Our Philosophies - The Third Five

“My philosophy of education stems from the Islamic views of the creator, the universe, and the human nature. Thus, man is good and naturally willing to differencially learn and lead a prosperous life according to the Islamic teaching with a respected regard to the cultural uniqueness and diversity of every individual and ethnic group.  In that, as an EFL teacher I believe that my role is to create a more mentally challenging, emotional and uniquely culturally student – made and disciplined environment that I hold responsibility of.  We are but what we belive!”

Khadijeh O. Hamidi

“I believe every individual is unique, and my role as a teacher is to create and seize opportunities and help learners extend possibilities to reach the threshold of their minds empowered with the confidence, ability and desire to make the world a better place.”

Bassam Saleh

“I believe that each child is a unique individual who needs a secure, caring and stimulating atmosphere in which to grow and mature emotionally, intellectually, and socially. It’s my desire as an educator to help students meet their fullest potential in these areas by providing an environment that is safe, support risk-taking and invites sharing of ideas.”

Saleem Al-Jabali

 “I believe that teaching and learning is an orchestra played by both teachers and students. The more congruent they are, the more fantastic the tune is. Students are there waiting for the leaders to explore their potential talents, create their own culture, shape their own future, and help them to be well-prepared for the real world.”

Fatima Ramadan

“I believe that the main role of the school is to create a balanced generation who have the ability to participate in different activities in their society. In order to achieve that, the teacher should explore students’ potentials as well as their shining sides believing that each one of the students has something to add.”

Khawla Adarbeh

Our Philosophies - The Second Five

“Students of all social class, ethnicity, race, colour, and mental abilities want to learn. My job as a creative teacher is to provide them with tools and knowledge that are necessary to continue the learning process.  Teaching must be combined with student’s life experiences and they must be taught the techniques of creative thinking, logic, problem solving, and basic ingredients of argument..etc.”

Tahani Jamal

“I believe that the teacher should enlighten students’ way to discover their abilities and potential equipped by respect, pride to their culture and religion and having a wide open mind to communicate with others.”

Sabreen Al-Omari

 “I believe that I have a mental challenge, sense of joy, and an ethical contract in the interactive learning environment and to deal with the miscue of some students, take care and respect of them in order to support their axiology and to be proud of them.”

Sara Subhi Shawamreh

“I believe the children are our future and each and every one has the potential to bring something unique and special. My main role as a teacher is equipping and empowering rather than transferring knowledge, helping students in learning to learn.”

Shadi Ali Al-Khwaja

“I believe in getting a great proud tolerant independent student having beliefs and values in an appropriate environment in order to live in the wider community.”

Amira Issa Abu Al-Tee

Our Philosophies - The First Five

“I believe in my ability to create culture where students are well instructed and consistently guided. This culture, I believe to have the atmosphere of trust, respect and teamwork. Learning in such a motivating culture arouses students’ self-confidence, creativity and their responsibility towards their learning environment.”

Nihaya Saleh

“I believe that students are capable and unique who have the potential to bring something unique and special to the world, if we help and provide them with a responsive environment which moves with their changing needs, interests, and desires. As a teacher my role is to guide my students to develop a deep love and respect for themselves, others, and their environment.”

 Mervat Shawabkeh


“I believe in my ability to build a classroom culture based on ethics and human values where fair opportunities are offered to every student to prosper and develop her full potential in a systematic environment open to positive and congruent modifications.”

Salam Saleh


“I believe that all students are unique individuals who need to be placed in a safe and supportive environment that helps them develop psychologically, intellectually, emotionally, and socially. Building that conducive environment will allow them to meet their potentials. My role as an educator is to facilitate their learning and to promote respect among them.”  

Zeinab Ajarmeh


“I am a firm believer of student’s right to learn, shape their characters and develop their ability in a safe stimulating environment that instills society’s beliefs and morals.”

