National day for students with learning difficulties

In the sake for enhancing teacher’s knowledge about students with learning difficulties, ”world vision” conducted a training course at “Al-Makassed” school to increase teacher’s awareness of such issue. 

It’s almost impossible to go through your teaching journey without encountering a student with learning difficulty. It may be your student, your children, your relative or someone you don’t know. It’s obvious that every student is unique, the fact that each student has his own strengths and weaknesses. For that, a teacher can’t compare students to the ideal student in the class; rather she must focus on students’ progress according to their own capabilities. 

Teachers are responsible to guide each student and help in developing the strengths and remedying the weaknesses. 

Many teachers refer to some students as being foolish and lazy, the fact that it’s not their fault sometimes being the way they are. It’s just the way that their brain works.

The teacher’s academic and humantary role is to enrich the teaching process with special techniques to help these  students cope with their learning difficulties through concentrating on the strengths of such individuals (vision, listening, feeling…), and asking about the ultimate way to attract such student and involve him.

Teacher’s main role is to create humans. It only requires some faith that we can deliver our message and we can make out good people out of ordinary ones. 

It’s not about the percentage of students who get the point. It’s about comprehensiveness. If only one student was out of track, then a problem exist. The teacher should think of other ways to involve this student.  You must not be proud only of the good student, be proud of the week one that get your point and get on the way. 

Feedback must be given according to the student situation, not in comparison with the “benchmark”.

Teachers must be aware of some properties to discover if there is any learning difficulty behind.

• Going to the bathroom repeatedly
• Talking out of turn
• getting into trouble around exams activities, or heavy periods of study
• Forgetting stuff related to school
• Cheating frequently and copying others work
• Being the class clown
•  Always having  reason why he have not completed the work
• Always being out of time
• Can’t distinguish between words
• Week analysis
• Memorization difficulty
• Difficulty in the automatic memory(he knows but forget to do..)
• Psycho-motor difficulty
• Lack of participation
• Reading problems
• Miss reading the question
• Do not understand what he read (information processing)
• Bad handwriting
• Undesired learning outcomes
• Writing phobia (hate to write)

All of these signs may indicate a learning difficulty triggered by the way the brains of such individuals work. These signs may be tricky sometimes, where a student having one or couple of these characteristics may be just a normal person affected by some psychological or sociological factors.

The role of teacher here is to diagnose the situation and try to find out a good therapy!

Chemistry or No Chemistry!

Your hearts meet and your eyes speak? You dream for future and live for the moment? You feel sparkles in the eyes and many many feelings that can’t be traded? Too many bonds, special connections, reactants and products?? 

If this is the case, then it’s CHEMISTRY.

Reactants: He + She

Products: love and love and love…

Word equation: He + she --> LOVE

More specifically: Adrenaline + norepinephrine + Dopamine + Serotonin + Phenylethylamine --> euphoric love 

Signs of chemical reaction:

·         Feeling of pleasure

·         Psychological arousal

·         Rapid heart beats

·         Shortness of breath

·         Excitement

·         Lover-sickness

As any spontaneous chemical reaction, love happens instantly. It either happens spontaneously from the first sight or it would never happen. Chemistry would explain why a person having a “full package” may not be the right person unless you find out some chemistry. I actually use this word too often to corroborate why a “full package” person would not fit. But I found out that it’s not just a word, it’s actually the chemistry of love. There are several hormones that interfere with your impressions as you see a person for the first time. These hormones include Adrenaline, norepinephrine, Dopamine, Serotonin and Phenylethylamine, which are responsible for that euphoric feeling that you feel for such one person. This irresistible cocktail of chemicals is induced actually by our brains. The fact that it’s not feasible to say “I love you from the bottom of my heart”, rather it’s more appropriate to say “I love you from the bottom of my brain!” I guess it’s more specific: p

Daydreaming or Nightdreaming?

