Niagara Falls

Last summer I traveled to Niagara Falls. It is located about 150 km from Toronto and is on the border between Canada and the United States of America. There are a total of 3 waterfalls that drain from Lake Erie into Lake Ontario. The falls area total height of 50 meters. I went in the summer time and the falls were very beautiful. You could hear the water crashing and feel the mist that came off from the falls.


I went on a boat ride called Maid of the Mist where a ferry takes you in the middle of the river and very close to the falls. They gave us ponchos and as we were getting closer to the falls I could feel the mist from the falls which actually felt like we were in the middle of a rainstorm. I could barely see anything because of the rain, but I was able to get a number of good pictures. I also saw a nice rainbow.


The view from the Canadian side of Niagara Falls is much nicer than the American side. Looking across the border, there were not that many tourists, and all the nice hotels and tourist attractions are on the Canadian side. In the evening there were lights that were shining onto the falls and made them look very pretty.

An Exemplary Teacher

I have a friend named Ann. Ann's career takes her all around the world and her children usually attend American schools. She told me of one particular teacher who really stood out for her attentiveness and sensibility when dealing with Ann's son, Thomas.

Thomas was a very active young boy who could not sit still for very long. He was easily distracted and although very bright, he found many of the lessons in school quite boring. He would normally listen for ten or fifteen minutes, and then his mind would wander to other places. Because he had many different areas of interest including astronomy, sports, cars, art and geography, his mind would take him on long journeys and he would lose attention. Often, he would draw (beautifully) in class and his mind was so occupied with the drawing that he wouldn't even hear the teacher call him. 

When Thomas was in the third grade, his family lived in Singapore. His main (homeroom) teacher was an elderly Singaporean teacher by the name of Mrs. Wong. Mrs. Wong immediately recognized Thomas's difficulties and her long years of experience told her what to do. Whenever she saw that Thomas was fidgeting in his seat and moving too much, instead of admonishing him or even commenting on it, she found tasks for him to do - tasks that would take him out of the classroom, before his movements would disrupt the rest of the class.

Sometimes, Mrs. Wong would ask Thomas to take a note to the Principal's office. The note, in a closed envelope, would simply ask the Principal's secretary to send Thomas to the storage department and bring some teaching materials back to class. Mrs. Wong would tell Thomas that this task is important - and urgent. She asked him to walk very quickly. By the time Thomas would return to class, after having missed five to ten minutes, he would be tired from his brisk walk and would sit quietly for the rest of the lesson. By receiving these tasks, Mrs. Wong achieved four objectives: she took care of the issue without embarrassing Thomas or admonishing him; she got him to spend a lot of pent-up energy which allowed him to sit calmly through the rest of the lesson; she empowered him and strengthened his confidence by giving him tasks and responsibilities; and she dealt with what might have become a disruptive element for the rest of her class.

There is much that we can learn from Mrs. Wong about how to deal with the challenges posed by over-active students in the class, with wisdom, experience and sensibility.

Unpleasant Experience In The Classroom

 

Hi everybody,

I would like to share with you an unpleasant experience I had during the "teaching practice week".  The beginning of the lesson was stressful because the students didn’t arrive and I was being observed by a teacher from the college.  Earlier, during the break I'd seen their replacement English teacher (their regular teacher was in the U.S) and I'd reminded her to send me the students. But in spite of this the students didn’t turn up. Then, a few arrived. I asked one of them to go downstairs to her class and call the others, but she herself didn’t come back. Finally, I was forced to go down myself 15 minutes after the lesson should have started. I found the students with the teacher, who was giving them back their test, and discussing it with them. She hadn’t even told me what she was going to do it! It all made me feel tense and it was very tiring having to run up and down after the students. In addition, the students didn’t have time to present their work. I saw that teacher after the lesson and I told her that it had been difficult for me running after the students and she just laughed. In general, I feel that experienced teachers sometimes need to be more sensitive to the difficulties faced by "students teachers", especially when they are being observed. After all, they were students themselves, once.

