Mr. Ansel’s English Academy
How an English Teacher in a small school in the northern tip of Qatar managed to create something extraordinary…
My editor eyed me inquisitively, his eyes wondering why I was requesting a one week trip to a tiny Gulf country in order to write an article about a high school teacher. “I don’t get it,” he said, dropping the itinerary and modest expense report onto his desk. “What’s the angle?”
I grinned as I laid out five A4 page prints out. “What’s the common link between them?”
They were news articles about five people from seemingly different backgrounds. Jim Mesner, the 30 year old who won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Best First Novel. Sheetal Agarwal, a 27 year old Indian whose debut novel released last year to wide critical acclaim and impressive commercial success. Ahmed Najjat, a journalist who’d become BBC Arabic’s youngest Chief Editor at the age of 33. Yassir Siddique, the Pakistani Indie screenwriter turned co-producer of the Netflix show ‘Scattered Pulse’. And finally, Francis Ragudo, whose short story collection currently occupied a prized position on the shelf behind my editor’s chair.
“I don’t know. They’re all good writers?”
“Close,” I said, feeling excited about the interview I was sure I’d be having very soon.
“They all had the same high school English teacher. A Mr. Farhad Ansel.”
*
To interview the subject of Smashed Glass Magazine’s next cover story, I traveled to a gated community located in the northern part of Qatar. The tiny Gulf state had catapulted to international fame (and some would argue, infamy) because they were scheduled to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup. But within minutes of arriving at my destination, it was clear that this part of the world had been developing long before any bid for a sporting event had even been tabled.
Alcove Community was a gated residential community, though after traversing from one end to the other at the mandated 25 KM per Hour speed limit, I had to agree with the residents who referred to it as a township. There are approximately 15,000 residents living in exquisitely landscaped and meticulously planned apartment compounds and villas.
Mr. Farhad Ansel was genuinely bemused to receive my email, and though he’s graciously agreed to talk to me, the 57 year old, grey haired, bespectacled, short and wiry man who greets me at the entrance to the high school is smiling and shaking his head.
“I can’t imagine why any reporter would even bother to talk to me!” He says, and it would take me a while to realize that his modesty, while definitely not false, coexists alongside a pride that’s been gently nurtured for over two decades.
The school itself is unique for a number of reasons. Started in early 2002, the square shaped, three story high building provides what’s referred to as an integrated curriculum. It’s easy to understand how that came about once the demographic of the township is understood. All the residents are employees of QNGC (Qatar Natural Gas Corporation), perhaps the richest and most productive Gas Corporation in the world. The engineers, administrators and accountants required to operate such an enterprise have been recruited from all over the world. “We have over 45 nationalities living here,” said Mr. N. G. Sharma, the principal of Alcove International School (AIS), as we walked through one of the squeaky clean 500 meters long corridor of the school. “So early on, there was a question of what type of school we’d be, in order to provide a comprehensive education for the children growing up in this community.”
Initially, the plan was to establish an Indian school that would follow the CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) syllabus that’s familiar to the sizable Indian expatriate community, as well as another school that adhered to the British Curriculum (IGCSE Programme). Which is where the subject of this story enters the picture.
“I’d been working as a teacher in Doha for almost a decade by then,” recollects Mr. Ansel, referring to the capital of Qatar that’s 60 kilometers away. “When my wife got a job at QNGC, we shifted to this community. And when talk began about establishing schools for the residents’ children, I felt I had a valuable suggestion to make.”
And that suggestion, straightforward as many in this plush community may consider today, was extremely unorthodox all through 2001. Most parents had concerns about a so called ‘integrated’ school. “I wouldn’t say it was prejudiced, actually,” the English teacher explains, “but yes, a lot of the Indian parents couldn’t see how their children would fare well with peers from other nationalities and cultures. And the feeling was mutual, I believe. Some parents worried if the school would be academic enough, others were concerned if extracurricular activities would be overshadowed. Somehow though, the management decided to try it out. It was a bold experiment, that’s for sure.”
