Students are not the SAME!!!

Many teachers might fall in dealing with students as if they all know nothing. This is not the case nowadays. Students do come laden with experiences and knowledge. The problem is that students’ experience and knowledge differs from one student to another. Many factors do affect this. It might be to the socio economic status (SES) of the students’ family or the social status…etc. For example, a student with high SES might be introduced to many experiences that a low SES one would not be introduced to. Also, a student with a regular family is not the same as a student whose parents are divorced, dead…etc. so, students come with previous knowledge to our classes. Our role as teachers is to full the lack of knowledge to those who are less-experienced in order to have a healthy class. However, many found that this is impossible. They thought of separating schools for rich and poor students. Do you think this is the ideal solution? If not, what would you recommend?

Long and Short Term Planning

Planning is very important in order to organize the thoughts for your students. There is more than one type of planning. There are the short term planning and the long term one. Both are important for implementing our lessons in our classes. The long term one is as much important as the short term one. The short term one is important for each session and each lesson where you identify your objectives. However the long term one is important for identifying the skills and concepts that a student should know after duration of time. This is really important for the emphasis of teaching for understanding not coverage. No matter what we plan, we should be aware not to be rigid to our plan. The thoughts and ideas shared in class should be taken in to consideration in order to edit it to match our students needs.

Summative or Formative Assessment

Assessing students is very important in order to take certain decisions toward the students. However, the tool we use might differ. Many never use any tool except the paper test one. Also, many use summative evaluation only; they don’t take in to consideration the students’ work in class. They don’t even ask them any tasks to do, or if they did many teachers would not take them in to consideration in taking the final grade for the students. In my opinion, formative assessment is important as the summative one. Students’ development in class should be taken into consideration. It is not fair for students working all the period of learning and the day of the exam they were sick or had a problem they would fail and the careless ones succeed and get a better grade just because they studied for the final exam. What do you think? Is this right? Do you think formative assessment is important too?

Webinar

I attended a webinar about the emotional intelligence. At the beginning, I was confused a little bit about the idea. I wasn’t sure what I was doing. After that, I got used to the idea. Actually it is a way you can learn new things with the help of the universe thoughts. Actually, it was an interesting experience that I advice anyone to try. Of course the connection of the internet in Lebanon is as always bad. This didn’t help me a lot to hear the lesson.  Another thing I faced is that I should attend at a specific time and I wasn’t able to be online. Anyway, they sent me the recording and I watched later. I thought I would have enjoyed it if I watched it directly. This is because when you do so you are able to communicate your thoughts with others. So, whenever you have any misunderstanding or any question you can ask. What do you think? Is it a good idea to watch a webinar or not? 

It is all about managing your time

After my mom’s death, we as a family had to overcome this calamity together. We showed each other how strong we are and how life should go on. My elder sister played a big role in that. She wanted us to never feel that anything is missing because my mom is not there. All the house duties were on her shoulders. After one year, she got married. She didn’t want to leave us, but we didn’t accept her to do that with herself. Now, I should take the responsibility instead of her. It was my senior year in college. I was shocked. I didn’t knew how to cook, how to the laundry ….etc. I didn’t know anything and it is my senior year college. I thought many times to quit college. However, I was pretty sure that it is not the right decision. I threw all the fear of this responsibility away. I started managing my time. My sister would come and help as well as all of the family members, my sister, brothers and even my dad. All of them were helping me. I had time to study, clean, cook, and even go out. I graduated and now I’m almost done with my teaching diploma degree. Whenever I look back, I see how much managing my time helped and I imagine where I could be now if I didn’t. 

