Don't Quit

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will, 
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill, 
When the funds are low and the debts are high, 
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh, 
When care is pressing you down a bit, 
Rest, if you must, but don’t you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns, 
As every one of us sometimes learns, 
And many a failure turns about, 
When he might have won had he stuck it out; 
Don’t give up though the pace seems slow– 
You may succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than 
It seems to a faint and faltering man, 
Often the struggler has given up, 
When he might have captured the victor’s cup, 
And he learned too late when the night slipped down, 
How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out– 
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt, 
And you never can tell how close you are, 
It may be near when it seems so far, 
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit– 
It’s when things seem worst that you mustn’t quit.

- Author unknown

This poem is very inspiring as it reflects the reality that each and every one of us lives. We all encounter hardships and mishaps that put us down and make us want to quit. It is okay to take a break from all the commotion we are living, as long as we don't give up. We may think that our goals are unachievable but we may be closer than we think. It's okay to fail because we can learn valuable lessons from failure. After all, life is a test and success is not easy to achieve. So stick to the fight and persevere!

Funny and Interesting Facts :)

1. It is impossible to lick your elbow.
2. A crocodile can't stick its tongue out.
3. A shrimp's heart is in it's head.
4. People say "Bless you" when you sneeze because when you sneeze,your heart stops for a mili-second.
5. It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky.
6. More than 50% of the people in the world have never made or received a telephone call.
7. Rats and horses can't vomit.
8. If you sneeze too hard, you can fracture a rib.
9. If you try to suppress a sneeze, you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck and die.
10. If you keep your eyes open by force when you sneeze, you might pop an eyeball out.
11. Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over a million descendants.
12. Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in your ear by 700 times.
13. The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.
14. You’re born with 300 bones, but by the time you become an adult, you only have 206.
15. Most lipstick contains fish scales.
16. Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different.
17. Over 75% of people who read this will try to lick their elbow.

Imagination vs. Science

Ever since childhood, we have been given opposing ideas about how to think in life. As children, we are taught to use our imagination, and to believe in the power of love as the cure to any problem. As we grow older, we are taught to use logic and reason to solve our problems, for love is not going to put food on the table and keep us warm at night. We are taught that education strengthens nations, but are not reminded that it also destroys nations. Science creates cures for diseases that are caused by nuclear weapons, another invention of science, used during wars that are due to greed for power and money.
Comparing men of science to their childhood selves, we can see that no man was born evil: Adolf Hitler, George W. Bush, Ariel Sharon etc...All men of science and "education" were once children with imaginations. Were their childhood selves and imagination responsible for mass destruction and man slaughter? No, their "adulthood" and scientific power greed minds were. Imagine the world ruled by children. Would it be a better place? If imagination and believing in the power of love were to rule the world, would there be poverty? Would there be hunger? Would there be wars?

How to Let Him Go

We have all had that feeling: butterflies in our stomach when we see him, fast heart beats, nervousness, awkwardness and warm faces. And, as usual, he wanted you, chased you, got you until he got bored, and then walked away. We might all be in denial, not wanting to let go, thinking we can't possibly live without him, but we are all stronger than we think. All we have to do is believe, and stop waiting around for HIM to save us. 

Stop waiting for prince charming. He is too lazy to walk out of his castle, and can easily replace you with another one of his princesses. Be your own hero, and stop living in fairy tales that were written by men thinking that we need "men" to save us and be our hero to live happily ever after.

The fact is that we are women. We can endure walking in heals all day, giving birth, shopping all day... We don't need men to save us. We are perfectly capable of saving ourselves. Just keep reminding yourself that you deserve better than someone who would let go of you in a heart beat. You deserve more than empty promises that "it won't happen again." You have to make him respect you, starting by respecting yourself and realizing that he is not the person you fell in love with, and it's time to let go.

It's never too late to start over. Just keep in mind to love yourself before you allow your heart to love someone else. Always remind yourself that you deserve to be happy. 

Importance of Background Knowledge

Many language students face difficulties while attempting to comprehend a written text in the foreign language. So how can teachers prepare students so that the reading and listening materials become more comprehensible to them? Educators such as Ausubel believed that learning must be meaningful to be effective and permanent. This means that it should be related to what students already know. Ausubel also spoke about the importance of using advance organizers to activate students' prior knowledge. This will also facilitate retention of new material. Three kinds of knowledge are activated in the second language comprehension process. They are knowledge of linguistic information, knowledge of the world and knowledge of discourse structure.

