I do not know about you, but I am fascinated by the differences and similarities among people from all over the planet. We all have words for essentially the same emotions, fears, needs and thoughts while things may not be translatable because they may not even exist from one culture to another. Why is it that we all feel the same but we put our feelings into practice in such distinct ways?
In some cultures bigamy is not only culturally accepted but socially necessary because of a huge disparity in the number of women to men. In such a world, do women and men love differently than I do? Simply because there is not a husband for the woman down the way, would I love my husband any less to be willing to share him equally with her? How could I be happy when he spends time with me, knowing that next time he will be with her? And when he is with her, even if she is his wife also and a member of my household, how do I forget my love for him? And he his love for me? I can theoretically understand the necessity of such an arrangement in societies where women always get married, where they all wish to get married. But I wonder if all is still for love or if it is more for convenience and future stability in the society as a whole.
Perhaps my idea of love, true love, is old-fashioned and idealistic. If my husband could not live through my having him one night and my second "husband" the next, because he loves me too much, how would I love him any less and hurt any less while he has a second "wife"? If there is no love, of course, the arrangement is only that, an arrangement. But when love enters into it, all bets are off. I have been told that in such arrangements, a man must be equally fair in all dealings with both wives. If one gets a gift, the other must also. However, often the heart leans more toward one over the other and, in such cases, this must be hidden. Tell me, how can it be hidden? Will not all three people know how much time is being spent with one another? How can a husband love one much more but still divide his time exactly in half? How can this be what I know of as love? Maybe I am mistaken.
Now, I must also admit, not every relationship has lasting and sustainable love. Sometimes people make regrettable choices and might not even care if a husband or wife has another partner. But, in such cases, why continue to divide time equally? Will love not win over all? These ideas pose me so many imponderable questions that it makes my heart hurt. And, while we are on the subject....why do we love one person and not another? Why are some people disgusted to look at a person or race of people who someone else is enchanted by? How do we connect on levels far beyond what the eye can see? Why do I talk to you and not someone else who might be more pleasing to the eye?
I believe in a force which guides these types of interactions. You might call it God, Allah, Yaweh, karma, fate, serendipity. You might not believe it at all. You might think that the randomness of it all is simply that, random. I happen to believe that so many things cannot be explained by randomness. Too many things are, at the very least, serendipitous, and at best, true blessings. Anyone who has met his or her true love in a place or time where maybe neither was ever supposed to have been can join with me in discounting the randomness of our lives. We may not know the plan, we may even buck against it, but there are things that we are meant to do and things and people that we are meant to know. I can certainly attest to that, coming from a monolingual family and having an insane love of and propensity for languages. We have abilities, faculties, that are innate in us, whether we choose to recognize and utilize them or not.
Back to the world of wonder....
If we, as human beings, see things as the most important in our lives, why are those the parts of our existence which are least relatable to others? Why are love, hate, joy, pain and the smile of the person you love the things that are most understood by every human heart?
Sunday, April 24, 2016
Saturday, April 23, 2016
There Are Weeks and Then There Are Weeks....
To say that this past week has been rough would be what we would call an understatement. Returning from Turkey to my rural school district is a bit difficult, but the smiles from students helped with that hurdle. The work, the apathy, the feigned investment in what is going on...it all seems so trivial when the world just got so much smaller last week.
On a good day, in a good week, I find small-mindedness and trivialities challenging. Couple that with jet lag, general disinterest in progress and myriad other organizational issues and the annoyance is multiplied thousand-fold. I have been able to talk with some of my new-found friends and supporters each day, which has been immensely helpful, although also distressing because they all believe that they are aspiring to what we have here in the United States education system, but little do they know....
Upon my return, I sent out an email to key persons in my place of employment asking if anyone had any interest in hearing about the research that I traveled (on my own dime, I might add) half-way around the world to present, and which was generally well-received, as unusual as it was. Of the forty people to whom I sent an email, including the highest individuals in the organization, I received a statement of interest from three. Of those, one is an administrator who previously worked for the state, one is an outside coach who does not work for the district and the third is in a district-level position, but has no direct dealing with me on a professional level. I don't know,,,I feel like I would want to know about any research that had been conducted in my organization, especially if it had seen positive results. I guess I am weird like that. Probably why I bothered to even try new and unconventional methodology in the first darned place.