At first, the students followed separate curriculum, with only few classes in common. Physical Education, Art and Music, to be exact. And the results were not encouraging, to say the least.
N.G. Sharma jokingly claims his hair turned white prematurely primarily due to events that transpired in the school’s first academic year. “Almost every other day, there was a small crisis we had to deal with,” he muses, the nearly two decade gap and eventual success of the school severely blunting his misery.
The ‘integrated’ classes had Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Egyptian, Palestinian, Syrian, Qatari, Sudani, Moroccan, Filipino, Indonesian, Malaysian, British and American students huddling in cliques according to ethnicity and language. At times fights broke out; often the timid children were taunted by the more domineering ones. The teachers, themselves from diverse backgrounds, inadvertently developed blind spots, which only served to deepen divisions. By the end of the 2002–2003 academic year, parents, teachers and the management were all ready to pull the plug on this seemingly failed experiment.
And that’s when Mr. Ansel’s English Academy was born.
*
As I scanned the faces of the 24 students in Mr. Ansel’s classroom, each sitting behind a square blue desk, backs upright and faces attentive, I couldn’t help but think of a cliché. It was like looking at a model United Nations meeting. The point was inadvertently emphasized when Farhad asked them to introduce themselves, probably so as to break the awkward silence I was too stunned to notice.
They were all 17 years old, in the last year of high school, and it showed in the way they confidently stood up and politely flashed a smile as they told me who they were and where they were from. Only later did I realize they hadn’t explicitly been asked to. It made me wonder if they were aware how intrigued strangers were by their diversity.
There were 8 nationalities in that class, and though I would have loved to ask them if they were actually friends instead of just classmates, it became clear that Mr. Ansel intended to continue with his class. “You can sit in, of course,” he said, pointing to a large purple cushioned chair at the back of the class that seemed to have been brought in specifically for me.
Farhad Ansel went over to his beige desk in the front corner of the room, and tapped a key on his laptop, illuminating the projector screen next to him.
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley: Discussion was displayed on the screen, over the front cover of the book. Before I could consider the book choice, the discussion began.
“I loved the world building. Especially how it gets right into it, you know?” said Saikumar Kalyan, a bushy haired, bespectacled kid from India. “I mean, the first ten pages just drops us into this utopian world-”
“Dystopian!” cried Amina Zakiya, an oval faced Malaysian girl wearing a white scarf.
“We know why Sai thinks it’s a utopia!” Mubashir Mohamed from Sudan chuckled, eliciting laughter from his mates as he winked at Saikumar.
“It was an honest mistake!” is the last comment in before the genial English teacher steers the conversation back to world building. Over the next forty minutes the whole class dissects the novel. Not in the intricate, literary and sometimes pretentious seeming way that adult critics do. Instead, there’s a slant to it all, a kind of honesty that’s both refreshing and illuminating because of the ideas that are generated. Julie Serin from Philippines believes Brave New World is an easier read than 1984, which was too dreary and stifling.
“Maybe that was intentional?” Farhad Ansel comments, allowing his words to sink in and germinate undisturbed for a while as he signaled for the next student’s opinion.
Most loved the philosophy that was expounded in the book, though some did wonder if the last ten pages were blatant exposition. “Honestly, isn’t it always going to be exposition, sir?” Daniel Fernandes asks, shrugging as though he’d resigned to that fact.
“We’ll talk about that when we cover Dialogue Writing on Monday,” the teacher replies, perfectly timing his words so as to end just before the bell rings. “Just a reminder. We still haven’t decided on the next book. You guys need to figure out by tomorrow, else we might not be able to order copies in time, alright?”
They nod and vocally agree, but only stir when Farhad Ansel gets up from the edge of the desk and signals dismissal with a nod.
