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Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Spring and Summer at Work

Principal and religion teacher discussing the
program for the Independence Day Celebration
Just in time for the start of the new school year (August 26th is the first day for teachers to report back to school), I'd like to share a few stories about my work from the end of the school year and the summer time.  I apologize for the tardiness of this post, but I must admit that I have spent more time on vacation this summer (more on that coming soon) than time at work.

Jordan's Independence Day is celebrated on May 25th and our school put on a festival complete with guest speakers, student performances, and 10 platters of mansaf.  I concede that I did not understand much of what the speakers had to say, or should I say yell, into the microphone; nevertheless, I gather that it was primarily about great our school is, how great Jordan is, and how great Allah is.  Personally, however, I was more entertained by the student performances.  I was completely oblivious to the fact that these groups of boys had been rehearsing their plays, speeches, and dance performances.  It was certainly a treat to see my students display their talents outside of English class.

5th grade performers backstage
At my principal's urging, I even managed to convince a group of 6th and 7th grade boys to memorize and put on an adaptation of Aesop's "The Frogs Who Want a King".  I attempted to film their performance but unfortunately the footage did not come out well.  As a consolation, I do have a video of one of the more mediocre rehearsals, which I hope will shed some light onto some of the English projects that I have taken on with the boys in my village:


More pictures from the Independence Day Celebration, as well as other pictures from my school and my English clubs, can be found by clicking here.

Morning Assembly

Rob and Mohammed leading a
lesson on decision making
Moving now to the summer, I worked at three camps this year: two English camps sponsored by the US Embassy and one Brain Camp in my village.  Brain Camp is rooted in the idea of a "growth mindset", which basically means that with effort one can grow and strengthen his or her brain.  While this idea may not seem too far-fetched to American ears, it represents a radical paradigm shift for the Arab and Islamic world.  Islam states that Allah has already predetermined all events past, present, and future.  This predetermination thus leads to a complacent acceptance of the way things are.  Teachers rarely talk about students who have potential, or students who are hard-working or lazy, or students who have the ability to overcome obstacles; rather, teachers talk about students who are "clever" or "weak".  That is that; people are the way they are and little can be done to change that.

The core principle of Brain Camp attempts to challenge this widely-held cultural belief.  As described in The Wall Street Journal, students who have a "growth" or "mastery" mindset believe that they can become smarter merely by putting in more effort.  The primary goal of Brain Camp is not to discredit the culture, but rather to explain the scientific differences between a "growth mindset" and a "fixed mindset" and to let the students determine which one to adopt.

Examining students' squiggle drawings
After the foundational mindset topics are discussed, students are then taught eight critical thinking skills over a six-day period:
  1. Memorization
  2. Organization
  3. Reasoning
  4. Strategy
  5. Decision Making
  6. Opinion Formation
  7. Perspective Taking
  8. Creativity
It is imperative to note, however, that we did not merely teach these skills individually and then walk away.  Rather, the students participated in a 30-minute interactive lecture and PowerPoint presentation for each skill followed by 80-100 minutes of games and activities to practice each of the skills.  The practice games and activities ranged from sorting beans with vocabulary words written on them for Organization, to Blokus for Strategy, to squiggle drawings for Creativity.

Sorting beans
Finally, students watched a 12-minute video on the water shortage problem in Jordan and spent the last day developing a final project to help address the issue and solve Jordan's water crisis.  I have to admit that I was especially impressed by the quality and diversity of projects developed by the boys from my village.  After several brain-storming sessions the three groups developed models and presentations for the following ideas:
  1. More efficient water conservation shower heads
  2. Education campaign to address the water shortage and water conservation in Jordan
  3. Improved technology for well digging and site location
Brain Camp certainly has been one of the most-rewarding projects that I have organized and run thus far in Jordan, but I absolutely could not have pulled this off without the support and dedication of fellow Peace Corps Volunteer Rob Delaney and Village Counterpart Mohammed Amoush.  Without both of these two amazing men working all six days, my Brain Camp would have been an utter disaster and I cannot thank them enough for supporting me and the boys from my village in this project.  For pictures of them, and from throughout the Brain Camp, please click here.

Certificates!

Lastly, please allow me to briefly mention the two other camps that I worked at this past summer.  These were both Environmental English camps sponsored by the US Embassy.  I taught drama with fellow Peace Corps Volunteer Veronica to 6th-9th grade boys and girls that participate in the ACCESS program at a village school close to Petra.  Additionally, I taught Environmental English to 7th-10th grade girls in Aqaba with Kathy and Meg.  Teaching with these three Peace Corps Volunteers was a real treat for me and I hope to have future opportunities to collaborate with them or other female volunteers as my village work and village life is almost 100% male.

Please enjoy pictures from my first SCUBA diving trip in Aqaba as well as this video of a cheer that Meg taught to the girls (and then promptly asked the male teachers to demonstrate):

2 comments:

  1. Good morning how are you?

    My name is Emilio, I am a Spanish boy and I live in a town near to Madrid. I am a very interested person in knowing things so different as the culture, the way of life of the inhabitants of our planet, the fauna, the flora, and the landscapes of all the countries of the world etc. in summary, I am a person that enjoys traveling, learning and respecting people's diversity from all over the world.

    I would love to travel and meet in person all the aspects above mentioned, but unfortunately as this is very expensive and my purchasing power is quite small, so I devised a way to travel with the imagination in every corner of our planet. A few years ago I started a collection of used stamps because trough them, you can see pictures about fauna, flora, monuments, landscapes etc. from all the countries. As every day is more and more difficult to get stamps, some years ago I started a new collection in order to get traditional letters addressed to me in which my goal was to get at least 1 letter from each country in the world. This modest goal is feasible to reach in the most part of countries, but unfortunately it’s impossible to achieve in other various territories for several reasons, either because they are countries at war, either because they are countries with extreme poverty or because for whatever reason the postal system is not functioning properly.

    For all this I would ask you one small favor:
    Would you be so kind as to send me a letter by traditional mail from Jordan? I understand perfectly that you think that your blog is not the appropriate place to ask this, and even, is very probably that you ignore my letter, but I would call your attention to the difficulty involved in getting a letter from that country, and also I don’t know anyone neither where to write in Jordan in order to increase my collection. a letter for me is like a little souvenir, like if I have had visited that territory with my imagination and at same time, the arrival of the letters from a country is a sign of peace and normality and an original way to promote a country in the world. My postal address is the following one:

    Emilio Fernandez Esteban
    Avenida Juan de la Cierva, 44
    28902 Getafe (Madrid)
    Spain

    If you wish, you can visit my blog www.cartasenmibuzon.blogspot.com where you can see the pictures of all the letters that I have received from whole World.

    Finally I would like to thank the attention given to this letter, and whether you can help me or not, I send my best wishes for peace, health and happiness for you, your family and all your dear beings.

    Yours Sincerely

    Emilio Fernandez

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey Craig, great blog! I did Peace Corps back in 2002-2005 in Lesotho (inside of South Africa). I'm heading to Jordan for vacation in late November and wondered if you had any suggestions of definite places to go and other questions? My email is jboogchronicles@gmail.com if you have the time.

    Thank you for your time!
    Josh

    ReplyDelete

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