Sweet-bitter...
The more the program approaches the end, the more events! This is the first period (the first half of November), the word return starts to hover in the air! How fast and surprising announcements have been! Ambivalent as they are, my feelings could lend themselves to no reasonable interpretation: excitement, homesickness, fascination, stress…all at once! You could imagine how these emotions just flood at times making it hard to settle on one mood, rendering you as vulnerable as ever, as happy as a freed bird! Every book has an end to read and reach, with lessons to learn for what to come next!
Multitasking is the real skill to count on here! Tending an inquiry project compounded by a composing a summative report, remembering to write on this blog, attending IU courses…Working on presentations, making visits with the Fulbright cohort (two this November)…Amidst all this, we still have to make time for other equally interesting events: school visits, celebrations!
This week, CIEDR (Center for international education, development and research) and Fulbrighters celebrated the international education week at the school of education, Indiana university. Morocco team rocked featuring dress, artisanal work, music, tourist attractions exhibition, and Arabic language. Many pavilions (India, Botswana, Finland) did a great job.
One of Morocco's attraction cities is Casablanca, which most Americans could recognize (thanks to the movie by Humphrey Boggart and Ingrid Bergman), albeit this film was shot in L.A California. Chinese, Vietnamese, Americans, Mexicans and you name them visited and got enough info about the richness of our country. Most of them know a little through media or friends, and some exclaimed “seriously?” as we told them about the snow and the modernity the country is undergoing, considering its African location.
Attending one of the TESOL’s conferences has been one of my wishes, and at last I could make it albeit locally. The “INTESOL”, the Indiana TESOL conference was a day-long meeting, with interesting and relevant presentations and hands-on intake to implement. In lieu of tedious presentations heavily entrenched in theory, light and practical tips and activities are gaining in favor for the teaching folk… again, Thanks to Karen, my host family in Bloomington, I could attend it. (I just realized she is in the board). A long-day journey ending in savoring the Vietnamese/Chinese food near Indianapolis was the very thing I would have hoped for.
I can’t thank CIEDR staff enough for planning visits to several types of schools operating in the American context. This time The Fulbright cohort visited Signature school in Evansville, Indiana. It is a charter school (A charter school is a school that receives government funding but operates independently of the established state school system in which it is located, and in some cases, is privately owned), composed of 365 students, taking courses to graduate as international Baccalaureate holders. More interaction happened with students as we got divide in groups and thus work as members in students groups as the teacher assigned a task (A set of questions to think of and write responses to).
I assume you might be asking questions “This is commonplace, so why reporting it after all?”. Okay, hold on! The students’ way of reasoning, analyzing and responding to each other’s views were just “Wow!”. A teacher explained later that these youths can talk about politics in the U.S way better than many adults, and I totally confirm. The questions were more abstract, still the students did a great job reasoning. Another class of English Novel just got me sit agape as the students had such an in-depth analysis of the novel’s characters. They were critics talking about a newly issued book, it seemed!
The director put it “We hire the best, and we let them do what they want to do”. A sophomore student describes critical thinking in a simple way that I understand it better than put by a scholar in the field of pedagogy, “It is not about what I know, but knowing why…What I can do “.
I could see some of the secrets behind a healthy school culture: teachers’ voice, professional development, collaboration, student-driven activities, hands-on learning, updating…etc. Congratulations to the school administration and teaching staff for the marvelous work!
I shouldn’t forget to mention the re-entry workshop we had as Fulbrighters with CIEDR director. It was a sweet-bitter moment to put it in short. Talking about all aspects of the program, experience both personal and professional consumed most of the time that morning. I could discern that I was not comfortable with the discussion as the program director managed to an incredible extent to map the major effects, challenges, arrangements for the period to come! One more thing to love about the Fulbright team (CIEDR) is the long-sightedness, and the excellent preparedness for emergencies, what to have in store…
I wondered what the hell were we going to cover in 3 hours span? It turned out that they were not enough to cover the well-tailored questions in the slides of the PPT. Hats off guys! Professionalism at its best! tailored questions in the slides of the PPT. Hats off guys! Professionalism at its best!