After all is said and done, I personally approached one administrator and she gave me permission to speak at a staff meeting in May. I have not decided if I will present or not because staff meetings are not really great venues for such discussions at the end of a long day when everyone just would rather be on their way home. Seems counter-intuitive to me, but that was the only option I was given. I think I will ask if I could use some time allotted to professional learning committee time and speak to them in small groups at a better time of day,
I still have a bit of a way left to get work completed for this week, so I will sign off now, but if you are reading this, thank you very much for tuning in, and I hope that you have a lovely week! I hope to see and hear from all of you very soon!
On a good day, in a good week, I find small-mindedness and trivialities challenging. Couple that with jet lag, general disinterest in progress and myriad other organizational issues and the annoyance is multiplied thousand-fold. I have been able to talk with some of my new-found friends and supporters each day, which has been immensely helpful, although also distressing because they all believe that they are aspiring to what we have here in the United States education system, but little do they know....
Upon my return, I sent out an email to key persons in my place of employment asking if anyone had any interest in hearing about the research that I traveled (on my own dime, I might add) half-way around the world to present, and which was generally well-received, as unusual as it was. Of the forty people to whom I sent an email, including the highest individuals in the organization, I received a statement of interest from three. Of those, one is an administrator who previously worked for the state, one is an outside coach who does not work for the district and the third is in a district-level position, but has no direct dealing with me on a professional level. I don't know,,,I feel like I would want to know about any research that had been conducted in my organization, especially if it had seen positive results. I guess I am weird like that. Probably why I bothered to even try new and unconventional methodology in the first darned place.
After all is said and done, I personally approached one administrator and she gave me permission to speak at a staff meeting in May. I have not decided if I will present or not because staff meetings are not really great venues for such discussions at the end of a long day when everyone just would rather be on their way home. Seems counter-intuitive to me, but that was the only option I was given. I think I will ask if I could use some time allotted to professional learning committee time and speak to them in small groups at a better time of day,
I still have a bit of a way left to get work completed for this week, so I will sign off now, but if you are reading this, thank you very much for tuning in, and I hope that you have a lovely week! I hope to see and hear from all of you very soon!
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Keeping the World Small and Our Part in It HUGE
Well, if you have read any of my prior posts, this theme has emerged: I think the world should be a place without divisions. Of course, we create more and more divisions while the problems that we all face as human beings are becoming ones that we can only face and solve together. Whether any of us would like to admit it or not, none of us has all of the answers and we will, whether now or later, need one another in order to address these issues.
We could be talking about climate change, the rise of Daesh, the crises of migration and economic collapse, refugees, wars or changes in political regime. In any and all of these situations, we can make our voices heard. It is not always easy and it is often without recognition or remuneration, but if we want a world in which we can live, with or without our artificial boundaries, we must speak. If we do not raise our voices, we, and our world, may simply cease to exist sooner than any of us can imagine.
I was born into a society that many wish to have been born into, with a skin tone that affords me more opportunities than others with different skin. The fact that I have not always made the best choices and have perhaps failed to recognize and take advantage of these opportunities does not negate their existence. Being born into a skin that some will detest at first sight while others envy or fear is difficult, but not as difficult as it would be if it were another color. My native language is English and, while I speak another language, much of the world struggles to learn and teach my mother tongue while so many of its native speakers make no effort to speak another.
I studied my masters in teaching English as an additional language in order to help people who arrive in the United States with little English. I feel like the imperialists of old (and even the present) when I hear that every country has schools for English and tests for English. I feel sick that a person must speak my language in addition to his or her own (and perhaps many more) in order to be employed in his or her own country. Even though without English I could not be understood by many people, I encourage people to stop this trend in their own countries because, while it helps me to understand them, it minimizes their contributions in the world.
If each of us could look clearly at what society values and throw out what we do not value in it, great strides could be made toward acceptance over tolerance and peace over conflict. Let the parts each of us play be too big to ignore.
We could be talking about climate change, the rise of Daesh, the crises of migration and economic collapse, refugees, wars or changes in political regime. In any and all of these situations, we can make our voices heard. It is not always easy and it is often without recognition or remuneration, but if we want a world in which we can live, with or without our artificial boundaries, we must speak. If we do not raise our voices, we, and our world, may simply cease to exist sooner than any of us can imagine.
