Breaking News! Unknown Link between EdTech & Crushed Garlic Now Confirmed!

 

There’s a way in!
Naomi’s Photos

Recent research at the Puffin Institute of Classroom Experience has illuminated the striking connection between using educational technology in the classroom and crushing garlic, particularly crushing garlic with a fork. Due to the fact that many teachers moonlight as family cooks, the following information may be of particular interest.

Here are the main findings of the research:

A divisive flavor!

Either you hate it or you love it…  Feelings run strong!

There is no denying that generous use of garlic has a strong presence in a dish – whether it enhances it or makes you push the dish away is the debatable part. Obviously, use of EdTech in the classroom, whether it is via computers, cell phones or tablets can’t be missed either. The question is whether eyes are rolled at the thought of introducing it into the classroom while tongues are clucked in disapproval at the “waste of time”, or is the technology embraced as means to interactive learning?

It can be sorely tempting to use the frozen version!

“Finely dice the garlic!” “Only add the diced garlic when the onion has become translucent, otherwise the garlic will become bitter!” “it’s better to crush the four cloves of garlic!”

While there is no doubt that FRESH is best, frozen garlic cubes, (which only need to be tossed into the pot) can seem quite tempting indeed!

“Fresh” in EdTech means using technological tools that allow teachers to pour in content tailored to their own students’ needs, such as choosing the vocabulary or creating the questions. Remember the old adage “A stitch in time saves nine?” Well, one link (to a ready-made activity) may save time, say nine glorious minutes, or cost nineteen minutes in explaining what goblins are or “zero conditionals”, or get you mired in trying to explain why what happened to a mythical John in Ibiza might be a secret…

Everything under control…
Naomi’s Photos

There are Time-Saving Tricks – Sigh…

Try peeling the cloves of garlic, leave them whole and toss them into the pot with the onion. Now all you have to do is fish them out and smash them with a fork before adding all the other ingredients to the pot.  No dicing or special garlic-crushers needed – all time issues resolved, right?

Well…

It really is a time-saving tip, as long as you don’t dice the cloves out of habit before you remember not to. In addition, if you fish the cloves out of the pot too early they tend to fly off the chopping board when you try to crush them with a fork…

Thankfully computers don’t usually “fly” in the classroom. However, colleagues and counselors, so eager to impart time-saving tips which prove that using EdTech won’t take the teacher more time, sometimes forget that it takes time to learn how to save time. Time, practice and patience are called for…

Reducing Blood pressure \ Improving Brain Functions 

In these matters, Edtech and garlic only have a partial match. While it is clear that learning to use new educational tools (or learning anything for that matter), certainly improves brain functions, the issue of reducing blood pressure could not be established. There are schools in which using EdTech entails running after the person in charge of the computer room or dealing with old equipment that can crash…

“So, what now?”
Naomi’s Photos

Acquired Tastes!

There is hope!

The Puffin Institute of Classroom Experience has been collecting accumulating evidence proving that there are garlic-haters who have learned to like garlic in their food and teachers who have learned to overcome their distrust of EdTech.

Patience is the key!

Saturday’s Book: “In Xanadu: A Quest” by William Dalrymple

 

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Don’t read this book if you are easily offended.

However, despite the fact that Dalrymple is quite critical (or condescending!) of every place and culture he encounters on his incredible journey from Jerusalem to China, this book is a great read and I quite enjoyed it.

The book is actually a double form of time-traveling.  The author, and his formidable traveling companion, Laura, set out to recreate most of Marco Polo’s epic journey. They don’t begin in Italy but rather in The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, where Marco Polo supposedly stopped to take some holy oil for the journey.  Dalrymple brings alive historical information about Marco Polo’s journey in a light, engaging,  and clearly knowledgeable manner. He particularly focuses on architecture and points out cross-cultural influences between Islamic and Christian architecture, as he relates anecdotes regarding the people he meets and their adventures along the way.

But the modern journey is itself a form of time-travel to a reader like myself, reading the book in 2018. The two students (the author was 22!!!) embarked on the journey in the early 1980s. Not only have the regions they passed through undergone changes or even upheavals since then, but the journey also took place in pre-Internet days. While Dalrymple is very knowledgeable about the past, he seems to have known very little of the current (1980s, that is) forces or news of the regions he was passing through in advance. I believe foreigners trekking through remote places was a much rarer phenomenon back then, which makes his tales even more interesting.

Naomi’s Photos

The young people certainly do not travel in style and do many a crazy thing to keep progressing towards their goal. Frankly,  I find it pretty amazing they made it to Xanadu at all. Side note: Dalrymple makes the whole journey but in India, Louisa replaces Laura for the last leg. Louisa was Dalrymple’s former girlfriend…

I have to admit that I’m a mother of 20 something-year-olds. Although I read the tales of these two young people’s travels through areas considered highly dangerous (where the two young people could have easily been murdered or thrown into a remote prison many times!), with a fair amount of equanimity, I got quite upset when I reached the part where Louisa became ill.  They were in an area where the health care was particularly appalling and she could have easily died!  Obviously, she did not but I identified strongly with their mothers’, who are briefly mentioned.

In short, despite its shortcomings, it’s an engaging book! I’m ready to read more of his books!

When a Proctor’s Smile Becomes a Tricky thing – Deaf Students taking an EFL Exam

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The scene is familiar, students seated in rows, one to a table, with an exam paper in front of each of them. Their school bags are lined up against the wall and there’s a dictionary on each desk.  All the students are focused on their exam papers.

