In Germany, the Christmas season begins with Advent. A wreath of evergreens with four red candles is hung in the home. One candle is lit on each Sunday before Christmas.
Decorating the tree is an important part of the Christmas celebration. Besides using ornaments, lights, and tinsel, the German people also hang cookies on the branches. The cookies are shaped like people, animals, hearts, or stars.
St. Nicholas visits the children on Dec.6th and leaves candy and other sweets. Children leave notes with St. Nicholas, telling him what they want. Children believe gifts are brought by the Christ Child (called Christkindl). The gifts are opened on Christmas Eve.
On Christmas Eve families go to church, then feast on a large dinner of roast goose or duck (stuffed with apples), "stollen" (Christmas bread) and marzipan candy. After dinner, the children are allowed to eat the candies and the cookies that are hung on the tree. Some families also have a gingerbread house covered with candies, cookies and tiny decorations
Sufi Music is a genre of music inspired by Sufism. Sufism or also called tasawwuf is defined by its adherents as the inner, mystical dimension of Islam. A practitioner of this tradition is generally known as a Sufi or Dervish.
Therefore, Sufi music is also central to the whirling dervishes and the ceremony of Sema, who use a slow, sedate form of music featuring the Turkish flute, the ney. The Video shows a performance of a Dervish with sufi music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ke7WDrmqpA&feature=related
In love masnavies fiction is set by tradition. In this fiction, the love adventure of heroes was generally directed by spiritual guides, sheikhs, prophets, friends, or by a divine sense of sound that is manipulative and powerful. The effect of this power often serves to shape the ideal world. In these masnavies the power of guidance creates a sense of direction in truth and relationship. Ideal elements are created through understanding traditional fiction. These elements are; love, perfect human beings, good-evil conflicts, advice, morally-Islamic, outside world, helpful and supportive friends and prayers.
The German education system is different in many ways from the ones in Anglo-Saxon countries, but it produces high-performing students. Although education is a function of the federal states, and there are differences from state to state, some generalizations are possible.
Children aged three to six may attend kindergarten. After that school is compulsory for nine or ten years. From grades 1 through 4 children attend elementary school(Grundschule), where the subjects taught are the same for all. Then, after the 4th grade, they are separated according to their academic ability and the wishes of their families, and attend one of three different kinds of schools:Hauptschule, Realschule or Gymnasium.
The Hauptschule (grades 5-9 in most German states) teaches the same subjects as theRealschule and Gymnasium, but at a slower pace and with some vocational-oriented courses. It leads to part-time enrollment in a vocational school combined with apprenticeship training until the age of 18.
The Realschule (grades 5-10 in most states) leads to part-time vocational schools and higher vocational schools. It is now possible for students with high academic achievement at theRealschule to switch to a Gymnasium on graduation.
The Gymnasium (grades 5-13 in most states) leads to a diploma called the Abitur and prepares students for university study or for a dual academic and vocational credential. The most common education tracks offered by the standard Gymnasium are classical language, modern language, and mathematics-natural science.
Grundschule teachers recommend their students to a particular school based on such things as academic achievement, self confidence and ability to work independently. However, in most states, parents have the final say as to which school their child attends following the fourth grade.
The Gesamtschule, or comprehensive school, is a more recent development and is only found in some of the states. It takes the place of both the Hauptschule and Realschule and arose out of the egalitarian movements in the 1960s. It enrolls students of all ability levels in the 5th through the 10th grades. Students who satisfactorily complete the Gesamtschulethrough the 9th grade receive the Hauptschule certificate, while those who satisfactorily complete schooling through the 10th grade receive the Realschule certificate.
No matter what kind of school a student attends, he/she must complete at least nine years of education. A student dropping out of a Gymnasium, for example, must enroll in a Realschuleor Hauptschule until nine years have been completed.
Beyond the Haupschule and Realschule lies the Berufsschule, combining part-time academic study and apprenticeship. The successful completion of an apprenticeship program leads to certification in a particular trade or field of work. These schools differ from the other ones mentioned in that control rests not with the local and regional school authorities, but with the federal government, industry and the trade unions.
