leave your worries at the classroom door !

yesterday as i was being ready to end my weekend and start my working days ... my son fell at his judo practice and he hurt his chin and broke a tooth... i ran to t he hospital where he had seven stitches.
this was a perfect ending to my weekend .. which means that the next week is totally ruined !! 
i woke up the next day thinking about my son how would he go to school ... would he be able to eat or even talk ... i was too worried to think about anything else ... when he woke up i asked him how he was doing and he said fine but could not eat ... i was too upset that i went work at 7:00 Am i.e 1 hour earlier than my time just to run away from looking at him.
i was the first one to arrive at school ... finished a few paper work then i had a not so pleasant talk with a friend who said that my son will never forgive me because i did not go to a plastic surgeon. i felt weak and a little feverish and the minutes were too slow for the first session to begin.
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.... then the bell rang ... i took my copybooks and walked to my first class ... knocked at the door and said "besm allah al ra7man al ra7im" " In the Name of Allah"   and entered... and suddenly i was someone else i was not the worried sick mum i was simply the teacher... i started talking to the girls about our project updates and how we will have a difficulty going to a bank at the regular working hours ... thought of some ideas to solve this but we needed the principle's approval ... i started to write today's objectives and i started my lesson... i was patient as i would be in one of my good mode episodes ... i was enthusiastic about warping all the objectives ... the student's had plenty of time to ask and solve and correct their work .. i even assigned them homework ... it was one of the good days although the lesson was somewhat theoretical with little applications.
and then came the next two sessions it was a boys class ... we laughed at the beginning, commented on some marks for the last quiz  and then it took me just 10 minutes to explain the lesson and they took the rest of the 90 minutes working like crazy in a quest to finish their classwork assignment and it's feedback too.

to cut a long story short ... as soon as i started to look at my classroom and my students as the perfect getaway of my headache ... i felt soooo happy and alive .... i felt that this is my kingdom ... my private space ... or may be my personal playing area :)
the moment i entered my class i decided to put everything behind me and leave it at the door ... at the end of the session i felt happy with my achievement that i told the story to my friends and told them "could you tell that there was something wrong with me ??" ... they said No... and then it hit me .... PROFESSIONAL ... this is what the word means!

The beginning

When i was a teenager i thought i wanted to be a mechanics ... you know the typical tom boy ... and as a means to full fill my dreams as well as my father's –of becoming a doctor- I joined faculty of engineering biomedical department.
As a department among other departments we were mocked for being  somewhere between a doctor and an engineer. As years went by … my faculty experience was a mixture of fun and work … I enjoyed my five years tremendously  … I  made good friends and graduated with a "good" grade and "excellence" project.
I then worked in the R&D department of the CASBEC center of advanced systems and biomedical engineering consultations … at the faculty of engineering…. Doing WHAT … I was an ICDL INSTRUCTOR ..... clue #1 !!!!
I remember the doctor in charge saying to me "I don't know how to read you … but it seems you don't actually know what you want yet"   … this was 13 years ago … a very insightful man i have to say.
and days went buy with me accomplishing nothing as an engineer but always excel in whatever i do even if it was a PowerPoint presentation for my boss.
then the opportunity presented itself for me to apply for an e-commerce diploma for 6 months sponsored by ministry of communication and IBM. i said goodby to my job and enjoyed being a student again. and INSTRUCTOR ... clue #2!!!!

Then came the major life altering experience ... MARRIAGE ! followed by getting PREGNANT ... but in Triplets . i stayed home doing absolutely nothing -other than managing my little school of three -for 2 and a half years and on the verge of madness i got an offer to teach in a new school where my kids would join nursery class.

i should feel happy by now .. since my whole career circulated around teaching as a profession... but yet it did not hit me right away.
 
For four years i did the job... as good as i could with no proper training just driven by my personal instinct to excel in what i do.

Then it finally hit me i needed to change the school in a quest to search for my professional values.

As soon as i started applying for teaching jobs in couple of schools ... going through personal interviews and demos ... i heard praise that i was a teacher by nature ... i got accepted and began my teaching career from the very beginning with an eagerness to learn.
for the first year I was willing to do extra administrative tasks to be close to my senior and absorb all her skills ... i even taught her a trick or two ;)

Then i joined the AUC teaching diploma and it has been a journey of  evolution that started with the first course.
learning about adolescence and the psychology behind all their action was the first key to a smiling understanding teacher's personality ... something i wasn't !
teaching strategies and resources were couple of keys to an empowered teacher ... and so it went ... five interesting enjoyable and challenging courses that made me more of a learner than a teacher and that made all the difference ... I became my students ...i know what they want what they like .....what they feel when they were bored ....frustrated... tired ... i even got the taste of what an A student feel when i ignore him to give a chance to those who don't know !!!
but the trick is i Knew what they needed and i Had the tool to give it to them.

so yes i was a nobody as an engineer and i became somebody as a teacher ... i was lost not knowing who i was and what i wanted and know i found myself feeling alive every time i touch a student's soul and mind.

brain storm !

Yesterday's session was quite interesting … first I had a taste of what I like best about the AUC Teaching diploma in general which is getting to share my experiences and thoughts with fellow teachers. So talking within the group discussing our response to the questions was enlightening. I can never get enough of these talks !

Second the fact that we got to talk in pairs about our ideas about projects and we got to compare and adjust our thoughts according to the feedback we had from each other. 

Pairing with lamis was definitely an added bonus … she's a sweetheart.

Last but not least … Dr. Joyane's idea about presenting all the projects to the class and voting and maybe adjusting some of them … actually gave us opportunity to end up with a group of thoughts simply applicable for different subjects and can be performed by many grades.

In fact I liked our discussions of the project ideas with class members ... I discussed mine today in my class… I asked the students to give me feedback about couple of ideas I had and I explained how I need the project to be motivating to them and relate family and community and they picked the "interests and banking project" I presented yesterday. 

So I think that to ensure a project's success … we should look for ideas from learners to guarantee motivation.