I was born into a society that many wish to have been born into, with a skin tone that affords me more opportunities than others with different skin. The fact that I have not always made the best choices and have perhaps failed to recognize and take advantage of these opportunities does not negate their existence. Being born into a skin that some will detest at first sight while others envy or fear is difficult, but not as difficult as it would be if it were another color. My native language is English and, while I speak another language, much of the world struggles to learn and teach my mother tongue while so many of its native speakers make no effort to speak another.
I studied my masters in teaching English as an additional language in order to help people who arrive in the United States with little English. I feel like the imperialists of old (and even the present) when I hear that every country has schools for English and tests for English. I feel sick that a person must speak my language in addition to his or her own (and perhaps many more) in order to be employed in his or her own country. Even though without English I could not be understood by many people, I encourage people to stop this trend in their own countries because, while it helps me to understand them, it minimizes their contributions in the world.
If each of us could look clearly at what society values and throw out what we do not value in it, great strides could be made toward acceptance over tolerance and peace over conflict. Let the parts each of us play be too big to ignore.
Tuesday, April 19, 2016
A Smaller World, All Around
It is often difficult to know how others around the world feel about events which touch them and affect their lives. This past week, I have had the honor and the pleasure to interact with intelligent, educated and very dedicated people who teach English all over the world. Most of them do not have English as their mother tongue, and many followed this line of work when and where it might have even endangered their futures or their very lives. I am so proud to know each of them.
I attended the GLOBELT 2016 Conference in Antalya, Turkey and was privileged to hear some very amazing academic work, but also to converse outside of the presentations with some truly incredible and awe-inspiring people who I know will be lifelong friends and colleagues in this far-too-competitive field. Collegial respect and collaboration is truly what the conference was about and I am constantly reminded that we are not in that business in the U.S. education system for the most part, which is entirely unfortunate.
Of course, at a conference in Turkey, there would be presenters from Turkey, but there were also presenters from Iran, Palestine, Iraq, Kurdistan, Dubai, Libya, the United States, Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Ireland, United Kingdom, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Austria, Taiwan, Latvia, Slovakia, Spain, the Netherlands, Cyprus, Australia, Egypt and Canada. And, although the professional atmosphere was incredible and collaborative, what was so immensely valuable to me was getting to know everyone and hearing their stories and walking in their shoes for just a while. The world was all of a sudden the size of a dining hall or cocktail party and I did not ever want for it to end. People and places and events that, here in America, we only hear about in the news, are things in which these people live, work, breathe and worry. Several of the presenters live and work in Ankara, where there recently was an attack at a bus station which one of the presenters uses every day for her commute. She could have been there. I do not want to use her name without her permission, but she confided in us how attacks change how people go about their lives and make their decisions about the future.
A presenter from Libya and I spoke at length about a longstanding Libyan leader and his grip on not only his country, but on many others, and how he had held many in fear over the years. And we spoke about how her homeland is now a bit chaotic as the leader's followers dispersed and show no connection to the land or her people. Simply knowing this woman put a face on all of the pain of the Libyan people all of these years and has made me feel like my small job in my small town is nothing at all compared to the suffering around the world.
An attendee from the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in Northern Iraq spoke about what it is like in his land now that Daesh has been pushed out, and I spoke with him about how proud the Peshmerga must be to have been able to protect many of their families and futures from people who spend all of their time and energy to slander the ideas and reputations of millions of respectable and loving Muslims in this world. A presenter from Cairo talked to us about why Egypt had declined into chaos after the Arab Spring and how things have improved greatly, even though the news rarely reports the positives.
My goal of opening a multicultural and linguistically global school was reinforced and I realized that there are many others around the world that also want to shrink what comes between us and keeps us at bay. There are many of us in many places and, together, it is up to us to make a smaller world, all around.
I hope that each of you will read this and know that I am speaking of each of you that has changed my life in very profound ways. I love each one of you and look forward to seeing each of you again.
I attended the GLOBELT 2016 Conference in Antalya, Turkey and was privileged to hear some very amazing academic work, but also to converse outside of the presentations with some truly incredible and awe-inspiring people who I know will be lifelong friends and colleagues in this far-too-competitive field. Collegial respect and collaboration is truly what the conference was about and I am constantly reminded that we are not in that business in the U.S. education system for the most part, which is entirely unfortunate.