German children only attend school in the morning. There is no provision for serving lunch. There is a lot more homework, heavy emphasis on the "three R's" and very few extracurricular activities.
A very low-cost or free higher education could lie beyond a German Abitur. Many of Germany's hundred or so institutions charge little or no tuition. But, students must prove through examinations that they are qualified.
There are several varieties of university-level schools. The classical universities, in the tradition of Alexander von Humboldt, provide a broad general education and students usually attend them for six and one-half years. The Technical Universities (Technische Hochschulen)are more aimed at training students for specific careers and are usually attended for four and one-half years. There are also Hochschulen for art and music.
The whole German education system, including the universities, is available to the children of bona fide expatriates. The catch, of course, is that the classes are conducted in German, which is usually all right for school beginners but becomes more and more of a problem as the children get older.
http://www.howtogermany.com/images/school_chart.jpg
Krashens article “Second Language Aqusition” inspired by work in bilingual education, presents a different view, one in which the first language can accelerate second language acquisition. This happens in two ways: First, and most relevant for this discussion, education in the first language supplies background knowledge, which can help make input in the second language more comprehensible. Second, as long as literacy in the first language is a short cut to second language literacy. Furthermore once one learns to read in any language, it is much easier to learn to read in another; developing reading ability in one language is a short-cut to developing reading ability in any other language, even when the writing systems are different. Some of the facts supporting these points come from evaluations of bilingual programs in which minority language children are provided with subject matter knowledge and literacy in the first language, along with plenty of comprehensible input in the second language. Students in these programs gain at least as much of the second language as those in non- bilingual programs in which all instruction is in the majority language, and regularly acquire more. This position also explains the success of children who arrive as immigrants in another country while of school age, and who do well in school, succeeding academically and acquiring the majority language well. These children, in every case, had a good education in their own country before emigrating.
Jim Cummins presents in his article “Empowering Minority Students: A Framework for Intervention” a theoretical framework for analyzing minority students’ school failure and the relative lack of success of previous attempts at educational reform, for example compensatory education and bilingual education. Cummins suggests that these attempts have been unsuccessful because they have not altered significantly the relationships between educators and minority students and between schools and minority communities. He shows ways in which educators can change these relationships, thereby promoting the empowerment of students, which can lead them to succeed in school. Minority children’s cognitive/academic growth and socio-psychological development are enhanced by maintaining and further developing their first language. Cummins’s “Developmental Interdependence Hypothesis” explains that the development and maintenance of minority students’ home language contribute extensively to the learning of a second language and academic success. A child’s second language competence is partly dependent on the level of competence already achieved in the first language. The more developed the first language, the earlier it will be to develop the second language. When the first language is at a low stage of development, the more difficulty the achievement of bilingualism will be.
After decades of collaborating to enhance child language vocabulary, Betty Hart and Todd Risley spent 2 1/2 years strongly observing the language of 42 families throughout Kansas City. Exclusively, they looked at household language use in three special settings: 1) professional families; 2) working class; 3) welfare families. Hart and Risley gathered an gigantic amount of data during the study and subsequent longitudinal follow-ups to come up with an often cited 30 million word gap between the vocabularies of welfare and professional families by age three. This number came from the data that showed welfare children heard, on average, 616 words per hour, while children from professional families. Essentially children with college educated parents heard 2153 words per hour. Betty Hart and Todd Risley’s 1995 study that demonstrated that by age 3, most middle-class children had much larger vocabularies than children from low-income families. Middle-class parents speak, on average, 300 more words per hour to their children. The longitudinal research in the following years confirmed a high correlation between vocabulary size at age three and language test scores at ages nine and ten in areas of vocabulary, listening, syntax, and reading comprehension. This study was afterward used to fuel the fire of arguments for early childhood programs such as Head Start.
Grammar is central to the teaching and learning of languages. It is also one of the more difficult aspects of language to teach well.
Many people, including language teachers, hear the word "grammar" and think of a fixed set of word forms and rules of usage. They associate "good" grammar with the prestige forms of the language, such as those used in writing and in formal oral presentations, and "bad" or "no" grammar with the language used in everyday conversation or used by speakers of nonprestige forms.