However, the room is quite small. There are only nine students. There were supposed to be ten students but one of them, today of all days, missed his pick-up time for the transportation to school and is absent (hmm, I think to myself).

I ponder the advantages of being Deaf during an exam. The room assigned to us overlooks a parking lot of a neighboring municipal building. I seem to be the only one bothered by the noise of the vehicles, and the people talking too loudly on their cell phone. A student in the back taps his foot nervously and no one is perturbed by the repetitive tap tapping.  I’m relieved that there are no real hard of hearing students in this particular class – that kind of noise drives them bonkers (the students who hear better have turned off their hearing aids, I tap them on the shoulder if I need to tell them something).  That is until the nervous student starts knocking his pen against the desk. The student sitting in front of him immediately picks up her head, puzzled. She doesn’t know what she is hearing and which direction it is coming from. I explain and ask the other student to stop. He hadn’t noticed he was making a sound. Everyone else is working quietly.

Being judgmental…
Epstein Family Photos

Then it happens.

The same nervous student in the back gets up for a moment to stretch (the chairs never seem to be comfortable for these really tall boys!) and makes a funny face. I smile at him with a sort of silent laugh and motion to him to sit back down. Another student is instantly alert. What did he miss? What went on here? Why was I smiling? Did I say something when I was moving my hands?

You can’t say “It was nothing, keep working”. Deaf students are very sensitive about feeling left out of things. They have to deal with that feeling a lot in the world outside the classroom.  So there I am, explaining in Israeli Sign Language, about me smiling because of the student who made a funny face and that they both should get back to work when other students pick up their heads. They picked up on the sign language and needed to know what was going on.

In short, I ended up with a “commercial break” in which everyone got the update regarding the funny face made, that nothing more than that went on, no one missed anything and would they please go back to work.

And they did.

I’m still glad I smiled.  Even though it caused some trouble.

Smiles are worth it.

*** Note:  I enjoy following Jamie Keddie’s postings as he inspires teachers to take their own stories and use them with students and with other teachers.  This week his bi-weekly post happens to tie in with mine, as it is about communication or rather miscommunication!

“There is a  Scarface in the bath” by Jamie Keddie 

 

 

From Judy Blume to Hessler – Musing on Reading about Teachers

Naomi’s Photos    Point of view

Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret.” by Judy Blume is certainly not a book about a teacher and a teaching career.  It’s a young adult book about growing up and figuring out one’s identity.

However…

It depends on how you are reading it.

There are those times at school when I have really long days and I need some quiet time to recharge around noon. At least once or twice a week I drink my tea in the classroom instead of going to the staff room and read books from our tiny class library. It’s an eclectic collection of graded readers and books at wildly different levels, composed of books that were donated or ones I’ve picked up at “free-book-corners” at the municipal library.

Now that I’m working my way through the Blume book (I must have read it when I was about ten years old but that was a long time ago!) I find myself zooming in on a minor character in the book with a running commentary in my head. The character is, of course, the teacher, Mr.  Miles J. Benedict, Jr.

Really, Mrs. Simon, (aka Margaret ‘s Mom), did you have to groan when Margaret said she had a first-year teacher?  And claim that there is nothing worse? Couldn’t you have kept that thought to yourself? How about giving the new teacher a chance?”

“How did you manage that impressive feat, Mr. Miles J. Benedict, Jr.? The entire class didn’t write their names on their quizzes, as an attempt to pay you back for changing their seating placements in class after they misbehaved. Not only didn’t you say a single word about it, but each student also got the correct quiz back with his /her name on it! What classroom management technique did you employ here? Was it the fact that you had samples of the students’ handwriting from the first day of class when you asked them about themselves? How did you stay so calm?”

I haven’t finished rereading the book yet. My apologies to Margaret but I do hope there will be more about how the new teacher goes through his journey of coming into his own as a teacher in the remaining chapters. There is something fascinating about “seeing” the process as told through the eyes of a student, not as reported by a teacher.

The only problem is that Blume’s book is a work of fiction. Could a teacher really do that handwriting trick and stay so calm? What do you think?

Naomi’s Photos

Peter Hessler’s “River Town – Two years on the Yangtze” is a completely different kind of book. Put aside for a moment the truly fascinating aspects of the book related to history and life in a remote place in China in 1996, this isn’t a “Saturday’s Book Post” review.  In this book, not only does the American Peter Hessler write about his experiences teaching English as a foreign language in a small teacher’s college in China, but he also relates what it was like to study Mandarin, in China, from a teacher who spoke no English.

The interplay of language and culture is what makes Hessler’s experiences particularly worth discussing for teachers. Take the issue of praise vs. criticism as an example. How criticism is delivered, how much, how often and how severe it is employed as a tool, is related to culture. Teachers everywhere encounter students bringing different cultures and behaviors from their respective homes into the classrooms. Even if the differences are not as extreme as Hessler describes.

Interestingly enough, Hessler’s book is also a book about a young person trying to establish his identity as a person worthy of respect, especially outside the classroom’s walls. In China, according to the book, the teacher is always respected inside the classroom…

I read for pleasure and to broaden my horizons and most of the books I read have nothing to do with teaching.  But I must admit that there’s something fascinating about examining the roles of teachers in books and how they are perceived. I can’t exactly put my finger on the reason for it.

Can you?

Does it matter if the reason remains elusive?

Here’s to reading and books!