Life never Stops

I was eighteen years old, the age where every person is supposed to be living the happiest life ever.  Although the sickness that controlled our home to all of us, I pretended to be that person. My dad was sick and went to the hospital. My brothers, sisters, and I were also sick. The doctors didn’t know what was wrong with us. Even my mom was sick. She went to the hospital couple of times. Also, the doctors never knew what was wrong with her. We decided that she should go to a hospital in Beirut. She stayed there for 13 days. The doctors knew her disease as well as my father, my sister and my brother only. Whenever I asked to go visit her, the answer will be no and whenever I asked what was wrong with her the answer will be “she’s good and she’s coming after couple of days”. Friday April 30, 2010, we were allowed to go visit her. I saw her for the last time. I can never forget that day. She started telling each one of us what she wants from us to always do. We left and I was sure that there is something wrong but I couldn’t tell. Monday May 3, 2010, my sister was there. I asked about her she said that she is better now and she might come home. Tuesday May 4, 2010 I woke up at 5:00 am hearing cries downstairs. I rushed down and I knew what was wrong but I didn’t want to believe it. I started asking what’s wrong. No one answered. I just heard my dad saying “إنا لله و إنا إليه راجعون”. I couldn’t believe what he said. I was shocked. MY MOM DIED. I thought that it was the end of the world, but no. Three years!! Three years passed and my mom is not with us but life goes on. LIFE NEVER STOPS.

by determination you can reach the stars

i am a student from Azhar Al-Bekaa. what is special about this school is that students learn two curricula in one year, the national curriculum and a religious one. for that, they started the grade 12 - humanities program from grade 10. however i insisted to stay there and then i will register whatever in college even all knew how much i was good in sciences. when i reached university i wanted to go for physics. all were surprised. my brother told me if you completed the first semester successfully you will never ever be able to complete the second. i wanted this so bad. i studied hard. i studied the mathematics and physics high school curricula. one of my teachers in college who were my teacher in school too helped me a lot. actually, all my instructors were supportive and helped me whenever i wanted so. they always welcomed to help me because they saw how passion and determined i was. i was over all expectations others had for me. my grades were high concerned with my poor background. in fact, i had better grades than many who had regular high school experience. i finished my BA in physics in 3 years and i'm proud of that. so really, by determination you can reach the stars.

Teaching for Understanding or Teaching for Coverage

Teaching for understanding or coverage or teaching for coverage is a debate between many teachers. Some think that what really teaching means is to be sure that your students had really got the idea; teaching is all about providing your students with the needed skills and competences to be able to construct knowledge by them selves. Others think that what really matters in students' learning is providing them with the whole material scheduled in the national curriculum. This group thinks that it is not fair when teachers deprive students from certain knowledge if some material are skipped. On the other hand, the first group thinks the opposite. They think that it is not fair when material is covered when students don't really get the idea of each information taken. Which group do you think is right, and how you convince the other group by your opinion? 

classroom management

Fortunately, last year I've got the opportunity to attend “Classroom Management” course, and I can’t express how much it is beneficial for every teacher. This course help the teacher to be aware of the differences of her students, and the different factors that might affect their learning such as: abilities, motivation, different learning styles, preferences, emotions and so forth. All these factors play a crucial role in the capacity to acquire the knowledge. The skillful teacher is the one who take all these factors into consideration when preparing his/her methodological plan and preparing lessons and activities appropriate to those students. Furthermore, the teacher should vary her activities in order to meet as much as possible the needs of all students. To add this course offer a precise information about how to manage a class, how the teacher should a role model for her students, how to convey expectations for her students, how should believe in her students and always push them toward the best delivering 3 motivating messages: “I believe in you”; “I won’t give up on you”; “You can do it”.

cooperative learning

Most of teachers still not familiar with the term of cooperative learning, awkwardly, in this way they deprive their students from the opportunity to interact and communicate their thought with their classmates during the instruction. The 5 basic elements of cooperative learning are: positive interdependence, individual accountability, face to face interaction, social skills, and processing (evaluating). First role of the teacher should be starting with team building through warm up activities or personal story telling, and other activities to introduce them to each other in order to know their colleagues better and therefore they function better together. The teacher has a wide range of cooperative activities starting from the easy to the hard one such as: think -pair-chair; say and switch; round table; three-step interview; corners; graffiti; learning together; teams-games-tournaments; jigsaw, and group investigation. The most important issue that should be learned before starting any group activity is teaching students social skills, such as taking turns equally, being responsible, disagreeing in an agreeable way, listening, accepting differences, using quiet voices and more others. When cooperative learning is implemented effectively we can expect: higher self-esteem, higher achievement, greater social support, greater use of higher level reasoning, and better attitudes toward schools and teachers.