Another important point is that the teacher should be aware that every person has a different schema for every situation or event. Rumelhart defines schema as: an abstract representation of a generic concept for an object, event, or situation. When trying to comprehend a message, people instantiate a particular form of a schema. If misunderstanding occurs, then the wrong schema has been activated. Being aware of this helps reduce ambiguity in classes because the teacher will be aware that misunderstandings occur not only due to linguistic aspects, but also misreadings of the schema.

"Each learner builds and adds to his understandings according to his or her own knowledge, thoughts, ideas, perceptions, experiences, values, and beliefs. If new information does not connect to existing knowledge, the brain will not accept it." (12 things a teacher must know about learning)

Induction Programs Needed!

The other day, we (TD and masters students)  attended a seminar with our instructors at AUB. The masters students there were presenting their thesis and one of the students discussed a catchy topic which is Induction Programs.  Personally, I found it very interesting so I did some extra research about the topic.
Some of you may be wondering, "What are induction programs?" They are programs designed to provide professional support to novice teachers, meaning teachers in their first and second years of teaching. They support effective learning, teaching and assessment practices. They also aim at helping new teachers gain the requisite knowledge and skills that will support success as teachers.
UNFORTUNATELY, there is no existence of such programs in Lebanon. As a novice teacher, you are expected to either swim or sink in your first two years and those years decide whether you will persevere in your teaching career or not. Research indicates that more than a third of beginning teachers leave the profession within the first few years. To prevent this from happening, beginning teachers need support! 
A novice teacher needs help concerning classroom management, effective parent communication skills, and instructional strategies and methods that address all types of students. A few sessions of lecturing by professional teachers is not enough, for they cannot condense numerous years of experience into a few hours. For this reason, extended programs are needed where professional teachers act as mentors, facilitators and supporters. 

Concerns about the "Listening Skill"

Our curriculum places great emphasis on developing the reading skill. The syllabus is crammed with so many reading lessons to be covered by the end of each term. Students learn different sub skills such as paraphrasing and summarizing, and various reading strategies such self questioning, creating mental images, reading ahead and many more. All these serve our goals of making our students life long and independent learners. 

On the other hand, when it comes to developing the listening skill, we can notice its absence in our curriculum. What we do in our classes mainly is TEST listening. In addition, our testing has no inclusion of authentic materials. 

Since we aim at helping students reach a point where they can carry out a range of functions that are necessary to deal with others in the target culture, in other words to be able to understand native talk, students must be taught to comprehend what they hear. 

Thinking about these points made me curious to find out whether students in our classrooms do understand material they listen to. To test this, I used one of the tapes that we use as a "read along"  and which were created for academic use. After students listened to the tape, I was shocked to get this common response from many students "I didn't understand anything." 

 For this reason, teaching listening should be included in our curriculum. And this teaching should be based on the use of authentic materials. It is essential that students develop both their receptive skills, not only reading. 

Screen vs Print Reading

In the last five years we have seen great leaps in digital technology. We are now dominated by a digital age where technological devices are used everywhere; at schools, work or for leisure activities. Furthermore, much of what we read is read on screens and this practice is being integrated in schools, which is of our great concern.

In the meantime, researchers are working to get a clearer sense of the differences between online and print reading. Because there is so much information, videos and pictures alongside with words, while reading off screens we usually scan through the texts looking for key words. We scroll up and down, look for words and get distracted. However, when we read in print our brains read in linear ways. So, nowadays, since we highly depend on screen reading, we seem to be developing digital brains. This means that we are getting accustomed to reading with less depth. This is a concern of many researchers and educators. Maryanne Wolf, a Tufts University cognitive neuroscientist and the author of "Proust and the squid", voices, "I worry that the superficial way we read during the day is affecting us when we have to read with more in-depth processing." 

Since reading in print can help students learn with a slower mode, screen reading cannot replace it. However, we can train our brains to be bi-literate, being able to adapt to both types of reading.

Grammar Can Be Fun!

The usual reaction we get from students when informed that a new grammar topic will be discussed is nagging. You immediately hear sighs and see frowns on students' faces. For this reason, we should surpass the routine and traditional ways grammar has been taught. Students like to experience whatever they are learning. You may think, " Is that possible with grammar?" Well, as a matter of fact it is! For example, when explaining possessive pronouns, you can gather students' possessions and place them on a table. Then you can have volunteers choose an object and say: 

This is David's bag.

