1. Taking the bus in the morning has its advantages. I get about 30 minutes more sleep while someone else drives. Extra sleep, except for today, today when I walked out the door nd a the bus was pulling away. Luckily, one of the students saw me and told the bus. Yikes that was close. I had no plan B. Here is a picture of the inside.
2. Students DO NOT use their cell phones in class or the hallways. It's only allowed at lunch. Speaking as someone who loves her phone,it's kind of nice. Students are distracted in other ways, not the phone. All the adults enforce it.
3. This system has a great bilingual system. Students have fluent conversations with me in English. They've had instruction in almost all classes in English since kindergarten. They take Arabic history, in Arabic.
4. There are cameras in the classroom.
5. Students are the same everywhere. I've taught and observed classes and each class has: the class clown, the introvert, the nerd, the slacker, the hall wanderer and so on. I found them right away.
I taught 4 classes while I was here. I did Born of Man and Woman, MLK's Why We Can't Wait and Company Man. I even told jokes and they laughed! Success :-)
I also gave a talk to parents about AP English. Here we are.
After the parents. I spoke with teachers and helped develop a plan for them to start their AP English program. They're ready. The program is going to be great. Here is my Egyptian English department. Tomorrow is my last day in Egypt.
Sounds like a wonderful experience!
ReplyDelete