers. Usually it costs double to hire a foreign language teacher, in comparison with teachers of other subjects. We could not afford to hire a Hebrew teacher to teach on a regular basis. So the Hebrew program has never been as regular as the English or French language programs.
At present we have 170 students, and we expect an increase in enrolments in September 2005 because we have added a seventh grade and the school has better facilities now. In physical terms we could have more students. During 2005-06 we will have over 200 students. The school year starts in September and ends on 30th May each year (when the hot weather starts).
The school day starts at 8am and usually finishes at 12.30, in which we teach the mandatory curriculum. Then we have extracurricular activities in the afternoon and the evening.
What about school fees and funding?
Usually parents pay for places at the school but it varies from family to family according to their income. The annual tuition that many parents pay is around US$500, which includes tuition and school fees, transportation, stationery and uniforms. Before the intifada (2000-2004) they used to pay more. Since the intifada we cannot ask people to pay as much as they used to pay because the general economic situation has deteriorated. At present we offer fifty scholarships for students whose families are low-income or whose fathers are not working. Unemployment in Bethlehem is almost 60%.
We need to have a full social spectrum at the school, since different kinds of students have different perspectives to contribute. It's a shame not to accept students because they cannot pay, because the general situation is beyond most people's control - many people have lost their jobs because of the economic situation, not because they want to stay at home. We need to protect our community from dangerous and difficult social conditions too.
Often children leave school and start work at the age of twelve, because their families need money, and this is why we give scholarships and try to assist as much as we can in every possible way, to protect the community and to stop losing the children to the need to work for money.
Do you get any official support?
We have no practical support from the Palestinian Authority or the city, but they nevertheless accept our work. We have received funding from the Canadian and Swedish governments, the British Council, the Japanese embassy, USAID and other international governmental agencies. These have been single grants toward specific projects - renovation, security and other particulars - rather than regular aid.
We have been looking for funding to support teachers and administration on an ongoing basis, and we depend on private donations to meet these expenses. This is really difficult, because we depend on irregular donations and appeals, without a good, stable income for the school. This takes up a lot of our time. We have to do a lot of fundraising before we can secure teachers' salaries for the months ahead. This keeps us in a tension all the time, and we keep working on it all year. If we could find funding support for our operating expenses, at least for salaries, this would make us feel very relieved. We could then concentrate on other important things.
What happens when funding is insufficient?
Sometimes there are difficult times when we have to narrow down to two things. One is renovation, to comply with regulations set by the authorities, so that we can have a licence for the following year. The other is teachers' salaries. This at times worries us, because we always need to raise funds for these two key items.
How many staff do you have?
At present we have fourteen teachers and staff, of whom nine are full-time teachers, two are drivers, then there are cleaners, psychologists and others.
Are there people who disagree with your approach to education?
Some people around Bethlehem have disagreed with our approach, which focuses on reconciliation and peace. In the beginning this did affect the school greatly. When the school started in 1984 it adopted a policy of peace and democratic education, yet at that time it was even unwise to speak about coexistence with the Israelis, and it was not a common priority at all. At the beginning our ideas were therefore rejected by the wider community.
The school's vans were burned, the founder, my father Hussein Issa, was accused of being a collaborator with the enemy, and it was hard for people at that time to separate an educationalist from a politician. He was not a politician, and it took a long time for the people to understand that.
But now, after twenty years, there is a lot of encouragement from the community and the Palestinian authorities at all levels. Just this summer the governor of the Bethlehem District, Zuhair Manasra, came to visit, in connection with the PeaceTrees project (tree-planting in the neighbourhood around the school).
There are some people who project negativity on us, but there have been big steps forward over the last twenty years, and people now understand the need for what we offer. They see why we are doing it.
Tell me about the psychological support program.
Our psychological support program, to help children and their families deal with trauma and stress, arising from the conflict, has been run in cooperation with a foundation in the Netherlands. For three years we have organised training for psychologists at the school, so that they can work with traumatised children. We trained five trainers who then trained the teachers, who themselves now train the students. This has been a good beginning.