It has just come to my mind. Which is more enjoyable daydreaming or night dreaming? Which one do you prefer? Although they are really two separate things but at the end, they are both dreams not reality.  For me I would like one side in each. Daydreaming is the one that can be controlled, creating your own world using fantasies and thoughts, but the one disadvantage is that it’s rapidly interrupted by a call that brings you back to real world. Night dreaming is the one that you have no control over but seems more real. It’s a great pleasure if the dream can match one of your real dreams but what’s worse is that it can be turned into nightmares where you have no control over the outcomes or may be very silly things you feel bored with.  A bad dream may also follow you all over the day leaving you in a depressed mood all the day. I can remember a night dream that always followed me when I was in my first elementary grades. I used always to dream that my shoes was lost at school and spend all the night searching for it, which was really very bothersome to me, the fact that I never find it! :p It was my enduring long lasting nightmare!

The best I can say here is that I love daydreams that carry on to night dreams! In such way I can live the best of both, where I can have control in the beginning shaping all what I like then continue to live the actual experience at night. Here it would look perfect I think until you realize that it’s just a dream…COME ON!

Be free to share your experience :) 

Men or Women: who is the more complicated gender?

Who do you believe to be more complicated a man or a woman?

At the first glace I have said it depends on the individual (you can’t compare apples to banana :p). But for me, at full blast, I think I am probably more complicated than men :$.

Women are often labeled as complicated in our society. To men it looks common since they are not one of them and usually know very little about women so that they do not understand them that much. To women it’s also a common thought since they fail many times to interpret their feelings or actions. But what exactly make them give the impression of being more complicated?

Women are usually known to think with their hearts rather than their minds, which make them very emotional, the fact that makes them be more complicated. They are easily tricked and can be hurt easily when they face problems with their personal relationships and get disappointed when they do not have their emotional needs fulfilled.  Also women today tend to perform multiple roles of being the lover, the wife, the mother, the daughter, the sister and the professional, which creates a large burden on them making their behaviors more complicated and their lives more complex. Men agree that women usually care a lot about minor and unimportant issues which could mean nothing to a man. This would leave a woman disappointed when she’s not understood and a man wondering what the matter is. Moreover many times you could notice that the woman could never forget anything that bothered her once which could interfere with her present and future life which is rarely the case with a man.  Also a woman cares a lot about her outer appearance and would like to be always the center of attention which might also explain why she looks complicated many times. A man fails occasionally from time to time to understand a woman failing again and again to give a right answer. If a woman asks her man concerning her weight or whether she looks fatter, the man absolutely, extremely, totally fails this question. If he says “no” then he would be called a liar, and if he says “yes” he would be left alone for his lack of feelings, outlook, interest and attention!  A woman would rarely tell her man exactly what’s wrong. She only tries to give some secret codes wishing and expecting him to understand, where the complication starts when her wish does not come true!

Lastly, we can say that every complication can be turned into a simpler one just by deep understanding of such matter to make any relationship more meaningful.

Should homework be banned?

Many students perceive doing an assignment as a punishment added to the 8 hours of attending classes at school. They would really be much glad to spend these hours playing under sun.

So should homework be banned??

On the cons hand, Homework is usually done when students are already tired from the long day spent at school, which sometimes add nothing to the things they learned in class. At school, students are treated equally and receive the same educational help from teachers, but at home some students have better advantages over others including the overall home atmosphere and the educational help provided by parents or private teachers. For me, as a teacher it’s hard sometimes to check whether the homework is solely done by the student or whether it’s copied or done with the help of an elder. Being young doesn’t mean that this person shouldn’t build bonds with others, unless the homework given says that sometimes, where homework seems unrealistic and hard for a student to complete in a realistic study time making them pay with their free time with family and friends to complete it…

On the pros hand, there are only few teaching hours in a school day, which are sometimes not enough to cover all the materials and come out with all what is needed from students, where the role of homework really comes to allow deeper education away of distraction of other students. Homework prepares student to work independently and to get used to such type of working for their future higher classes and career researches. Overtime, well planned homework can develop students to like the things they are doing and apply what they learned in school. It’s sometimes fun for students to find that the things they learned in class can work with them without a teacher’s help. After all, homework is one link between the teacher, the student and the parents, where parents get engaged in the learning process.

On balance, it’s hard to decide whether homework should be banned or not… I have just provided you with some cons and pros regarding this important issue, leaving you to decide on the winning hand…. Kindly share your opinion!