Since he has over an hour before the next class begins, the soft spoken English teacher takes me to the sprawling staff lounge, where after brief exchanges with some of the other faculty, we sit down for a discussion alongside two steaming mugs of coffee.
“So how would you describe Mr. Ansel’s English Academy?”
And as expected, Farhad Ansel laughs. For the name, universally known as it is among the students, faculty and parents in the AIS community, is still just a nickname that took a life of its own.
“Well, technically this all started in 2002, when I proposed a joint English curriculum for the Academic year.”
It was a bold initiative, one that even the ever optimistic English teacher wasn’t sure would be green lit. The school was already wary of the incidents that’d occurred during integrated classes. The last thing anyone expected was for the students to spend more time together.
But Farhad was extremely persuasive, and presented it as a golden opportunity for the students to get a higher standard of education. “Despite how progressive and middle class this township is,” he remarked, chuckling as he took a sip, “many Asian and Arab parents quietly felt their children would benefit if they learnt with native English speaking students. That somehow it’d make them all better.”
No matter the validity of the thinking, Farhad Ansel was granted permission to design a curriculum for all 1,200 of the students at AIS. “It was a daunting task, definitely, but then again, it was something I was deeply committed to.”
What he came up with was a hybrid lesson plan that focused extensively on cultivating a reading habit among the students. In fact, looking back, Farhad understands how the conditions were just perfect for him to launch what in truth was a highly unorthodox idea.
“It’s like the school was in an incubator, cut off from the rest of the world. Not just in a geographical sense, although that too does factor in. But being in this township, in the northern tip of the desert peninsula, meant most of the parents and faculty did not interact with their counterparts from other schooling systems. The nearest school was about an hour away! Plus the parents trusted the management to know what needed to be done, and the management trusted me! Which, honestly speaking, wouldn’t be happening today.”
Taking cues from both IGCSE and CBSE syllabus, not to mention from IB (International Baccalaureate) as well, Farhad Ansel, who was named the head of the English Department that year, instructed all the teachers regarding his primary objective. Focus on reading first, and writing second.
Mrs. Padmini Navya, who in 2002 had about a decade’s experience as an English teacher in Hyderabad, India, admits she was pretty taken aback by the approach. “Yes, I was a little….you could say, wary?” She says, exchanging a laugh with Farhad who simply shrugged his shoulders in agreement.
“I mean, one of the first things Farhad asked me to do for my 5th grade class was…you remember the first ‘Book Route’?”
All five of the English teachers were asked to create personalized ‘Book Routes’ for each of the students in their class. “So basically, we had to get to know each student over the course of the first three weeks, and work towards figuring out what kind of books they liked,” explains Padmini. “And yeah, now I know how brilliant the whole concept is, but back then I was almost ready to rebel. I mean, I’d just spent a decade teaching the same fill in the blanks and match the following exercises that were available behind every lesson in the textbook. And now I’d flown all the way to the Gulf only to stare at a ledger that listed the names of 35 students plus the books they’d liked? It felt weird. Not to mention I had no idea of how to get them to read.”
“You’d only have to get them the books for their age group, right?” I ask, unable to contain my bafflement. “Honestly, it — it doesn’t seem that hard…”
Neither of them is offended by my frankness, and I suspect it’s because over the past seventeen years they’ve encountered the same sort of belittlement. They exchange a knowing glance, as though to decide who should set me straight.
“That’s one of the biggest misconceptions we have about reading as a society,” Padmini says, “everyone thinks inculcating a reading habit means to just pick up a book and read it. If you don’t like it, pick up another book. But that’s a gross oversimplification.”
“We’re not talking about the ones for whom it comes easy, by the way,” Farhad adds as he refills our cups. “There are some people who’d read through a telephone book if they encountered it. But as teachers, we were trying to ensure that every student, no matter their nature or temperament or academic ability, was hooked onto the habit of reading.”