The psychologists work with the students as individuals and in groups, and sometimes visit them at home so that the children and their parents can talk about their situation. The psychologists can then take a closer look at how and where the children live and what kind of atmosphere they live in.
It is hard to measure the success of the program in just three years, but it is successful because there are signs that it is so. At the beginning, the first meeting had only two or three mothers, the second meeting had five, and nowadays many parents call to speak with the psychologists. It is generally the mothers who participate, though sometimes fathers do - maybe this is a question of culture.
There are many meetings in which there is good feedback from parents about changes in their children and families. We also find that children who have been through the program help other children. This connects with the trainings we give the children concerning democracy, in a practical way. Children and families have started working in their communities to organise workshops themselves for other children, to teach the methods they have learned.
Peace and democracy education isn't ideological indoctrination. It concerns learning how to deal with challenging and confronting situations, how to cooperate with others, how to hold meetings and express one's viewpoint, how to bring people together or contribute constructively to situations that arise. So it is closely connected to our psychological support program. It also prepares our students for facing the situations they are likely to meet when they grow older - as well as dealing with situations that arise now, in their own lives as children and young people.
What kind of challenges and problems do you face?
The most difficult thing I myself experience is witnessing the suffering that children have, watching how it affects the school as a whole and impacts on their own personal abilities. At times some parents worry about their children coming to school, about possible dangers on the way. Or they want to keep the family together because they are in a state of family shock from events. This is frustrating.
The school is sometimes searched by the army, mainly at night. It happened once when the children were here during the day, but the army did not come inside. There were some German students here, and the Israelis thought they were Israeli students and wanted to take them away (since it is illegal for Israelis to visit the West Bank). The German group leader showed all the permits he had and the army were satisfied and went away.
There was one occasion in 2002 when shooting started nearby. Everyone hid, and we had to call the US Consulate and Red Cross to evacuate the children. That was horrible.
We have many challenges ahead of us. One is that our computers are getting old, and this affects our administration! The biggest challenge is the threat of demolition of the cafeteria - this threatens our complete functioning.
The second challenge is the security wall, which will be built very close to the school. The school will then be in the security zone which is established around the wall, which worries us.
The third challenge is that the school's main access road needs rehabilitation - we have been seeking funds for this without success. We have to coordinate with officials, and the Israelis are preventing work on it, though there is now growing flexibility. USAID has talked about supporting rehabilitation of the road, helping to clear the way officially, and then it will be a question of money.
The fourth challenge is meeting the annual operating budget. Our annual operating budget is around $200,000 per year.
What about the cafeteria?
We have had significant problems with our school cafeteria. Construction has ground to a halt and it is threatened with demolition. Building started in 1998 and stopped in the same year. This happened because of finances and also the planned building of the Israeli security wall near the school, which will bring about the demolition of the cafeteria because it is too close to where the wall is planned to be. If we didn't have the threat of demolition we could raise more money and have it open before long.
During the violence of the intifada we had to switch priorities from expanding the school to meeting the basic running costs and salaries for teachers and staff. The threat of demolition has been renewed recently, and we have made appeals, and people have campaigned internationally to help us too, not least through the US Embassy, and we have done what we can to stop the demolition. The matter is not yet resolved. But the wall is still going to be built. This will affect us greatly, walling off one side of the school and putting us right on the edge of Bethlehem's Palestinian jurisdiction.
How far do you believe you have achieved Hussein Issa's original aims?
After twenty years we do not feel we have achieved our full aims and potential, but we have made good progress.
And what keeps you going, inside yourself?
What helps me keep going? It's the encouraging response from our students. They are doing so well, not only in preparing themselves for further education or for their future lives, but also in their development as people. They are learning ways in which they can make a positive contribution to the world. This is so important.
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HOPE FLOWERS SCHOOLEDUCATION FOR PEACE & DEMOCRACY PO Box 732, Bethlehem, Palestine Tel: +972 2 274 0693 / 4975 Fax: +972 2 274 747084 E-mail:
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