Of course, at a conference in Turkey, there would be presenters from Turkey, but there were also presenters from Iran, Palestine, Iraq, Kurdistan, Dubai, Libya, the United States, Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Ireland, United Kingdom, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Austria, Taiwan, Latvia, Slovakia, Spain, the Netherlands, Cyprus, Australia, Egypt and Canada. And, although the professional atmosphere was incredible and collaborative, what was so immensely valuable to me was getting to know everyone and hearing their stories and walking in their shoes for just a while. The world was all of a sudden the size of a dining hall or cocktail party and I did not ever want for it to end. People and places and events that, here in America, we only hear about in the news, are things in which these people live, work, breathe and worry. Several of the presenters live and work in Ankara, where there recently was an attack at a bus station which one of the presenters uses every day for her commute. She could have been there. I do not want to use her name without her permission, but she confided in us how attacks change how people go about their lives and make their decisions about the future.
A presenter from Libya and I spoke at length about a longstanding Libyan leader and his grip on not only his country, but on many others, and how he had held many in fear over the years. And we spoke about how her homeland is now a bit chaotic as the leader's followers dispersed and show no connection to the land or her people. Simply knowing this woman put a face on all of the pain of the Libyan people all of these years and has made me feel like my small job in my small town is nothing at all compared to the suffering around the world.
An attendee from the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in Northern Iraq spoke about what it is like in his land now that Daesh has been pushed out, and I spoke with him about how proud the Peshmerga must be to have been able to protect many of their families and futures from people who spend all of their time and energy to slander the ideas and reputations of millions of respectable and loving Muslims in this world. A presenter from Cairo talked to us about why Egypt had declined into chaos after the Arab Spring and how things have improved greatly, even though the news rarely reports the positives.
My goal of opening a multicultural and linguistically global school was reinforced and I realized that there are many others around the world that also want to shrink what comes between us and keeps us at bay. There are many of us in many places and, together, it is up to us to make a smaller world, all around.
I hope that each of you will read this and know that I am speaking of each of you that has changed my life in very profound ways. I love each one of you and look forward to seeing each of you again.
Thursday, April 7, 2016
Good News and Nerves
Well, I suppose I should recount some of the interesting news and happenings in my small corner of the universe, and share some interesting insights on other situations.
After having spent uncounted hours completing many rounds of applications for various seminars, events and placements, I have been accepted to the Summer Seminar on "Japan's Olympic Challenges" at the University of Colorado at Boulder in July, sponsored by TEA/NCTA. I had the honor of attending a seminar there last Summer on Korea and it greatly changed my teaching and perspectives. I am sure this one will do no less. I am still awaiting news on so many other projects that I could not even fairly give a passably complete list. The highlights, however, of these have been my application for a Bridge Fellowship for Advocacy through TNTP and a short-term Fulbright application for placement in Botswana to teach teachers participatory methodology, student-led instruction, project-based instruction and authentic learning. Since those are all paramount to my teaching, I feel I am a good fit, but I am waiting to hear if Fulbright agrees. I have also submitted some manuscripts to writing competitions, but I do not really hold out a great deal of hope to win any of those.
Now, amidst all of the insanity of deadlines and applications, I am also teaching, which is really the reason for everything else. The past several weeks, I have been spending the entire morning with a pair of siblings who need a great deal of intervention. It up-ended the rest of my schedule quite a bit, but it was necessary. I had been seeing these students at the end of the school day, and I was not seeing a great deal of progress and no linguistic retention at all. It was disappointing to me, but I cannot even imagine how terrible it felt for them and how disappointed their parents must have been feeling. This week has been the harbinger of change, and I am so happy to have been a part of it!
The two siblings have learned a significant amount of math this past week, and they are able to remember from day to day how to do it. This, in and of itself, is fantastic because I do not speak their language at all, and they have been able to tell me, in English, what they are doing as they complete a problem. The older sibling, a boy, is a soccer nut, but they have been playing basketball in P.E., which is taught by their favorite teacher. Having had no exposure to basketball in his country of origin, he does not like it and does not know how to dribble at all. I brought in a basketball and showed him how, along with different passing methods. He now participates in P.E. class more than he ever had previously! On top of this, which was a breakthrough for us, another teacher walked into my classroom the other day with a student. Her student is typically sent out of his classroom for disciplinary issues. She asked if she could come in, and I agreed, so they say down at the table with myself and my two ELLs. He politely asked them their names and told them his. After some reading aloud and math drills, the student asked if he could also help my student with basketball because he knew something about it. I agreed, since it was time for a small break anyway. He and the older sibling passed and dribbled and passed away the ten minutes. When we were going over vocabulary at the end of class, one of the vocabulary words had been "friend". I have asked many times for each sibling to name one friend. The sister is always able to give me a name of one girl because she had been paired up with her since her first day in school here. The brother, on the other hand, is a bit more shy and had never been paired up with anyone by his teachers. He had been rather isolated. So, on this particular day, the brother turned to the visiting student and asked, in a complete English sentence "what is your name?" The student answered him, and the ELL turned to me and said "_____ is my friend". I was so happy for him! He asks about this student every day when I pull him from his class.