Therefore the Book Routes could not be prepared simply by asking every 5th grader to read The Velveteen Rabbit or Alice in Wonderland. “Once I began to see the beauty of the endeavor,” Padmini continues, “I realized I’d have to work a little harder to find the best so called Route for each student.”
Their experience over the years has made them both experts about human nature when it comes to reading. “Some students are simply hooked by comics. I know there are many out there who frown and say reading a comic doesn’t count as reading –”
“Wait till you see what’s in our library,” Farhad remarks with a chuckle.
“Exactly. But there are different things that appeal to different students. Some have specific quotas that need to be filled when it comes to their imagination. Like certain girls, regrettably or not, love to read about a princess, and certain boys love to read about spacecrafts. Things like that. So when we take classes each day, it’s basically like detective work.”
They tell me about the various ways they unearthed dormant imaginations and fired up forgotten dreams, and over the course of the hour, a couple more teachers from the English Department pass by and stop to share their memories. Soon I’m feverishly jotting down the points least I forget a single one among them. About how they would narrate small stories made up of specific characters and then note those whose eyes would light up. Or how they’d decorate the room with huge posters of vivid castles, fantastical creatures and dynamic heroes, and then watch surreptitiously as children gathered to speculate their meaning before or after class.
“The goal was always simple. Try to understand what they liked, or would probably like, and test the hypothesis by giving them suitable books, until you refine the whole process and complete the Book Route.”
“Oh, and back in 2003,” Farhad reminds me quickly, “we only had till Grade 8 in this school. So that helped a lot…”
Farhad Ansel later showed me the shelf in his office that contained every Book Route ever completed in the school until then. His face beamed with pride, making him look thirty years younger, as I stared at the thick blue ledgers stacked against the wall, towering from the floor, dwarfing my height.
“I know you’re probably wondering why I didn’t just feed the data into a computer,” he conceded even though the thought hadn’t crossed my mind yet. “Honestly, it just feels more satisfying when I can leaf through a ledger to see how a student’s reading habit’s been shaped. We soon got them to write the entries themselves, you know? And flipping through the pages, from an 8 year old’s scrawl to an 18 year old’s confident etching….that’s — that’s something else.”
And as it turned out, the ledgers were indeed being digitized after all. One of the first students to graduate from AIS, Ajmal Ashgar, is currently working on an app that uses machine learning to understand reading patterns and provide accurate suggestions.
“The project’s still in the early stages,” says the young man shyly as he adjusts his gold framed spectacles and ruffles an unruly mop of curly hair. “But the data is just amazing. We have book reading patterns of over 5000 students over the past 15 years. That information is frankly a gold mine!”
And while five interns systematically feed entries from the ledgers into their laptops, Farhad picks out one of the most worn looking ones from the completed pile, and flips to a specific page.
“So this is what I’d say is the circle of life,” he mutters, and I should have understood the emotion bubbling beneath the surface of his voice. “Ajmal wasn’t really interested in books, you know? He read mostly comics and car magazines, right Ajmal?”
The former student grins, nods and shrugs his shoulders.
“But you see, right here. This is why I love these ledgers and these Book Routes so much. April 2006, check out the book Ajmal read…”
The scrawled, barely legible blue ink is still clear enough. Isaac Asimov’s Foundation. And then I follow the teacher’s aging finger as it runs through the entries in the subsequent month. The entire Foundation series. And then Arthur Clarke’s 2001 A Space Odyssey.
Farhad Ansel shuts the ledger suddenly and asks Ajmal when he joined for the coding class. Ajmal Ashgar frowns as he tries to remember. “Oh, that 4 week winter camp for coding? That was…when I was in 9th…yeah, 9th.”
The English teacher doesn’t spell it out for me. He doesn’t even try to insinuate anything through his expression. Instead he simply nods, smiles and remarks, “That would be December 2006, right?”
