Working with New Teachers at PDO
It was my honor to meet with new participants in Cairo during the PDO. I knew from them that they have a wonderful orientation through the TAFL by the Arab Academy staff. yesterday and today they are eager to hear from us all. They learned some valuable strategies and techniques about teaching Arabic as foreign language.
Now they have opportunity to meet with alumni who have just returned to Egypt after a very successful year at their host schools in the US.
Abdo started by talking about his experience in South Carolina and talked about class room management. Emil talked about adapting new techniques and learning new strategies to teach Arabic. I talked about the importance of keeping students excited about learning Arabic all year long. Arabic is difficult language for American students, it is very helpful to teach through activities and have your students involved in meaningful projects." We are not Super Teachers, your English is better than ours when we first participated in this program!" I told the new teachers when they said you all did amazing things throughout the year. I added:" You are special teachers; you will do much more amazing and wonderful things during this year simply because everything in the US encourages you to do your best. Just remember, VERY FEW THINGS COME EASILY." We were asked so many questions about almost every thing specially the challenges that we faced during this year. The three alumni were very clear talking about the difficulties and challenges that we had and how we did overcome them all.
I was very glad while listening to new participants' questions and comments! It is as if it were just yesterday when I was sitting in the same place asking Christine and Halaa about Life in my new community in the US. Not many people knew about Kansas at that time. After spending one year there, I'm a kind of expert and a resource for people who are traveling there.
It was a wonderful orientation. The new participants are excited and full of enthusiasm. People at the AMIDEAST did a wonderful job.
My dear new TCLP participants, Egyptians are well known for their sense of humor and their ability to overcome challenges. Be positive, creative and have self confidence. I look forward to hearing from all of you during this year. I also look forward to working on a project between my students in Alexandria and your students in the US.
Emad Rawy
Alexandria, Egypt
The Arabic Camp Day, April,17th,2009
This is a life long experience for your students and for your self. Learning is not in the classroom, but also in real life situations.
Arabic Camp Day, April, 17th, 2009.
The idea for this Camp Day started a few months ago. The first thing I did was to form a Team Work. This team consists of teachers, parents, students and school administrator. I discussed the idea with all of them individually or in meetings. The idea appealed to all of them and I was much encouraged to go on. The American Council approved the idea for having a grant up to $5000.
After we had decided on a date, we began to expand the idea and thinking about including more kids from different schools.
The main goals were:
1- To have as many students as possible exposed to Arabic culture and Arabic language in a real life experience.
2- To provide the high school students with opportunity to use the language they learned at the classroom and have chance to experience new things in a practical way too. (Wearing Arabic clothes, eating Egyptian food, performing Arabic dance and teaching Arabic language.)
3- To involve people from the community to be excited about the Arabic language and culture.
4- To give people true picture of what Egypt looks like nowadays and who are the Arab?
5- To involve the local media to write about the Arabic culture and the Arabic language as a critical language so that students are encouraged
6- To provide all students with a life-long experience that remains with them for a long time. They may forget what I taught them all year round, but they will never forget the taste of Egyptian food, or the sound of the Arabic music or the happiness of their dance.
Important Facts about the day:
About 170 kids from14 different schools, 13 high school students, 5 teachers and 4 people from the school district and many parents took part in this wonderful event.
Ben Dunbar, the manager of TCLP came particularly to attend this event and he was so glad with it.
There were 6 different stations for food, clothing, reading, writing , music and countries and their flags.
We started at 8:40 AM and ended at 2:15 PM and we had 20 minute break between the morning session, the young kids up to grade 4 and the afternoon session up to grade 8.
The Arabic Camp Day on the News:
This event was covered by the local news paper and the school district website.
This is an Article in” The Sun Newspapers”
http://www.sunpublications.com/Education/Education/students-learn-arabic-culture-through-day-camp/menu-id-113.html
This is the news on the school district website:
http://www.smsd.org/default.asp?PASSID=29296&Ticker=yes
Emad Rawy,
Shawnee Mission South, Kansas
A trip to Louisiana
Coast Louisiana March 14 – 20
In August of 2005, Hurricane Katrina left her mark on the Gulf area ravaging homes and lives of many residents. I was so glad to have this chance to be one of the leaders of youth group who participated in mission trip to Louisiana for a week to help people there rebuild their houses.
I was surprised that after four years of the hurricane, you still see the destruction and ruins of many buildings and houses. People there are very kind, friendly and show a lot of hospitality. I met with Coocko , a 68 years old lady who welcomed me at her house and explained that people called her Cookco because she is used to cocking a lot of food every day, although she lives alone, surprisingly that every day some people go and knock at her door seeking food !
I also was invited to another local resident's home. The hostess told me shocking stories about Katrina and explained to me why people can’t leave this place and go elsewhere!
The students in my group and I were highly motivated to help those people rebuild their houses. We started at 7:30 every day and finished at 5:00. We made the floor of the houses and fixed the doors. Students were amazing, very obedient, well organized, full of energy and funny too. We worked, sang English and Arabic songs and learned Arabic phrases and vocabulary as well.
We were very close to “The South most area of Louisiana”. We visited New Orlando which has a very similar weather to Alexandria, Egypt. We also spend a night in Memphis and walked in the Blue Street!
We crossed the Mississippi River by ferry every day. We had fun at night after work. I told the whole group about life in Egypt. They were very curious and asked so many questions about every thing in Egypt. I work during the day and be interviewed in the evening!
It was a long trip. This is the longest distance I’ve ever driven a car! It took us 19 hours driving from Kansas City to Louisiana.
