I am Adria
Arafat. The Adria part is my name given
to me by my mother – Adrienne. Her name
was given to her by my grandfather – Adrian.
I, of course, named my daughter wait for it….Adrienna. The Arafat part is from my wonderful husband
of almost 30 years, Aiman. Yes, I married
a Palestinian named Arafat back when it was one of the most recognizable names
in the world. And no we aren’t
related. We have four lovely children
and two grandchildren. My two oldest
live in the U.S. with their children, so I don’t get to see them much. My two youngest are here – one at Sharjah
University, and one at Raha International school.
I was born
and raised in a very small town in Utah, U.S.A.
I had never been east of Denver, and then moved to the Middle East. I have taught ESL in the U.S., Palestine,
Oman, Egypt, and most recently UAE.
I was
reminded while reading the other postings that I have always been curious. I was always the one my family asked to ‘fix’
things. My father would go for days not
knowing what time it was because he could never figure out his digital watch
and would wait for me to come home from college and reset it. My parents were founding members of the
flashing 12 club (think VCR’s a while back).
My father used to say he wasn’t on the information super highway, he was
on the information cul-de-sac. I am just
the opposite. I can’t get enough of the
internet, gadgets, widgets, music, movies, etc.
I played with an Ipad at an educational conference, and had to get one
the next day.
Having said
all that, I am pretty low tech in my class.
I try not to use any more than is necessary. The key word is necessary. What do my students
have, and what do they need.
I teach
foundation English. The key word there
is foundation. My students aren’t ready
for academic classes yet. It is my job
to get them ready. You know the one
about you can take a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink? Well, I feel my students are a lot like
that. I can lead them down the road, but
if they aren’t willing to do the work (I gave a homework assignment – only 1
out of 18 did it) then I must try something different. I won’t give up, but reaching these students
is proving very difficult. I try to make
my classes interesting, exciting, lively, but at the end of the day, my classes
are still the basics. We were supposed
to be “reviewing” the present continuous and most of the class acted like they
had never seen it before in their life! I
ended up ‘teaching’ it.
I would love
to “flip” my classroom, but fundamentally I know that this would a)not be
practical, b)not be allowed by the powers that be, c)not be accepted by my peers,
and mostly d)not be accepted by the students!
The students would never watch the videos. Not because they aren’t interesting, but
because they just don’t spend any time outside of class doing any school
work. I don’t want to become the ‘teacher
that shows videos’ just so I don’t have to teach. That isn’t my goal. I want to show videos because they are
entertaining, and educational – edutainment.
I have a lot
of ideas in my head, it’s the implementation of these that I have problems
with. I look forward to the module and
reading all of your stories, ideas, and insights.