Language teachers who adopt this definition focus on grammar as a set of forms and rules. They teach grammar by explaining the forms and rules and then drilling students on them. This results in bored, disaffected students who can produce correct forms on exercises and tests, but consistently make errors when they try to use the language in context.
Other language teachers, influenced by recent theoretical work on the difference between language learning and language acquisition, tend not to teach grammar at all. Believing that children acquire their first language without overt grammar instruction, they expect students to learn their second language the same way. They assume that students will absorb grammar rules as they hear, read, and use the language in communication activities. This approach does not allow students to use one of the major tools they have as learners: their active understanding of what grammar is and how it works in the language they already know.
The communicative competence model balances these extremes. The model recognizes that overt grammar instruction helps students acquire the language more efficiently, but it incorporates grammar teaching and learning into the larger context of teaching students to use the language. Instructors using this model teach students the grammar they need to know to accomplish defined communication tasks.
Tereza and Tomas, Tomas and Sabina, Sabina and Franz, Franz and Marie-Claude--four people, four relationships. Milan Kundera's masterful novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), tells the interlocking stories of these four relationships, with a primary focus on Tomas, a man torn between his love for Tereza, his wife, and his incorrigible "erotic adventures," particularly his long-time affair with the internationally noted painter, Sabina. The world of Kundera's novel is one in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and fortuitous events. It is a world in which, because everything occurs only once and then disappears into the past, existence seems to lose its substance and weight. Coping with both the consequences of their own actions and desires and the intruding demands of society and the state, Kundera's characters struggle to construct lives of individual value and lasting meaning.
A novel of ideas, a provocative look at the ways in which history impinges on individual lives, and a meditation on personal identity, The Unbearable Lightness of Being examines the imperfect possibilities of adult love and the ways in which free choice and necessity shape our lives. "What then shall we choose?" Kundera asks at the beginning of his novel. "Weight or lightness?" This international bestseller is his attempt to answer that question. And the answer is hinted at in the novel's final scene, in which Tomas and Tereza find themselves in a small country hotel after a rare evening of dancing. When Tomas turns on the light in their room, "a large nocturnal butterfly" rises from the bedside lamp and circles the room in which they are alone with their happiness and their sadness.
Jaques Derrida is discussion the question about the base an excavation of the conditions of the possibility of giving.
Is there a way to give without putting into the tyranny of an economic circle which changes a gift into a debt that demands repayment? This basic question leads Derrida into an archeology of the paradox fundamental to a gift: in order for a gift to be bestowed or received as a gift. This must seem different than a gift, for its permeable appearance or identification as a gift immediately collapses it into the ceaselessly cycle of debt and reimbursement. Gift giving has no real place in business relationships or etiquette.
In the Turkish tradition gift giving is very important. There are a lot of reasons, why people have to or want to give a gift for somebody. Especially by weddings.
Weddings are huge celebrated in Turkey. As a wedding gift, it is a Turkish tradition to buy the bride golden coins, called “ceyrek altin”, worth a hundred or more dollars, to pin on her dress. Friends, relatives, everyone buys them.
The case is, if Turkish people get a present from somebody, they feel that they have to give the same kind or a little bit more expensive than the present back. My Grandmother says for gifts “odunc”. Odunc does not mean present. It does mean lent.
Derrida s problem with to give a gift and expecting a gift are in the Turkish culture too. Maybe this is a human being character. If you give something, you want something.
Of all classes I took in college, the two that have helped me most in my life have been Composition and Grammar. In these classes I learned effective writing skills and language skills. The writing skill is the primary basis upon which your work, learning and intellect will be judged in college, workplace and in the community. Writing beautiful prose and poetry is a talent. Writing effectively is a skill that can be learned. When you have not basic writing skills then you do not feel comfortable to show your paper to others.
Writing is like art. Everything must be perfect. Your environment, mood, feelings and knowledge have to be ready. An artist needs not only the equipment, like colors, brushes and canvas, but also the perfect timing. Therefore, I can never push myself to start to write. When I am ready, I feel it and then sit somewhere where I am alone. I make sure that I have everything with me what I need, such as a pencil, pen, notebook, my articles, and blank paper.