This bag is his.

This is his bag. 

Students will really enjoy this activity and they will remember it every time they want to recall possessive pronouns. 

One cooperative learning strategy I have learned about is "Teams Games Tournaments" which I have implemented as a kind of assessment for quoted and reported speech. Students were given time to study together as groups of threes called cooperative teams. Then they moved to the competing teams and the games began. During this activity, a spirit of cooperation was created in the cooperative teams and students felt competitive which made them study harder. Throughout the whole activity students were not distracted and they were very pleased. At the end they were anxious to find out the results and recognition cards were given to the winners which made them feel appreciated. 

Where There's a Will, There's a Way

During a very important course called "classroom management", I learned that persistence is one of the important characteristics to achieve success in classrooms. What you expect is what you get. I never actually understood the true meaning of this sentence until I had the experience myself. As I learned, varying your teaching methods increases students' competency in a language. Differentiated instruction should be implemented to adhere to different learning styles. Being aware of these points is essential for helping students reach higher levels of proficiency. However, without persistence, all your hard work will go in vain. If you have all the prepared material, but show no perseverance in your work, students will not take the task seriously. However, if they are constantly motivated and their work is being followed up, you will achieve the results expected. 

A teacher should be really confident in what she is doing. Let me tell you about my own experience. For one of the reading lessons, I decided to have it carried out differently. I applied a strategy called Literature Circles which is a form of differentiated instruction. This strategy has students deal with the lesson creatively. Various roles are appointed to students. For example, the illustrator is responsible for creating a picture that represents something about the story. The word explorer must explain the difficult and important words. The discussion manager asks questions about the story and the connector relates the story to his personal life or experiences. And there are more roles that can be implemented. When I first introduced this strategy to my students, they started following traditional ways to get the work done; a simple explanation of the words, and simple drawings and lecturing. As I moved around the class during group work, I gave students some ideas of how creative they could be with presenting the material and I did not do this only once. For the following three days, I kept an eye on students' progress and day after day I noticed how motivated they had become. I even got more excited to see how well the work was going. However, I did not expect the results to be as good as they were. The day of the presentations, I had students who made booklets to explain vocabulary, while others got visual aids and some gave context clues to explain the words. Other students made models that reflected the events of the story. The discussion manager asked questions that require deep thinking and were well thought out. They were similar to the questions I ask myself. That day I could actually call my students "teachers". The activity was amazing and rewarding. Students loved this activity and so did I. 

                      Persistence is the key. Be persistent to get what you expect. 

This model, which was designed by one of my students, represents the setting in the story. It's the "Catskill Mountain." As you can see, in the middle there's a river and on both sides there are mountains.

What it Really Means to be a Teacher

Few are the ones who take into consideration the many responsibilities that come along with becoming a teacher. Many teachers, beginners or experienced, think that teaching simply means having a BA which qualifies you teach the material. But that is not the case. Teaching is both an art and a science. Both aspects should be targeted to be a successful teacher. So, what does it take to be a successful teacher? A lottt!! 

First you should lighten up! Many teachers enter classes having in mind that they are the solo power of authority. They reflect this by their actions and this is when the problems begin. The teacher struggles to keep control of her class in any way. She starts yelling and students yell back. As a result, the class turns into a battle field. Things will get out of hand and the whole year will become a nightmare for the teacher. 

Other than lightening up, a teacher should be patient. Patience is the key to success. As teacher, you should be aware that every class you enter is representative of different beliefs, feelings and thoughts. You have students from different backgrounds and maybe different cultures. Each student thinks in a different way, has different needs and intentions. A teacher should take this into account and her job will be much easier. I'm not saying that if you are patient you will never face any problems, but it really does lessen them. 

Furthermore, students love a teacher who has a sense of humor. It never hurts to have a joke with your students once you have set rules straight and students can differentiate between work and fun time. 

So, personality has a drastic effect on teaching. If you are able to build a good relationship with students, you have started off with a good teaching career. There are many other points that the teacher should work on as preparing the material properly and having it adhere to students' needs. Being very clear on your objectives and instructions is also a very important point that leads to a well managed class if tackled properly.