Week 10. Bye..!!

   What a nice feeling when you come to the end..! Patience is the key to relief. When I look back to this course I see how short it was, yet very busy. All participants in this course are involved in many things and that is a key factor for making this class hectic.

Needless to tell how squeezed my schedule was during the last couple of months, you believe it or not, I did not even have time to cook. I was supposed to join an intensive Japanese class. It would take me all the time. I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said that it was the most overwhelmed period I have ever had in my life.

When I got an email from Oregon I didn’t know what to do..! How could I catch up with these things..?! How could I stand up to all my responsibilities..!? I did not give them a reply until the last moment. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to handle all. Eventually I said to myself “Why don’t you give it a try, you’ll lose nothing, if you could keep up with the others that would be fine, otherwise you can just drop out..”.

But it was quite the opposite, once we started the course I got a different feeling, it turned to be an oasis that I come to after a long and tiring day. I wouldn’t though ignore the fact that it was also demanding. When I look back I say “wow, I just made it.. how come..?!”. It seems like the saying I used not to believe in became true “If you want something done, ask a busy person”. Of course Allah’s help is in the first place, it was there all the way long.

We learned so many things; Delicious, which is really delicious. It’s like a backpack; you just put your stuff in and go wherever you want. I personally got to know many websites I wish I had known at certain early stages in my life. The blog we made at the beginning, which will continue to be my reflective blog in the future, is also a fruit of this course. We made our own websites, ANVILL accounts.. etc, the list goes on and on. Those tools are the fertile soil where you can plant your ideas, and then keep watering these plants with a constant technological update.  

Finally, I want to thank all my classmates from whom I got a lot of benefit. It’s my great pleasure to get to know all of you guys. I wouldn’t have gotten this chance hadn’t been in this course. Thanks also to our guests who shared with us their experience and expertise. Last but not least, thank you Robert.. thanks for your comments, feedback and ENCOURAGEMENT.

Best Wishes 

Week9: Our study habits..

    This week’s discussion made me recall the question that I often raise with my friends “How much a student learn from the typical studying?”. I always try not to impose my opinion even if it’s right.. Hold on a second.! What do you mean right?! Right to who..!?.. Oh yeah, I am sorry, it’s just right to me.. It could be wrong from another’s point of view. But anyway, diversity of thoughts is always a healthy phenomenon.

The experience has proved to me that most of our study habits are, unfortunately, old-fashioned. How do we call it then when the student spends 12 years of his life at least, starting by the elementary school up to the high school, and when you ask him/her what are you good at, or what are your strengths? They just stand mute not to know what to answer..! Who is responsible for that?! Isn’t the educational insinuations and teachers?! Why do they insist on giving the same dose with the same amount to all students..?! Didn’t they realize that everyone is different form the other?! That’s how we were created, and based on that we should be working with people around us including our students..

You imagine with me, how would it look like if we just focus on our students’ talents and help them use those talents the right way?! I can imagine a society full of thousands of  people like Al-Khwārizmī, Ibn al-Nafis, Edison, Shakespeare..etc. Kids are like a clay, you shape it the way you want, you make it the shape you want. It’s our responsibility, whether we are parents or teachers, to try to find those kid’s talents and offer them to the world, and get the rewards and words of thanks for offering that genius..  or the opposite could be done quite easily “bury it” and get the condemnation and humiliation forever.

In school, Edison’s would often wander that made his teacher call him “addled” and that was the last straw that broke the camel's back. He left the school just after three months of official schooling. He recalled later, "My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt I had something to live for, someone I must not disappoint." His mother homeschooled him. It’s his mother who got the credit for that and it’s his teacher who’s still blamed for wasn't able to identify his talent.

Like Edison, the cornerstone of the modern Arabic literature “Mostafa Saadeq Al-Rafe'ie”, he dropped out the official schooling because of a hearing disability, but that fact did not stop him, rather his dad who was a learned man, put a huge library in his hands that he would spend most of his time in, and eventually the most famous Arab poet of the early twentieth century came out of that library.

Examples are endless in this regard, in every society and every culture, and I’m not against official schooling, this is an extreme that I am not in favor with, however I don’t like either the end of the other extreme. We want to hold the stick form the middle, to give a space to our children and students, to find exactly what everyone is really good at. As I said in one of my posts this week “what fits X student doesn’t necessarily fit Y” and based on this fact we should move. If you see your student has sort of tendency towards something, whatever that might be, don’t be a stumbling block on his path, rather, be a bridge to the area where he/she fits best. That way we can guarantee perfect education, perfect generation and obviously perfect outcome.

We got our projects done too, and we had the chance to get to know Tom and Max, Editors of the FORUM. Big thanks to both. They reminded us this valuable magazine.