The best writing environment is where I have all of my tools to hand; I am focused on my job and not distracted. Especially for me, it is hard to stay focused and motivated when there are so many outside influences bearing down on me. Therefore, I do not even drink tea or coffee. I have only a bottle of water on my desk. For me the rule is: The simpler your work environment is, the easier and faster you will get your work done.
In the 19th century writing was a rare gift. In Germany only in churches you could learn reading and writing in Latin. To write and read in German was not imported because these skills were only used for the reading and understanding of the Bible, which was in Latin written.
Nowadays, the relationship between illiteracy, social alienation, and poverty is too acute to ignore. Pauline Gibbons discusses in chapter 4 and 5 some difficulties that ESL students may have in learning to write in English. She suggests a teaching cycle that models and makes explicit some of the major forms of writing in school.
The Curriculum Cycle explain how ESL teachers can apply “Explicit teaching” in classroom.
In the first stage, the teacher has to build the field. This means that the teacher should give enough background knowledge about this topic. In this stage the students could read, listen or write about the topic. For example, when the topic is “A trip to Washington DC” the teacher has to explain that this is the Capitol of the
USA. The teacher can ask some questions and show pictures of the White House and Pentagon. After the ESL teacher wrote down the vocabulary, for example, government, president, capitol, politics first lady, the class can watch a short documentary about the president and his family.
In the next stage the teacher and students can write a letter to the President. They can write the needs of their school. For example, new tables and more teachers. In this stage the teacher can explain grammatical rules or sentence structure.
As homework the students can write a letter with their own wishes to the President. By the last stage the student have developed background knowledge about the topic and they also learned linguistic characteristics of the text type.
The teacher can get important information about the background of the student. The teacher should ask themselves what the text is telling her/him.
The research, which came about with the cooperation of the Heinrich Boll Foundation, Chrest Foundation and Global Dialogue, notes that that one of the very first Turkish words that Kurdish children learn in the school is “be quite.” According to students interviewed in the study, they quickly discovered that they were not allowed to speak in Kurdish even during breaks and had a strong feeling of alienation and desire to return home as soon as possible. First graders especially face many psychological hardship, such as not being able to express themselves, being unable to even ask permission to go the toilet, learning to read and write quite later, and even when they do learn, not understanding the meaning of what they are reading and writing. Most children also complained about the negative attitude by teachers and said they felt humiliated. The children also felt that when they improved their Turkish, they were afraid of losing fluency in their native language and facing communication problems with their parents. The teachers who don’t know Kurdish also face similar problems. The interviewed teachers pointed out that they are unable to enjoy teaching, disliked having to make hold students back to repeat the year and they too had feelings of alienation. Teachers that also spoke Kurdish are not immune from those feelings as they could not speak in Kurdish during class, but did so during individual conversations with their students. Parents of the children who don’t know Turkish said they found it difficult to participate in school meetings and were not able to help their children, but that they still tried to encourage their children to learn Turkish. The report stresses that the first years of school are significant for many communication problems between the students and the teachers. “Many teachers pointed out that the students are willing to learn and trying to learn but as their Turkish is not good enough they miss the opportunity to continue to their education. Most of the children felt stressed due to their language difficulties and felt they were considered as less intelligent, lacking motivation and not studying hard enough,” the report pointed out. According to the research, children face the feeling of being a loser from the very start of their school life and they try to cope with feeling of being behind because they spend their first years in school trying to learn a new language instead of new academic subjects. The students complained that as they didn’t know Turkish they felt stigmatized and subject to physical violence not only by their teachers but also from their peers. The students also complained that some teachers forced some of the students to submit reports about who is speaking in Kurdish at school and after school thus creating further pressure on the students. The report discusses these problems and provides international examples of bilingual education; however also points out that it is not easy to develop a model for this kind of education. Other solutions that the researchers point out include transforming the dominant teacher/submissive student relations; creating university departments that educate teachers on bilingual education; training teachers on diversities of the languages and cultures; allowing Kurdish speaking teachers to specialize in bilingual education methods; encouraging teachers to learn other languages spoken in Turkey; opening reading and writing in Kurdish courses for the parents; raising awareness in society of languages other than Turkish and TV programs for bilingual students. | |
Last week I saw the documentary “Waiting for Superman” directed by Davis Guggenheim. I really wanted to see this movie. /I wanted to learn more about the educational system in the USA, it’s the problems and lacks. Also, I have only spent time here in New York and I am very interested to see the other states because everybody is telling me “New York is New York and not USA”. I was thinking that almost everybody in the US goes to high school and maybe doesn’t have 10 % a high school degree.
