I’m not the least bit against reading a book with a happy end. I mean the kind when you know there’s going to be a happy end from page one. In fact, I need it from time to time.
And I’m perfectly willing to let the hero ” have” a miracle if the writing is good. Even if it happened on Christmas.
But I will absolutely not put up with books that adhere to a mold and are so predictable. I found David Baldacci “One Summer” to be laid out as if ready for a film with Jennifer Aniston (though not sure she is right for the heroine in this case). Person remains alone with 3 children (won’t spoil the miracale) and has to learn to deal with them. Enter person of opposite sex alone with a child. All learn to live again and love again. He DOES write nicely but I couldn’t stand it and abandoned the book.
I moved to “The Full Cupboard of Life” by McCall Smith, from the “No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency”. It is also a book where I know there will be a happy end but so very different! I smile and chuckle and can never predict how Mma Ramotswe will deal with something. I just know that she will!
The moment I return to high-school, it will be “reckoning time”. The whole time left till the end of the year is basically about tests, literature logs to be handed in and grades.
The time when students finally see the results of being physically (or mentally!) absent from the lessons. Some students are quite amazed that it matters.
This time of year reminds of an incredibly apt and wonderful poem by Tom Wayman. I would like to thank Steve Hellmann for introducing me to it.
Wouldn’t YOU like to say such things to a student sometimes?
I began the week, Sunday morning, with only fifty pages left to read. When I get this close to the end of a book, a good book, I have been known to drop almost everything and read.
This week it only happened today. Now that my talk on Sunday has been given, 3 different staff meetings have been attended and dinner for 15 people is behind me, today I “resigned” from everything, sat and read until I finished the book.
Good book.
Lenz so very cleverly manages to paint a universal tale by telling a very personal tale, rich with details. He deals with the extremely hot rod of a subject of defining homeland, of the beauty and dangers of patriotism and the price of rewriting history. Although one recognizes World War 1 and 2, he does not give time-lines or maps. In fact he does not directly name things you would expect
If I said, when reading part one, that parts of the book reminded me of an Emir Kusturica film, the second part reminded me at times of the POWERFUL movie “The White Ribbon” (Michael Haneke, the one who just won an Oscar for “Amour”). The final 50 pages are dramatic. While the book opens with the fact that the hero burned down The Heritage Museum, and all through the book one has suspicions, but only at the very end does Lenz make it crystal clear why it was done.
A book that highlights the power of understatement.
There’s something absolutely exciting about getting a large number of poll responses from people. It begins with a feeling of awe at the number of people who spent some time thinking about what I had asked. It’s as if I had spoken briefly to each and every one of the ONE HUNDRED AND TEN people myself.
Then came the drowning sensation. I’ve prepared many talks and usually have a very clear picture of what I want to achieve. Suddenly there was so much data! I could take it in so many directions! For a while I was stuck.
The talk was for “Shema” itinerant teachers. These are qualified teachers who tutor students with a hearing loss in elementary and junior high-school. They teach whatever subject the children need help with, including English when necessary. But they are not English teachers and most of them aren’t Native Speakers either.
I posted survey questions in Hebrew for these teachers, both as a wake up call to be more aware of services and support they could be getting and aren’t utilizing, and as a way to get more information for myself regarding their needs. 93 itinerant teachers answered the survey questions.
I also created a survey for English teachers, which I posted on our wonderful local network, ETNI. 12 teachers answered the survey in English
I must point out that the part of posting the surveys was very easy indeed, thanks to Adele Raemenr, who introduced me to Google Docs in a session at the Jerusalem Summer ETAI Conference.
Here are some of the results (note that the numbers refer to actual numbers, not percentages. They don’t always add up to 110 as not all the teachers answered all the questions).
The English teachers did not agree whether or not it was important for a Shema teacher to have her own copy of the teacher’s guide. There was a question of how helpful it could be for someone who was not a qualified English teacher.
Teacher’s Guide
Of the 30 Shema teachers who attended my talk, only one had ever looked at a teacher’s guide in English. In other subjects they had done so.
The Shema teachers, who travel from school to school, were also unaware of what they might find in the school’s “English Closet”. Here is what the English teacher’s had to say:
English Closet
It was very clear from the survey that many Shema teachers do not feel comfortable aksing the classroom teacher to explain material being taught. 61 of them said they would prefer to have a special reference/resource site for them instead of asking the teacher.
asking the classroom teacher
Considering the Shema teacher’s interest in having a site tailored to their needs (which already exists in a smaller format, yet hasn’t been used much!) I was surprised by the number of teachers who said that they prefer their resource material to be in printed book form – 36!
printed vs online
The explanation was that grammar is the topic most stressful for Shema teachers. They want to own a good book that not only has explanations in Hebrew but also has exercises for the students. They want to have it in printed form, readily available whenever needed.
