By Elizabeth Seward

Two students from Casablanca explain the similarities and differences they noticed between teenage life in Morocco and the United States. 

Students and faculty participating in IELC. Photo credit: Collegiate School.

In early October, I had the opportunity to participate in Collegiate’s International Emerging Leaders Conference (IELC) with seven other Seniors under the guidance and leadership of Collegiate’s Director of JK-12 Capstones Rhiannon Boyd. This conference welcomed 32 international students from eight different countries: China, Ghana, Italy, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Spain, and South Africa. 

During our week together, we were split into design groups to solve global environmental issues, such as bee depopulation in Mexico and flooding in Khazakstan. We worked with these challenging issues all week and created ideas for human-based solutions. On the evening of Thursday, Oct. 10, we shared our Design Pitches with members of the Collegiate community. Although our home countries were scattered across the globe, we found ourselves finding common ground on the ups and downs of teenage life. 

Mouwafaq and other students participating in the Global Issues Forum at IELC. Photo credit: Collegiate School.

The Collegiate ambassadors were each assigned a country’s delegation to help pick up from Dulles Airport in Northern Virginia on the first day of the conference. On Saturday, Oct. 5, I met six jet-lagged new friends from Morocco: two teachers and four students from George Washington Academy, an international English-language school in Casablanca. Despite their exhaustion and the fact that English was their second, or third, language, they were quick to introduce themselves and start explaining everything they were excited to do in the States. I talked with the students throughout the bus ride back to the hotel, and they even stayed awake to play an intense game of Jenga. 

Over the course of the week, I became very close with all of the international students, especially the Moroccans. After the conference, two of them shared with me some reflections on their experience at IELC, including some key differences between their daily lives in Morocco and their lives during the week of IELC.

Essaoudi participating in a deep listening exercise at IELC. Photo credit: Collegiate School.

Zineb Essaoudi and Muhammad Mouwafaq are both seniors at George Washington Academy. Although on different continents, Collegiate and the George Washington Academy are surprisingly similar. They both offer education to students JK-12, they both have similar core values, and they both prioritize a well-rounded educational experience for their students. GWA’s curriculum is based on American methods of education. Multilingualism is a priority for GWA; they teach French, English, and Arabic in their classrooms. Essaoudi and Mousafa’s school day is structured similarly to Collegiate’s but has a different flow of classes. 

“I go to school from 8:00 to 3:30 and have four classes a day that rotate daily,” Mouwafaq explained, adding that the varying schedule keeps each day engaging. GWA is one of the only high schools in Morocco to offer the International Baccalaureate (IB) program, in which Essaudi and Moufasa are both involved. Their schedule includes breaks for study periods, homeroom, and Theory of Knowledge (TOK), a required part of the IB program where, as Essaoudi shared, “students discuss various ethical and philosophical topics,” enriching their learning experience with real-life discussions.

Essaoudi and Mouwafaq posing in front of their school’s athletic awards. Photo credit: Omar Elfat.

Upon arriving at Collegiate in October, both Essaoudi and Mouwafaq were struck by the scale of the campus. “The campus size—wow. Collegiate was a lot bigger than my school,” Mouwafaq observed. Essaoudi noted, “Collegiate has more buildings spread across a larger campus.” As both Mousafa and Essaoudi are varsity athletes, they were very impressed by Collegiate’s athletic department. Essaoudi said, “I was really shocked to see that they had a separate campus for athletics. At GWA, we have two fields—one is an artificial turf that’s slightly smaller, and the other is a large grass field surrounded by a track.” 

Collegiate’s technology also stood out to them; while Collegiate students enter buildings using fingerprints, GWA relies on a more traditional security team. Despite these differences, they felt warmly welcomed by students and teachers alike. Their shared work on IELC’s Design Challenges made them feel part of a close community, where Essaoudi noted, “We found ourselves bonding over similar teenage struggles and comforts,” and building friendships, despite coming from vastly different parts of the world.

Experiencing daily life in America brought new perspectives and some unexpected surprises for Essaoudi and Mouwafaq. They were amazed that teenagers in the United States were able to drive. Mouwafaq noticed that American teens had more independence with driving. “Back home, none of my friends can drive. It was weird to see the American students driving their own cars,” he noted, admiring the extra freedom this provided. He was also surprised by American dining routines, finding it unusual to see dinner served so early. “I felt like people would eat dinner so early… In Morocco, [we eat] at like nine or ten o’clock, but in the States, it’s more like five or six, which I found crazy,” he added. Mousafa made it a priority to taste and thoughtfully review as many American treats as possible. Among these foods, his favorites were Sweet Frog, Chick-fil-A, and Bottoms Up Pizza. He was equally surprised by each establishment’s large serving sizes. 

Essaoudi and Mouwafaq visit a 4th Grade classroom to teach how to use tel3ah when they speak. Photo credit: Collegiate School.

Essaoudi and Moufasa speak three languages fluently: Arabic, English, and French. In Morocco, they regularly move between these languages in their conversations with friends. Using the traditional Arabic conversational style known as tel3ah, Mouwafaq and Essaoudi often use gestures and hand motions in addition to their language when communicating. Essaoudi remarked, “Honestly, the main difference for me was just not being able to switch between languages as I do in Morocco.” At home, she said, “I regularly mix English, French, and Arabic, so it felt strange to only speak English in the U.S.” For Mouwafaq, too, the blend of languages comes naturally. “I study with English, but with my friends, I speak a mix of all three. There’s not really a specific language that I have to follow.” This constant flow between English, French, and Darija (Moroccan Arabic) is their natural way of communicating. While listening to a conversation between the two of them, it was beautiful to hear them seamlessly drift from language to language and topic to topic. 

I am grateful to have had the opportunity to participate in IELC and meet amazing people like Essaoudi and Mouwafaq. I hope that one day I can travel to Morocco and note the differences in daily life for myself. Until then, I’ll have to take Mouwafaq’s word for it: “Between America and Morocco, I honestly don’t see much of a difference. Except the driving, I wish I could drive.”