And over the next week or so, this would be an idea that repeatedly revealed itself in the workings of the school and the lives of those who were influenced by the institution. But like any sincere disciple of the craft of writing, Farhad Ansel decided to show, rather than tell. Which is we left the Staff lounge and entered what I initially assumed was just another classroom, but turned out to be the longest library I’d ever seen.
“There’s a reason for that,” Farhad said, laughing as he watched my eyes try to take in the sheer length.
We were on the first floor of the square shaped building, and when I’d first entered the school, it seemed apparent that the four 500 meter long corridors connected classrooms on the exterior to a giant auditorium on the inside. At least that was the case on the ground floor. But as it turned out, all six doors in one of the corridors on the first floor opened into the library. (Editor’s Note: Description might not be clear; requires clarification)
“We’ve expanded maybe seven times over the past fifteen years,” the large, supremely friendly Filipino librarian said once we’d been introduced by Farhad. “It’s become almost like a running joke in this community. People say within ten years we’ll be occupying the whole floor!”
As she maneuvers out from behind the desk, I politely inquire when she’s due. Her face lights up even more as she pats her belly. “Next month. This is my last week before maternity leave, in fact. You came just in time!”
We slowly walk past rows of brown shelves that are fitted into the wall on our left, as well as multiple rows of shelves on to the right where many students are huddled in clusters, some scanning, others squatting as they pull out and peruse through books. Between the shelves are neatly arranged rows of blue, rectangular tables, most of them occupied by students silently reading. I count 30 tables. The distance from one end of the library to the other is ridiculously long, which is perhaps why blue doors punctuate the left wall, allowing students and faculty to quickly exit without causing a disturbance. As we make our way from one end to the other, students and some faculty silently stream in and out through the doors. I smile when it hits me the doors have been modified; the handles replaced by horizontal metal bars. A student carrying several books in his hands smoothly leans against the bar and slides out as the door swings open.
The library has been divided according to sections, and even if I wasn’t reading the engraved grey plaques fitted above the shelves and over the walls, the age of the students perusing the shelves would have revealed the classification. The other end of the library is the least orderly, with the walls painted pink and notice boards covered with paintings and crayon colored book reports. A younger librarian smiles at us as she gently shepherds the 6 year olds around her.
“This…this must have cost a lot!” I finally whisper when Farhad looks at me for a verdict. He nods and steps closer. “We have the management to thank for that. QNGC has been extremely generous. Over the years the funding has only increased. But then again, it’s all a matter of priority, if you think about it. There are corporations I know of that’d spend 200,000 dollars for a lavish Eid or Christmas party for their employees where half the food is left untouched and most of the other half is left on the table,” he says, smiling sadly as he thinks about all the mismanagement he’s seen in his life. “Compared to that,” he concludes, pointing towards the Crime shelf that was stacked with every Agatha Christie, Lee Child and Georges Simenon ever published, “This is a much better investment, wouldn’t you say?”
Before I could reply, a young man with a wheatish complexion and carefree stubble approached us, his eyes wide behind thick, large, round black spectacles.
“Mohit!” Farhad exclaimed, almost disturbing the silent ambience of the library as he excitedly shook hands with the grinning fellow. “This is Mohit Vorah,” he said, “one of the best students AIS ever had!”
“Mr. Ansel loves to flatter me,” said Mohit as we shook hands. A minute later, once he’d been quickly briefed about the reason I was exploring the library, a nostalgic smile settled on the former student’s face.
“I hope you get to truly understand this school,” he told me once Farhad excused himself to help out a few students with recommendations. We stepped out of the library and stood in front of a wall decorated with rows of framed pictures. “I know the focus of your story is Mr. Ansel’s English Academy, and trust me, if I hadn’t opted for the Advanced Chemistry classes, I’d have loved to get in, but this is more than just about writing, you know?”
I nodded my head, but in a manner that encouraged him to enlighten me further.