We stayed at a local church and we slept on the floor in sleeping bags. We had dinner together every night. I liked the students very much. Now I have a unique experience with students. I got chance to see another part of the American society, I no longer think that all Americans are rich, or live in comfortable houses, or have expensive cars after seeing people living in trailers! I can't understand after four years of the hurricane, there are lots of things that need to be done there!
Cross Cultural Connections
Have you ever thought about connecting your students here in the U.S to your students at your home country? WOW ~~ what a learning experience! What a day?
Live video conference to connect Egyptian, Johnson County students under the title:
“Cross cultural connections”
This was the title of a news letter I sent to the communication office at the school district . Shawnee Mission High School students enrolled in the CIS Arabic Language Program held a live 60 minutes video conference on Monday, March 2nd, with students from three different schools in Cairo, Egypt. The conversation was coordinated by Dr. Dalia Khalil, in Cairo and me in Kansas. This event was held from 7:30 – 8:30 a.m. at the Town Pavilion’s Video Conference Facility at 12th and Main in Kansas City while the Egyptian students used the American Embassy’s Video Conference Facility in Cairo.
This event aimed to:
- Help students from different cultures meet each other and begin to develop mutual understanding and respect to each other.
- Help U.S students learn about Egyptian and Arab cultures through the point of view of students their own age.
- Help students become aware of current global events and listen to other opinions about them.
- Provide U.S students the opportunity to use their Arabic language skills in real-life situations.
- Provide U.S students with a life long learning experience.
- Involve the local media to highlight the CIS and the importance of learning Arabic for students and parents.
- Get a true picture of both the Egyptian and American society.
I was so happy to see my students speak in Arabic and ask very good questions.
They asked.
- What is the most important international current event for you?
- What do you think about our president elect Obama?
- Can women be president or secretary of defense in Egypt?
- How did September 11th affect life in Egypt?
- How does the international economic crisis affect people in Egypt?
- What picture do you have in mind about American teenagers?
These questions were all in Arabic and the reply was in English.
I was surprised that one of my students answered a question about women’s role in Egypt in Arabic! He is in level 4.
One of the Egyptian students wondered if my student ( female originally from Palestine) feels different because she wears Hejab to cover her hair? and he received a very clear answer.
It was very fun too as one of the Egyptian students showed and expressed his enthusiasm to president Obama and American students clapped and laughed loudly.
American students were surprised by the accurate answers and statistics that Egyptian students gave.
Participants:
From Kansas, 12 students, two teachers, two parents including Lisa Lowrance the co-president of the PTA and Betsy Degen the Director of curriculum and instruction at the school district.
From Cairo,12 students from New Ramses College Private High School with their two teachers. Four students from Abou Bakr Experimental school. Three students from El Nahda Integrated Experimental School. An iEARN alumni. Three members of E-ERA staff including Dalia Khalil the director of E-ERA( Egyptian Education and Resources Network) and Mrs Hegazy The former Undersecretary of Education in Alexandria,
The event was covered by Kansas Star News paper on Wednesday, March 04, 2009 and by a local TV channel. http://www.kansascity.com/shawnee_mission/story/1065173.html
If you intend to have an event like that, I’ll be happy to assist you with that. We are working on having skype , yahoo messenger or I Chat and a web cam at school. This will be our new window to other local and international schools. I'm working on having another Video Conference with my students in Alexandria !
I hope that American Councils can help spreading this idea for all the TCLP participants and support them have connection between their students in U.S and in Egypt or China.
My first experience with snow
Earlier this week, Saturday, November 29th, I got up and had breakfast with my host family. I then was emailing someone when I got an email from my colleague at school saying "Hi Emad, enjoy your first snow!". I looked out of the window and saw that everything was WHITE! WOW.
This was my first time to see how snow overed everything. I went out at once and experienced it. Although it was very cold, I did enjoy it.
The next day, I got up at 7am and found that my host left me a "scraper" and wrote me a note: "This scraper is for your window Emad".
I have never seen one of these before. It was like a big plastic, black fork and I wondered what it is used for? Uncertain why it was
left for me, I decided to leave it on the counter and went out to drive to church.
I was very surprised to see so much snow that had covered all of the houses, grass, trees, cars and everything. I couldn't open the door of my car either as it was frozen shut? I didn't know what to do! I went back inside again and luckily my hostess was still there to help me. I asked her advice. She laughed politely and happily took the scraper and went out with me and showed me how to open my car's door by scrapping at it with the scraper. She also showed me how to remove the snow from the windows and gave me some useful advice about driving in such snowy weather like this.
I was very happy for this new opportunity and somewhat terrified. I was delighted to experience living, walking and even playing with snow that I used to only watch on TV and in the movie theater. I was terrified because it is generally very dangerous to drive on snow, at least for the first time.
I decided to drive and have my first experience with driving on snow. I drove very slowly, 40 mph where I was supposed to drive at 65 mph. I also saw a road accident and this increased my concern and caused me to drive even slower.
Finally, I got to the church. I was very excited and thanked God that I arrived safely. What a new experience for me! I'll never forget it.
My host offered to give me lessons on how to drive on snow. He promised to take me to a school parking lot and show me how to enjoy
driving during snow days. "I'll teach you how do this in an easy way, the same as I did with my son and daughters." He said.
Now with that promise I am waiting for some more serious snow to drop here in Kansas so I can practice driving on that slippery white stuff which is so foreign to my world in Egypt! How "terrifying"! I mean How 'fun'!
Emad Rawy,
SMS Kansas City
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