Have a good week,

Natalie

 

 

 

Jerusalem: Three religions - one god

The three religions in Israel share not only a common theistic faith but also a common biblical heritage. Moses, is for example mentioned no less than 79 times in the New Testament and 162 times in the Koran, Jesus have a whole chapter in the Quran. Musa We prefer you on the other, Musa, peace be upon him and prayers (from the Quran). From the above it seems that everything is fine and in perfect condition but, religious fanaticism has a long history but, blessed be the peacemakers, with long periods of reprieve. Its present phase can be traced to its rebirth or, more accurately, to its assisted birth during the period of Cold War as a countervailing ideology against the “godless” creed of communism. The religious forces in the Judeo-Christian and Muslim world were mobilized to face a common enemy together. That collective religious fanaticism. The Alliance of Abrahamic religions, despite many tensions, did work as a powerful tool against the common enemy, Having no common enemy in sight the forces of fanaticism turned against each other. Even so the Abrahamic religions have a long history of clash and conflict that makes them easy prey for manipulation by religious fanatics and political opportunists. In this long history of conflict the past two decades happen to be the worst since the 13th century. Not hard to mark those responsible for this extreme like the TV channels, magazines, newspapers, publishing houses – and authors, preachers and televangelists, whose business it is to sell and spread religious hatred. Once injected it spreads like an insidious disease, and is all the more dangerous for that very reason. For my opinion is that The policy makers in the Judeo-Christian and Muslim societies have yet to fully grasp the truth that the religious extremists in the two camps pose a threat not so much to each other as to their own societies. And not only to the interfaith harmony but also to the rational and humanist worldview within every society. The residents from the three religions stands helplessly by for it has not yet realized that the clash is not so much between good and evil as between two irrational forces, each against the other and both against Reason. My vision is to see Jerusalem as a place that belongs to all nations and religions, a place that is not controlled by any cause not religious, not political, to be conducted by a committee consisting of three sectors, being a place of prayer, belief, pilgrimage, and only for this purpose.

Difficulteis that Arab students face with learning english

Difficulties that Arab students face with learning the English Learning the English language is an essential tool use by nearly Nations all on the planet to gain access to the latest scientific that is important for research developing countries, as well as much of useful human knowledge. It is also a way to communicate economically, politically and socially and in all areas with all peoples of the world. Arab students face serious difficulties in English. First of these challenges comes from the fact that both languages belong to different families. Arab is considered a Semitic language while English is of an Indian – European origin. It follows that many terms in the Arabic script are different from that of the Latin , Arab is write from right to left while the English written from left to right. We find that some of the letters do not exist in Arabic, such as V, P and others. The Arab who wants to learn English faces hardship in the mastery of uttering certain characters as pronounced differently by the characters that followed, such as the letter C which is pronounces (س) when followed by the following characters (E,I,or Y) and uttered (ك) before most of the letters of the alphabet English except for (h) where it sounds like (TSH). Most startling for Arab students who are used to pronouncing every letters is to find that some English words contain letters that are not pronounced at all like the letter k in the word (know) and (P) in a word (Psychology). Here English teachers should give their students a historical overview of the evolution of the English language and how some of the characters remained written even if not pronounced, when writing the Bible in Britain more than 500 years ago. The wording of the verb and the noun and tense in English are different from those used by the Arab students in their native language. Arab students often base the grammar in English on the rules particular to their native language, and build their words and sentences accordantly this causes great difficulty to learn the target language. English does not distinguish between male and female in most tenses, such as (you) and (they). English phrases first used the adjective unlike Arabic, for example the translation of (great man) is (man is great) in Arabic. The most important proposals to overcome the difficulties faced by the student Arab students of the English language are: 1 . Start teaching English to students at an early age 6 years or before, and it is crucial to use a curriculum that contains interesting and enjoyable activities. 2 . Urge the students to speak only English and don't allow the use of any other language in the classroom. 3 . Use texts from poetry and short stories in simple English to enrich the vocabulary of Arab students to help them communicate in English. 4 . Use the Internet and private video chat windows to develop the skills of listening and speaking English with native speakers. 5 . Encourage students to express their feelings and their ambitions and aspirations in English, making them able to clarify their positions, their opinions and beliefs. In conclusion, I say that teaching English to our children does not and will not affect the learning of the Arabic language but it will help in the advancement and progress of our nation scientifically, politically and culturally. This was done by Europeans 600 years ago when they learned Arabic in order to transfer the products of Arab-Islamic and the Middle-East to western culture civilization in Andalusia.

New Teacher in the Field

I want to share with you my first experience as a teacher in a classroom. 

