I can’t really answer the question what the schools are like because I have only been able to go to 1 school so far. I really enjoyed the school, but I know that any one (of anything) is not a full picture. I have been able to attend 2 classes: 1 English and 1 Writing. Both were actually good. The English class was really interesting. It was grade 11, I believe. She was reviewing past tenses: simple, continuous and perfect….
When I was in St. Petersburg my senior year of high school our hosts referred to the field trips we took as “excursions.” This cracked me up. I don’t know why I found it so hilarious, but I had never heard that term used before. In MS, they are just plain ol’ field trips. So because of that, I always think of anything slightly educational as “excursions” now. Last weekend (Sept 25) we took an excursion to a nearby province…or…
If you’ve been following the blog, you know that my role here on the trip is to wrangle the kids. On Friday, the kids participated a fun run organized by Lost Children with the neighbor kids. The organization is doing some great things here to help Palestinian kids have normal childhoods. All the kids received free t-shirts, hats, and toys and after the run, they had a block party with traditional dancing, face painting, and bounce houses. I had originally…
Today I am going to be talking about the fun run I did. This fun run was a 4k and yet at the end all they handed out to you was water! That was your prize. It was only kids. Literally you had to be younger than 15. Since they had no prizes but water, we got ice cream! There were also people on the track squirting you with water which was actually very helpful because you were running a 4k….
We hear a lot about how everything we do online is tracked, and how companies can put together uncanny profiles of us from all of our public data (for example, that famous story of Target figuring out a teen girl was pregnant before her parents did). While the idea of privacy in a digital age is quickly vanishing, I was thinking the other day about how our digital lives do give us the opportunity to reconstruct thought patterns that we…
So today we’re going to be talking about being famous, because I am. I started my work when I was 7 years old. I have been doing it for 1 day. And I’m famous! Hehehe. Ok, that didn’t really happen, but it is my famousness so I can say whatever I want. I’m famous for a fun run that I did and I got a picture for doing it! So first we went to the fun run and we walked…
After school – Maggie: What was the most fun thing? I can’t answer that because everything was fun. What was one thing that was different? Can I name 2 things? Everybody speaks Arabic and we had different teachers for every class. The teachers move, but we don’t. What is your favorite class so far? Art. Because we get to color, draw and she (teacher) looks pretty. She is also the music teacher for my school and Will’s school. How did…
Here is Will’s interview after his 3rd day of school! After school – Will: What was the most fun thing? The most fun thing is recess. On Saturday, the day that our class and one other class gets the field, I go down to play soccer. On other days, I walk around and see if anyone wants to play. What was one thing that was different? One thing that was different was it is in Palestine. People speak Arabic. What…
Today was my first class in Arabic. It began at 8 am so I had to travel from my apartment (north of the city) to the class in the center. We have only traveled by taxi and someone had told me that you can prearrange a taxi, but I was too chicken to talk to the cab driver the day before. I thought I’d go to the cab office in the morning and ask. Ha! In the morning there are…
As I have mentioned before, my research deals with finding better ways of teaching writing for Arabic speaking students. Possibly using oral history as a motivator to WANT to write and thus gain better proficiency. To get a handle on the situation and how it is taught in the schools here, I am doing 3 main things: 1) taking an Arabic language course 2) observing English writing classrooms and 3) interviewing teachers and students. Class starts Tuesday: check. So the…