“Like, the opportunities we got here were….unbelievable. Even now, when I tell my coworkers or college friends about this school, most wonder why I’m making such a big deal about reading and books and all that stuff. I mean, after all, I’m an Environmental scientist, so none of this should technically fascinate me, right? At least, that’s the mentality a lot of people have.”
“So what do you tell them?” I asked, as we casually began drifting through the corridor.
“Actually, for a while I didn’t know how to explain….all this. But then I read this anecdote, and now that’s what I tell them all, so that they can understand.”
Over the course of two laps through the corridor, Mohit Vorah told me how he’d explained the importance of books and reading in his life. It was a story about Neil Gaiman that he’d read in The Guardian (his favorite newspaper). Later that day I read the article in question and the relevant excerpt is quoted below:
“I was in China in 2007, at the first party-approved science fiction and fantasy convention in Chinese history. And at one point I took a top official aside and asked him Why? SF had been disapproved of for a long time. What had changed?
It’s simple, he told me. The Chinese were brilliant at making things if other people brought them the plans. But they did not innovate and they did not invent. They did not imagine. So they sent a delegation to the US, to Apple, to Microsoft, to Google, and they asked the people there who were inventing the future about themselves. And they found that all of them had read science fiction when they were boys or girls.”
“Oh, and that reminds me,” Mohit cries excitedly, coming to a halt in front of a framed photograph. “Do you want to see my favorite school moment?” He points and it takes me half a minute to understand what I’m looking at. Standing in front of a stage, with thick maroon curtains as a backdrop, were several officials in suits. In the forefront was a short kid dressed in standard AIS uniform plus a suit and tie, his eyes wide with joy as he looked up at the older, bearded and bespectacled man who was holding up the commemorative plaque he’d just been handed.
“Yup,” Mohit nods wistfully as I step closer to read what’s written on the plaque. “It was over third Annual Writing Competition. That’s how students are selected for Mr. Ansel’s English Academy….But yeah, that year we were asked who we wanted as our chief guest. Honestly, even now I can’t believe we got him!”
Neither can I, though I’m staring at the proof. For the 2006 AIS Annual Writing Competition, the chief guest was Sir Terry Pratchett.
“He was — is my favorite author. I mean, I was the first one to finish all his books in the library,” says Mohit, “and then I got a lot of my friends to read and they were all hooked. So then when we were approached Mr. Sharma about requesting him and….we were kids, you know? It felt cool, but only now do we know how big a deal it actually was. But yeah, that’s the kind of thing you can do if you have money, connections and a grand ambition, I guess.”
Mohit gets ready to leave the school, but as we reach the entrance he remembers an incident that happened that year. “So there was an issue of the budget. It was our third Annual Writing Competition, right, but some in the management were concerned it was all getting too expensive, what with getting Terry Pratchett and the catering and the gift prizes….anyways, I remember my friend’s dad, who was on the committee, got up and said, ‘Aren’t we planning on gifting every child of every employee with an iPod this year?’”
“Wow, seriously?” I’m compelled to interrupt.
He chuckles and shrugs his head. “Natural Gas is a very profitable business. So anyways, he says, ‘Well, what if we make it one iPod per family instead?’ And that’s how we got the budget approved that year! I bet none of those iPods are around today though. But about 500 students read Terry Pratchett that year, and then recommended to their younger sisters and brothers…thankfully, we made the right call!”
Once Mohit Vorah leaves, I’m left to explore the school premise for a while till Farhad is free again. I realize I’ve not yet learnt how his English Academy operates. How this school was able to produce five excellent writers over the past ten years. How the wealth of a corporation, combined with the geography and demographics of a location can be influenced by a series of decisions to produce something extraordinary.
‘How’s it going?’ My editor texts me.
‘It’s going great,’ I reply. ‘It’s going to be a two parter, though. Hope that’s okay!’
Written for Smashed Glass Magazine, April 2019. Smashed Glass Magazine is owned by TOFU(The Onion For Utopia) Publication.