I asked for information, now I can’t ignore the answers. So, now I had better get cracking on expanding the online resource material for Shema teachers. I just hope they will use it!
Today was a BEAUTIFUL day, perfect weather for a nature hike in the Carmel Mountain. Its been a rainy winter and the flowers are in full bloom. Our timing was good, and we had already started walking when the ground warmed up enough for the storks to rise in the circular fashion that allows them to take advantage of the warm air and use it as an elevator. I’m not exaggerating, thousands of storks passed over us! Its migrating season! So very very impressive! No pictures though, very hard to catch.
Unsurprisingly, our friends tend to be people who enjoy reading too. This time we were discussing different reading habits. We seemed to be neatly split down the middle. Half of us (including me!) have to read every single day. Some days less, sometimes more, but every single day. I find that all day my thoughts are darting in a multitude of directions. Reading is a time of focusing on something outside my daily life. I find it very relaxing.
The other half feel that when they read they want to spend a lot of time reading and have continuity (read the book often). They feel too tired to read every day and prefer to save their reading for holidays and vacations.
In the past two years in which I’ve been on “blogosphere” and “twitterverse”, I’ve searched continually for mentions of special needs students in ELT.
I’ve found precious few mentions.
And it doesn’t make sense. They are out there. Why isn’t attention being paid to them?
Well, iTDi has stepped up and pointed a spotlight into the farthest corners of this void. Six writers from all over the world approach the issue from different aspects.
I’m a Special Ed teacher. I knew this issue would come out as I was asked to write one of the pieces. Yet I didn’t have a clue that I would be both surprised and moved by the other posts. I sincerely hope that teachers who read these posts will express an interest in special needs students, so that more relevant information will become readily available to them.
I sincerely hope that many other lamps will be lit to strengthen the spotlight iTDi has aimed at the void, and that the topic of special needs learners will become part of every teacher’s toolkit.
If you had asked me to name some important American Writers I would have mentioned John Updike. But the sad truth is that I hadn’t actually read anything by him (the fact that I watched “The Witches of Eastwick” on TV doesn’t really count).
It turns out that there are free New Yorker Magazine podcasts of short stories that appeared in their Magazine years ago. Each story is read by a different author and there is a discussion about the story with the paper’s literary fiction editor.
My first choice was Updike’s story. I listened to it and then found it online too (I’m not linking to it, don’t know about copyright here). I really enjoyed it. You see the scene so clearly, even though the story depicts a time period long gone. I could easily imagine it, the characters are so believable.
Since then, in the first two days after I listened/read the story, I encountered mentions of it! First there was the article about Brendan O’connell – an artist who paints Walmart(sounds awfully odd, doesn’t it?). He mentions the story as one of the sources of his inspiration.
When I began telling my older brother about this, he just heard the name Updike and told me that he’ll never forget the first short story he had learned in college, which was A&P.
I’ll see what the library has of his – any recommendations? In any case, am still reading “The Heritage Museum”. My friend Dorit surprised me with a copy of the book in English so I immediately abandoned the archaic Hebrew translation in two volumes. It is really good!
When I was a teenager, back in the days of the blue aerograms, when letters still arrived with colorful stamps, I had pen pals from around the globe. I used to listen to a special program on BBC World that helped connect teens from distant countries. In high-school I had pen-pals from Iceland, Malaysia and China. I still have their pictures in one of my photo albums.
Photo by Gil Epshtein
When our high school got the first computers connected to the Internet, (in a room kept specially cold, that one had to reserve in advance) I tried to recreate the excitement. There were a number of attempts, some lasted longer than others, but they all suffered from the same two problems:
* After the initial stage of students expressing curiosity and writing about their hobbies, their motivation to participate petered out.
* It was a lot of work. I was devoting time and energy to create activities that would cause them to stay on board and learn something about the country we were corresponding with. I seemed to be the one learning the most. I still remember how amazed I was when our friends from Finland wrote about the huge number of lakes they have and wanted to know how many we had. Eh, ahem, one… The kids weren’t particularly awed though.