As part of my technology class, I was asked to give a model lesson to twelfth graders. Needless to say, I was quite nervous since I have no previous experience and do not participate in immuney hora'a. The lesson took place at a school where the population is heterogeneous and some of the students present learning challenges. It was not meant to be an easy task. I had some concerns. First of all, this is a twelfth grade class and approaching them with no prior experience seemed to me like a complicated task. Secondly, I had heard that the learning environment was complex. thirdly, I had had no prior experience in standing before a classroom and here i was, asked to dive into the deep end of the pool. Despite all my concerns, the experience was strong and meaningful. I met some wonderful students who were curious and collaborative and even made me think about changing my final choice of school and age group that I would teach in the future. It made me rethink the problematics of pre-defining students. I believe that students evolve and develop depending on the teacher who stands before them. A teacher with no pre-concieved notions about his students, who creates a dialogue that respects and empowers the students will discover that his students are collaborative and motivated. Of course, this is a somewhat simplistic assessment based on a single lesson, but it certainly gave me motivation moving forward. 

A struggling Spanish Learner in Guatemala

            In  my last post I described my difficulties acquiring Spanish as a student at university. I would like to dedicate this post to my experience as a Spanish student in a Spanish school in Guatemala, where I started speaking the language for the first time.

I have always been fascinated with Central America and its culture. After graduating from university, I went backpacking on my own in Central America, Guatemala being my first destination.  A couple of days  after I had arrived in Guatemala, I realized that I had a problem, because I wasn't able to communicate with the locals in Spanish. Feeling extremely lost, I could neither utter a complete sentence in Spanish nor ask a simple question. Having realized that I must acquire basic Spanish in order to continue my trip, I decided to change my plans and go to study Spanish for several weeks.

 Guatemala is the cheapest country in the world to study Spanish and Quetzaltenango, or Xela as the locals call her, is the cheapest place in the country. With more than 40 Spanish schools, this city, which is not populated with gringos, expats and backpackers as Antigua, another popular destination to study Spanish, offers better opportunities to the Spanish learners to practice Spanish with the locals rather than speak English with travelers. As a result, people from all over the world come to Xela to learn Spanish and, or volunteer in different social projects.

After I arrived in Xela, I enrolled at a Spanish school.  Most schools have the same daily schedule: in the morning, a student can choose to learn four or five hours with a private Spanish teacher; in the afternoon, most schools offer different activities such as cooking classes, salsa classes, movies and different trips in the area, such as a trip to hot springs in Xela, Fuentas Georginas, which was definitely one of my favorites activities in Xela. In addition, many schools offer a homestay with a Guatemalan family in order to encourage complete immersion in the language, as the families do not speak English and the student must communicate in Spanish.  

My Spanish teacher, Norma who is a native Guatemalan, taught me five hours a day for three weeks. Although she had been teaching foreigners for more than 10 years, she could barely speak English. In her lessons, mainly putting emphasis on grammar, she first taught the new material and afterwards I had to do exercises. At first, I was quite skeptical about being able to enrich my vocabulary by studying mostly grammar; instead, I actually expanded my vocabulary through acquiring the words that were covered by the grammar topics. For example, when I learnt the present tense, I also had to learn the meaning of the irregular verbs. At the end of the school day, when I was too tired to study grammar, we used to read children's  stories together, which was a great way of reviewing grammar in a meaningful context. Significantly, Norma was a very strict teacher; not only did I have to take a test at the end of each week, but I also had to write an essay every day. She was so strict that even on the day before my last class; she refused to cut me some slack and made me write my last essay for the following day. L

 What I mostly learnt from this experience is that when you have to communicate with people whose language you don't speak, after a short while, you will start speaking their language. This is exactly what happened to me; once I was surrounded with people who could only speak Spanish, both at school and at the homestay, I had no other choice but to speak Spanish. I did whatever I could to be understood, from using the words I had picked up during my stay to miming.

I like calling this experience "the Spanish Brainwash Effect" because after two week I was able to acquire basic Spanish to chat freely with the locals. Only in Guatemala, after a short amount of time was I able to start speaking Spanish. Without a doubt, even if I studied Spanish for three years in University , I would not be able to achieve that level of proficiency.

If you ever have the time and the money, I recommend that you stay  for a while in a foreign country studying its language. I think that my experience as a language learner helped  me identify with my students' frustrations and difficulties, later on in my career as an English teacher in Israel. In my opinion, every teacher teaching a second language, especially if this teacher is a native speaker of that language, must undergo the process of learning a second language in order to understand his students and become a better teacher.

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