Mother's Day!

Last Wednesday was Mother's Day here and it was quite the celebration! The day started, and continued, with flowers, flowers, flowers galore! All the students brought flowers for their favorite female teachers and throughout the day kids and teachers were constantly carrying flowers! Additionally people on the streets were carrying flowers home.

The school day began with the Kindergartners through the sixth grade all gathered in the church hall for the Mother's Day show! Every grade performed a song, skit or poem about how awesome Mom's are in English or in Arabic. It was very sweet! Weirdly, none of the children's parents were invited... I have no idea why. The performance took a particularly exciting turn when a pigeon revealed that it was in the church hall sitting on a very high window! Quite exciting!

It was an especially exciting morning for the Kindergartners because after their breakfast, we gathered them up in pairs and took them over to the main school building for yet more Mother's Day celebrations! The model company club at our school was selling its products for sale. There were Mother's Day candles, tee-shirts and embroidered goods. The teachers, staff and students alike flocked to the tables to purchase gifts for their loved ones.

It was fun for me to see which of the kindergartners have siblings in the older grades. Since the Kindergarten is beneath the church hall, it is actually completely removed from the rest of the school so I had not ever seen which of the students are siblings to kindergartners.

After the sale the teachers and staff had a special breakfast in honor of Mother's Day. Tasty flat bread with thyme and olive oil accompanied by lots of veggies and juice! All the female teachers, myself included, got a little sampler set of scents: vanilla, aloe vera and citrus. Quite nice!


Even my Arabic lesson was Mother's Day themed! I learned all about Eid ilom (Mother's Day)! I learned about the popular Mother's Day song, "sit ilhabiyeb ya habeeba".

You can watch it sung by Arab Idol contestants on this video.

The words of the first verse are:
"Sit ilhabiyeb ya habeeba
ya aghrla min rohe w damee
ya hanieena w kullik teeba
yarabe, haleekee ya ommee"

Which means:
"My dear Mother, you are the most beloved person in my life
You are more precious than my soul and my blood
You are loving and full of goodness
May God keep you my Mother"

Aww! Needless to say Mother's are very beloved here as well as back home! Happy (slightly belated) Palestinian Mother's Day to my Mom!!! I love you!

Father's Occupation

On Thursday I worked very closely with several students who are applying for scholarships to a special English language program. I looked over their applications to make sure they had filled out the forms correctly and it turned out it was a good thing I did because one student had written the following:

Father's Name: Ahmad
Mother's Name: Fatima
Father's Occupation: Israel

I suppose it makes sense that my student would know that definition of "occupation" better than the job one...

"Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young"

Happy International Women's Day! My school takes this day off to honor all women everywhere and while doing some research during my free time this afternoon I came across an article. You know how sometimes you read something in just the right place at just the right time? It seems like just what you needed to hear at that moment? Well, that is what happened to me with this article today. The article is a faux commencement speech written by Mary Schmich, a Chicago Tribune columnist on June 1st, 1997. It is titled, "Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young". The text was also recorded in 1999 by Baz Luhrmann. I recommend listening to the youtube.com video while reading the text:

"Inside every adult lurks a graduation speaker dying to get out, some world-weary pundit eager to pontificate on life to young people who'd rather be Rollerblading. Most of us, alas, will never be invited to sow our words of wisdom among an audience of caps and gowns, but there's no reason we can't entertain ourselves by composing a Guide to Life for Graduates.

I encourage anyone over 26 to try this and thank you for indulging my attempt.
Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97:


Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone.

Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.

Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen."

Lessons from Fairy Tales

All my best nuggets of wisdom come from my parents. This morning my Mom shared a quotation with me that she came across: "Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten." -G. K. Chesterton


Sometimes, living here it is so easy to be pessimistic about the situation. Every side of this conflict is guilty of injustices toward the others and every side has totally legitimate claims against the others. The conflict is political with religion frequently pulled in to complicate the situation. A person can get really bogged down in the seeming inevitability of this conflict and its irresolution.

This quotation reminds me that I have to keep hope. The most impossible things are the ones we refuse to believe are possible and do nothing about. If ever there were a dragon, it is the conflict here and in other places all over the world. The worst thing we can do is refuse to believe that anything can be done about these problems.

Chesterton reminds me why I gave my blog this title. Even though things like a solution to the Isreali/Palestinian conflict seem as impossible as beating dragons, the important part is to hope that such a thing can happen. It is essential to always believe that a further shore is reachable from here. 


Whatever your dragons may be, I hope you always believe they can be beaten.

The View From The Judge's Table

Last Wednesday I had my first experience as a judge for the English Bowl! This was the first of the internal rounds for the speech competition. In May, each of the four schools will send two 8^th, 9^th and 10^th graders to the final speeches competition. Before then there is a great deal of preparation which must go into teaching the students how to give speeches and determining who will compete in the finals.

For the past few weeks the English teacher and I have been working with the students on how to write speeches using the classic five paragraph format. The first paragraph begins with a hook to get the listener interested, followed by a short introduction to the topic and a listing of the three main ideas about the topic. Each of the next three paragraphs then elaborates on one of the main points. Finally a concluding paragraph leaves the listener convinced (inshallah!) and sums up the speaker’s point. While this format is something I learned the very first time I started writing papers and speeches, many of my students have never been exposed to such a formulaic writing technique. Needless to say, some were more resistant toward it than others. We worked on practicing writing speeches with the students and with some of the students, it took several times of me explaining how important good structure is and helping them re-write their speech before they came anywhere near to the structure we wanted.

Jump forward to last Wednesday, the first day of judging. Every single student in these three grades gave a speech for their classmates and a panel of three judges, including yours truly! Some of the students clearly just wanted to get the exercise over with and had not prepared very well. Most were pretty good, having a good structure but definitely still learning proper speech techniques. Finally, there were a few in each grade who really shown brightly! I was so proud of them for learning this new speech writing technique and running with it. Some had even gone a bit beyond the formula to make a really interesting and engaging speech!

A 10th grader gives her speech to the class.

For me, the experience of being a judge was the most fascinating part. I have auditioned,  and interviewed for a lot of things so far in my life and I anticipate having even more in the future. But this was the first time I have ever been in the judge’s seat. 

It is a surprising amount of work to be a judge. We wanted to be kind but, of course, some students had clearly prepared better than others; I never realized how painfully obvious it is when someone does not put in the actual work. It was clear some students had printed their speeches off the internet. The ones that really broke my heart were the students who clearly wanted to do well, but just were not as good as some of their peers. I could tell that some had worked hard and practiced but just had not quite managed to master the art of giving a good, effective two minute speech yet. Thankfully we were allowed to give a few students in each class two extra points, so even though these students will not move on to the next round, they will get some extra credit for putting in good work!

The esteemed panel of judges. That's me in the middle!

Although being a judge is a lot of work, it was also really fun! Not gonna lie, it was awesome being the one all cool, calm and collected in the back, scratching notes and looking with a critical eye. It was such a change from being the one who has to gather their nerves and do their very best; hoping that these particular 2 minutes will show all the work that has gone into preparing for them. 

In some ways, the craziness of switching sides from the speech-giving side to the judging of the table has been a lot of what I have learned so far this year. I spent a solid 17 years of my life in formal education but always on the student side of the classroom. To be suddenly thrown to the teacher’s side has been more challenging than I expected. Likewise, going from being the one giving the speech in class to being the one judging it is such a change of pace from what I have been used to. It is refreshing, exciting and all kinds of challenging to take on a different role in the classroom and in the workforce at large here. I am as grateful for these workforce life lessons as  I am for all that I am learning about the context here.