Why did a typically difficult student want to be in my class for kids learning English as a second language? I suppose that it might be a great boost to his esteem to be able to know that he is a bit of an expert on something. He had been having a difficult time fitting in at school because he is the new kid, here from a major metropolitan area moving into a very rural locale. Perhaps he could identify with the struggles that my students have been facing since arriving in the Unites States.....I do not think even he would know if we asked him.
After having spent uncounted hours completing many rounds of applications for various seminars, events and placements, I have been accepted to the Summer Seminar on "Japan's Olympic Challenges" at the University of Colorado at Boulder in July, sponsored by TEA/NCTA. I had the honor of attending a seminar there last Summer on Korea and it greatly changed my teaching and perspectives. I am sure this one will do no less. I am still awaiting news on so many other projects that I could not even fairly give a passably complete list. The highlights, however, of these have been my application for a Bridge Fellowship for Advocacy through TNTP and a short-term Fulbright application for placement in Botswana to teach teachers participatory methodology, student-led instruction, project-based instruction and authentic learning. Since those are all paramount to my teaching, I feel I am a good fit, but I am waiting to hear if Fulbright agrees. I have also submitted some manuscripts to writing competitions, but I do not really hold out a great deal of hope to win any of those.
Now, amidst all of the insanity of deadlines and applications, I am also teaching, which is really the reason for everything else. The past several weeks, I have been spending the entire morning with a pair of siblings who need a great deal of intervention. It up-ended the rest of my schedule quite a bit, but it was necessary. I had been seeing these students at the end of the school day, and I was not seeing a great deal of progress and no linguistic retention at all. It was disappointing to me, but I cannot even imagine how terrible it felt for them and how disappointed their parents must have been feeling. This week has been the harbinger of change, and I am so happy to have been a part of it!
The two siblings have learned a significant amount of math this past week, and they are able to remember from day to day how to do it. This, in and of itself, is fantastic because I do not speak their language at all, and they have been able to tell me, in English, what they are doing as they complete a problem. The older sibling, a boy, is a soccer nut, but they have been playing basketball in P.E., which is taught by their favorite teacher. Having had no exposure to basketball in his country of origin, he does not like it and does not know how to dribble at all. I brought in a basketball and showed him how, along with different passing methods. He now participates in P.E. class more than he ever had previously! On top of this, which was a breakthrough for us, another teacher walked into my classroom the other day with a student. Her student is typically sent out of his classroom for disciplinary issues. She asked if she could come in, and I agreed, so they say down at the table with myself and my two ELLs. He politely asked them their names and told them his. After some reading aloud and math drills, the student asked if he could also help my student with basketball because he knew something about it. I agreed, since it was time for a small break anyway. He and the older sibling passed and dribbled and passed away the ten minutes. When we were going over vocabulary at the end of class, one of the vocabulary words had been "friend". I have asked many times for each sibling to name one friend. The sister is always able to give me a name of one girl because she had been paired up with her since her first day in school here. The brother, on the other hand, is a bit more shy and had never been paired up with anyone by his teachers. He had been rather isolated. So, on this particular day, the brother turned to the visiting student and asked, in a complete English sentence "what is your name?" The student answered him, and the ELL turned to me and said "_____ is my friend". I was so happy for him! He asks about this student every day when I pull him from his class.
Why did a typically difficult student want to be in my class for kids learning English as a second language? I suppose that it might be a great boost to his esteem to be able to know that he is a bit of an expert on something. He had been having a difficult time fitting in at school because he is the new kid, here from a major metropolitan area moving into a very rural locale. Perhaps he could identify with the struggles that my students have been facing since arriving in the Unites States.....I do not think even he would know if we asked him.
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