So when the AWESOME teacher of deaf students from Conneticut, Arlene Blum, contacted me about a global project I was excited and nervous. Adjusting to the new school curriculum is difficult and time consuming and I was worried about the extra work. In addition, I was concerned about the repeated pattern of students losing interest. But how could I miss this opportunity?
Global Friends Blog
Arlene started us off with a blog on Edublogs. Since we are both on Edublogs I believe that is how she found me. The blog has the advantage of being open and accessible (the comments and posts are moderated, of course!!!) . It is easy to work with and it has helped Arlene attract more schools. There are now 3 schools in the US, one in Australia, one in South Africa and one in Italy, not all equally active (and our school in Israel, of course!). Writing on the blog is good practice for the students and an excellent place to post videos that promote global feelings of friendship such as the one Arlene recently posted here or the summary of facts we have learned along with a moving video promoting friendship we sent in.
But the main disadvantage of the blog is that because of a need to protect our students, we don’t post pictures of students on the blog. Students with a hearing loss really want more visual modes of communication. They wanted to chat with the other students too but we can’t do that in any case because of the time differences. We also don’t share a common sign language!
So I suggested, following my experience with Edmodowith my course for adults, that we open a secure group for us there. The Facebook-like feel of Edmodo attracted the students and a large number of them wanted to sign up. We moderate the posts and comments there too. Some of them uploaded profile pictures. Not many actually write though. But I’ve decided to be pleased about the ones who do. I write updates about tales from our Global Friends on the board, so at least everyone is exposed to some information. I’ve also decided to be happy with the goal of having students expand their world knowledge. The benifits for their English is rather limited because most students take advantage of Google Translate and read the posts in Hebrew…
Since Edmodo supports videos, we’re currently trying to add a new component – students upolading videos of themselves. Not the same as chatting but will bring those foreign students to life! Some of my students suspect I’m making all of this up!
Yes, that’s right, volume one. This book, at least in its Hebrew translation (from German), comes in two volumes. I read much slower in Hebrew than I do in English, however the book itself is not a “slow read” at all. In fact it reads just like a screenplay, I don’t think it needs much adapting for the cinema at all!
The book begins by the burning down of the Heritage Museum of an area in Germany called Mazuria. This is not a spoiler as this is the event on which the rest of the book is based – a tale of the reasons why such a dramatically violent act of obliterating the past are called for. In Hebrew it is not called the Heritage Museum but rather “The Homeland Museum”. I understand the author wants to give the word its proper meaning, not the one of slogans, of parties that came later. His main message is not clear to me yet, but I understand from the recommendations I got that it will most certainly be.
The narrator of the book, who is the one who burned the museum, lies in his hospital bed, describing to a visitor how he came to do what he did, beginning in his child. The descriptions are vivid, detailed and rich, of a world long gone, not necessarily a beautiful one either. At times the tales remind me of films by Emir Kusturica – a combination of squalid life, poverty and ignorance combined with extraordinary events and humor. Unfortunately, the book doesn’t have the wonderful music that the Kusturica films have!
Will write again about this book when I get to volume two. A pity I didn’t get a hold of the book in English though, the translation is a pretty old one. It doesn’t matter – couldn’t have read the original version in any case!
I’m teaching the poem “Count That Day Lost“ by George Elliot to some of my high-school students at the moment. The English literature curriculum I’m following dictates teaching the “Higher Order Thinking Skill” (HOTS) known as “comparing and contrasting” when teaching this poem. Since the weaker students needed the concept “hammered home”, I prepared two versions of an exercise comparing the following two pictures. For the more advanced students I included a review of the previously taught thinking skill of inference.
Photo by Gil EpshteinPhoto by Gil Epshtein
One thing that surprised me was that the following question turned out to be the hardest one:
“Name one surprising thing about the man in this picture? (hint – how old do you think the man is? What is in his hand?)”
It’s not that the students didn’t notice what was surprising about the man in the photo. In fact they immediately commented on how strange it was to see an elderly man with a cane walking with a big hikers backpack, before reading the questions. But many of them had trouble answering the question properly. I think the hints actually threw them off. A common answer was:
“The surprising thing is that the man is old” (“old” was mostly defined by the students as being between 40 -50 years old!). I had to emphasize that seeing someone who is not young is not surprising, it is only surprising when we compare it to what we expect. To do that we must include another detail – he is old but has a heavy hikers backpack. They were quite surprised by that! They thought it was obvious, no need to state it. One can see that in the picture, right?