Yaser Alhreh

My Journey

Reality perception

My name is Sultan Awwad, I have been teaching English at UNRWA for about 7 years now. Although I have applied for an English teacher post to UNRWA, I have not realized the gravity of becoming one until I saw my name in the local newspaper. I didn't know what to do or what to expect. Nevertheless, I saw comfort in the fact that I spent about 12 years in schools as a student and naively assumed sufficiency of such an experience in performing my upcoming duties as a teacher.

Unfortunately, the comfort zone I capsulated myself in shattered into pieces when I saw the eyes of 45 students staring at me upon my first entrance to a class as a teacher! I then discerned that experience alter our perception of reality drastically.
Peculiarly, a boy sitting back close to the corner window (my favorite spot) called Hashem reminded me of myself; the glittering eyes, the confident smile, which can be interpreted mistakenly by a green teacher as a welcome sign. Yes, I was a green teacher but an adept student in giving teachers a hard time. Hashem would have been a perfect friend when I was a student; but now it is a whole different story! There is nothing pleasant in having someone like me in any class! I wanted to scream loudly "I'm one of you" I desperately wanted to reclaim my seat near that window where I could do my monkeyshines and manage my pranks. The only brilliant thing I did that day, which came out of instinct, is keeping a direct eye contact with them and wearing a shaky smile, which I strived to use as a cover to hide my fears. I saw no practical use whatsoever of my experience as a student except for my unrivaled ability to spot wicked students, which called for an emergency plan.
An emergency plan
I started to retrieve memory for the best teacher model that could deal with a naughty student such as Hashem. And there it was. Who else could it be? It was Mohammad aljaiousy; my tenth grade English teacher. I came to school the next day with high aspirations but things did not work as I hoped. I then turned to my capable peers to sip from their rich experience in terms of classroom management and teaching strategies. Some tips really worked fine but  it many had fallen apart when applied. It took me almost a year to realize that there was no unified booklet for teaching and that I had to invent my own.
I often saw teaching as a process of explaining a topic, encouraging students to ask questions, and giving Exams where some would pass and others would fail. I saw my performance as a teacher determined mainly by the evaluation sheet a supervisor fills upon attending a class of mine.
Milestone
All this changed three months ago when my mobile phone rang. It was my supervisor asking me whether I wish to participate in an intensive course by Dr. Michael Morsches. I had no idea about the course; nonetheless, I agreed to enroll.
Later on, we began communicating through the internet. He first required a brief summary about me, which I provided in no time. Then silence prevailed for a couple of days to be later dispelled by an assignment about philosophy. This course really sucks "I told myself". I hate philosophy. I hate people who write about it, talk about it, not to mention people who ask about it. However, I had already signed the contract! Nonetheless, Dr. Morsches had the redeeming quality of providing some elaboration on the questions he raise. He cut down the wicked term into three more wicked ones: ontology, epistemology and axiology.
I don't like the taste of failure, it is bitter, that’s why I made a good use of the notes provided by Dr. Morsches on each topic and ran a tiny research on the web. It turned out that philosophy isn't that wicked after all; it is a science that we live and experience everyday and certainly affects teaching and learning as well. It is the set of beliefs and conventions we hold, whether realized or not, which govern our behavior.
Philosophic responsibilities
It was blank inside my mind when I sat down to write about my philosophy as a teacher, but soon thoughts started to gush fervently as an eager prisoner longs for his freedom. I have started my philosophy article with questions I had carried with me almost forever; questions about the nature of things and people, about the perception of reality, about my students' nature and needs, about the process of knowledge acquisition, about the society and the ethical system we live in and about the values our student's cherish most.
Structuring my philosophy clearly, gave me a completely new self-reflection spectrum. My attitude as a teacher came to make more sense and I could see clearly my strength and weakness spots not only as a teacher but also as a human being. It is like having the sagacity to isolate frivolous, impertinent, and unreasonable variables of a ramified task profession and focus more on the core of teaching or "my philosophic responsibilities" as a teacher.
Setting up my philosophic responsibilities as a teacher, made me re-evaluate and reset my classroom instructions, my assessment techniques and the evaluation process in a more congruent pattern. Moreover, I came to perceive my philosophy in light of the goals set by the organization I work at, which added a great asset to my knowledge in keeping an equilibrium between the goals of the organization and those of mine. E.g., I didn't see a reasonable ground for applying authentic assessments by UNRWA because I had no clear perception of the overall image, nonetheless it turned out to be a crucial component in achieving my philosophic responsibilities.
I then realized that evaluating a teacher has more in it than just ticking a static evaluation sheet by an Ed. Specialist where both teachers and Ed. specialists have a little control over the many weltering variables in a rather blurry evaluation context. A teacher's evaluation should be based on teacher's congruent performance in the light of the philosophic responsibilities he/she cling to. In addition to that, I think Ed. Specialists' philosophic responsibilities should be reflected on the process of teachers' evaluation, which would yield a more natural equitable evaluation process for both teachers and Ed.specialists.   

