Posts Tagged ‘high school’
Hosting a Jordanian Administrator
Abeer Harazneh, an administrator from Jordan, is staying with me tonight beginning her 10 day visit to Provo High School and Brigham Young University. She will later be staying with administrators from the high school shadowing them during the day. I’m to facilitate the cultural adjustments between Jordan and the US. I’m brushing up on my Jordanian dialect which is pretty weak after being submersed in Egypt for so many months.
Tomorrow she has an all-star cast to instruct her and take her around BYU, which houses a world-renowned Arabic program and the National Middle East Language Resource Center (NMELRC).
This is now the third program I’ve participated in with American Councils for International Education. This summer I participated in ISLI which took me 6 weeks to Egypt for intensive Arabic emersion. We are now involved with TCLP (Teachers of Critical Languages Program) by hosting an Egyptian teacher for a year, Mohamed El Naggar. This is the Host a Jordanian Administrator program. Our school and much of the valley has caught the spirit of the Middle East. Many are excited to have these visitors come into their classrooms and community meetings. Dr. Kirk Belnap and Dr. Maggie Nassif of the NMELRC have been very supportive and willing to help facilitate these experiences.
Mohamed El Naggar
Mohamed El Naggar is out exchange teacher from Egypt this year. He has been a great asset.
Steven Berbeco
Steven Berbeco, the author of Marhaba, a new curriculum for teaching Arabic to high school students flew in from Boston to do a sample lesson for my students here in Provo. After he left I asked the students what they thought about the lesson. One of them said, “He was animated.”
I am a teacher
We all sat in a circle today. At least in one of my classes. It was Deaf Day. No one was talking. But these students can sign, well. We played a complex version of a charade like game. It was the laughter. Teenagers play fun when you play fun first, so I did. I have learned that it’s not playing with them, it’s playing and then standing aside and being the background while they take the stage. Teachers that are playing and the center of attention soon learn they are no longer invited.
I’ve noticed that the trick to teenagers, at least for me, is taking them seriously. They want to fly and still can at that age. Giving them the wings makes them the most happy. So, yes. They have fun but they would also be upset if you didn’t teach them anything. If you never asked them to sit still and listen or think deeply or challenge themselves, they wouldn’t be satisfied. So I find myself exerting all my creative energy to come up with fun but dense academic experiences. An experience that sells the subject. I guess in a way, I’m in sales. I feel success when a student tells me they checked out a book on the Middle East just for fun. Or, they say they are doing a project on Iraq for their Geography class and need the pictures from our class project in Arabic.
They’ve taught me a lot, too. High school can be a microcosm of society. A student seeing the world different than me challenges my status quo. I’m learning to sit back and let things happen. A student who fixes everything in the class. A student who smiles through everything. A student who reads at every possible moment. A student who works with people or with team spirit. A creative student. An obedient student. A student who challenges, who immitates, who questions, who peace makes.
They may be faces to someone else, but to me they live in my heart and have been my associates for a year. We’ve shared the same space and I will never be the same…after being a teacher.
Daily Herald covers Palestinian Exchange
| A reporter came to our class to cover our exchange with Palestinian students. It was a lot of fun.
Friday, 02 May 2008 |
| To the Mideast, with love |  |
| Brittani Lusk – DAILY HERALD | |
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Students at Provo High have friends in diverse places. International Baccalaureate students studying Arabic have friends in the Middle East and they’ve found that they’re a lot like themselves. In order to give her students experience speaking the language with native students and a way to learn first-hand about the culture, teacher Audrey Bastian has students write letters to native speakers and video tape skits they write using vocabulary words and post them on a State Department-sponsored Web portal called the Youth Connect Worldwide Arabic Exchange. Then they receive comments from students in Palestine, and they can watch videos posted by Arabic students learning English as well. Until recently Provo was the only American School using the site. They have been joined by a school in Boston. In one video posted by the Palestinian students, a girl with her head covered used a yellow ruler to point to the words on a giant screen that say “Most people like to hear music,” followed by the words in Arabic written in the English alphabet – “Mo’tham annas yoheboon sma’ al moseeqa.” Provo students use vocabulary about school and daily life they had been given by the Palestinian students and wrote a skit about studying. “Since we’re at school we decided to do school vocabulary,” said junior Jorgena Miller. Another group made up a skit about their daily activities including getting out of bed, brushing teeth and playing soccer. Reactions to the students learning Arabic have been positive and negative. Students said people have reacted to the sweatshirts they all have that feature Arabic writing. Senior Angela Ford said people sometimes ask questions like “Does your sweatshirt say ‘terrorist’ or ‘I have a bomb’ or something?” Bastian said other people are excited that the students are getting the exposure, which she said they need. “Because we are at war with Iraq it’s important for students to have an understanding of that part of the world,” Bastian said. Ford said she likes learning what Arab-speaking people are really like, not just how they are portrayed. “It’s good to see the real culture,” she said. “It’s nice to break that stereotype that they’re all terrorists.” To the U.S. Department of State, languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Farsi (Persian), Russian and Turkish are important for national security, and the government is increasing funding to get programs that teach these languages into schools. Gregg Roberts, world language specialist for the Utah State Office of Education, said those languages aren’t replacing other languages taught in schools like Spanish, French and German, but that there needs to be more options available to students. In addition to national security, language skills are needed in the world’s economy. “We don’t want to be left behind as far as the world. The world has global economy,” Roberts said. Freshman Jared Ludlow said he enjoys learning to speak Arabic because he thinks it’s more entertaining than other languages. “I think it’s interesting, and it’s funner than I would think other languages would be,” Miller said. Ludlow’s father is a professor of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University and his grandfather just returned from teaching at BYU’s Jerusalem Center. Ludlow said he sometimes cross references his Arabic with his grandfather’s Hebrew. “There’s some similar words,” Ludlow said. “Some words are very different.” In addition to Arabic, Provo high also offers Spanish, Latin, French, Chinese, German and American Sign Language. Lori Rich, Provo’s IB coordinator, said the school is thinking about adding Russian. • Brittani Lusk can be reached at 344-2549 or at blusk@heraldextra.com. |