Our Condolences

تتقدم أسرة أكاديمية lالتعلم والتعليم بأحر مشاعر التعازي والمواساة للزميل الأستاذ كمال الشوابكة وذلك لوفاة والدتة "المغفور لها باذن الله" يوم الجمعة الموافق 27/1/2012 نسأل الله ان يتغمد الفقيدة برحمته وأن يجعل مثواها الجنة وإنا لله وانا اليه لراجعون”

 “We express our deep condolences to our colleague Kamal Al-Shawabkeh for the loss of his Mother today, Friday the 27^th of Jan, 2012"

New Assignment

Your next homefun is very simple!  Find an online article regarding your research interest and forward it to me.  Also, write a small commentary about the article and what you think about it.  You need to start looking for a journal that you will eventually submit an article to. If you have any questions, let me know. Please get the article to me with your comments by next Friday, thanks :)

Punishment

 I met a parent today who left me with mixed feelings. Do I want to hit him? Do I need to burst with laughter right in front of him??

So, this well educated father ( who is an engineer by the way) said, “ With all respect to all what you do and all your techniques and philosophies, I think the only way to discipline my son is to spank him.”
……….
I stared at him for a moment to gather my thoughts and ideas, because I just wanted to give him a taste of his own medicine (a punch in the gut). Don’t worry guys, I didn’t do that.
I was able to convince him that a good teacher is always in control and he or she doesn’t need to be violent with the children to discipline them. After he left, it hit me… What if a teacher believes that the only way to control a class is by a wooden stick?? And even worse, what if a teacher uses verbal abuse thinking that words are only words and they can’t cause harm to these children in our classes.
I am not a parent, I have no idea how mothers deal with their kids at home. But to me, a child in my class is my responsibility. This child must be comfortable and he or she must like to come to class. How can he or she feel that way with an abusive teacher (think of everything that might hurt the child’s feelings as an abuse).
A teacher might say, “Well, you can’t control a class without some kind of authority. The good teacher is the one that controls the class and the students”
I agree with the last part, but the approach is the thing that I don’t agree with.
I would like to share with you what I usually do, and with a little training from the children’s part, it works like magic.
Pause for a little bit when a child does something wrong. Let the rest of the class notice that something wrong has happened and just…. Carry on. Talk to the child that misbehaved alone after class. Highlight the behavior not the child. Explain to him/her why it was wrong to do so and so. Even better ,let him/her talk about the wrong thing that happened during class. They understand no matter how young they are. Of course, there must be consequences, but not from the first time. You can agree on the consequences of the unwanted behaviors with your students in the beginning of the school year. Write these down on a notebook that you will keep all the school year long. These can be as simple as removing a star from the motivation chart, or as serious as staying in class during PE. ( believe me, the star thing is more serious than losing one’s home for the younger students).
And remember, reward comes along with punishment. Little things that you might do as reward will keep you in control not by the wooden stick, but by love and caring for those little angels.
Rasha