But “Waiting for Superman” opened my eyes. I saw in the movie two boys and a girl who were hoping to get a place in these special schools. The girl wanted to become a doctor and help other people. Her whole life was dependent on a lottery.
By the end of the documentary, I tried not to cry but then I saw a lot of people had been craying. I saw their red noses and wet eyes.
And surprise surprise, the USA does not give everybody the same chance and choices. Now, I am wondering what is the role of the teacher? Could teachers be the supermen? I think teachers are the supermen/women and therefore we need sacrificing teachers to close this gap in the education system.
I read an interesting article written by Barbara Johnson. This article is about deconstruction. Deconstruction is a theory of literary criticism and philosophical movement which questions traditional assumptions about certainty, identity, and truth.
In The article of Barbara Johnson “Writing and reading differently” mentions that the reader interprets and reads the literature from his personal view and experience. In this case each reader will understand the literature different. The understanding will be depending on the reader’s social background, knowledge, religion, political attitude and so on. However, privileging commonality and simplicity and seeking unifying principles deconstruction emphasize difference, complexity, and non-self-identity. A deconstructive reading of a text, or a deconstructive interpretation of philosophy (for deconstruction tends to elide any difference between the two), often seeks to demonstrate how a seemingly unitary idea or concept contains different or opposing meanings within itself. The elision of difference in philosophical concepts is even referred to in deconstruction as a kind of violence, the idea being that theory's willful misdescription or simplification of reality always does violence to the true richness and complexity of the world. This idea can be taken as a rejection of the philosophical law of the excluded middle.
If we combain this with the quotion of Barbara Johnoson
“…Deconstruction is first and foremost a way of paying attention to what a text is doing – how it means, not just what it means…”
She is trying to say that it is not just the text (vocabulary) it is also important how the writer tries to demonstrate his purpose. This kind of writing verdures that there are not one right interpretation. We can say that a text is not passive it is active. It does something with the reader. Because the text is influencing the reader how he she has to understand it. She says that reading is not the task of churlish the true single meaning of the text, but of churlish its multiple meanings, which are often unstable and conflicting. This ambiguity has allowed readers to enter texts at the locations where the author tries to erase, or distort the various claims that are made through language their identities.
AM I Superman/woman ?
Are teachers Superman/woman? Is this really how society, especially the students see teachers? First, to answer this question, I want to explain what Superman/woman means for me and secondly, how I thought in my childhood, were my teachers my Superman/woman?
Superman/woman is a person, who has magical powers, fights for the rights of the innocent, poor and underdogs. Superman/woman fixes all problems and tries to make the world a fair place. He/she is always there, when people needs his/her help.
My elementary school teacher was like an angel. She was an old woman and she never got married. Her students were all she had. She worried about us more than our parents sometimes. And yes, she was my Superwoman, because I knew, she would help me with my problems and she would help me, when my classmates bothered and made jokes about me.
In middle and high school everything change rapidly. New school, teachers and classmate. It was a big change in my life. My Teacher was a young woman and she was full of life. I was looking for my Supermanwoman Teacher, unfortunately, she was not be there. 30 Students in one classroom. It was too much for my Superman.
I felt so uncomfortable, that I could not speak in class and my grades, become worse. I was really waiting for my Superwoman, that she would say something and take care of me.
I think yes, Teachers are like Superman/woman. We are not in class because we want to teach them, science, language or literature. No, we are there, because we want to “create” a person, who can survive in society. We have to teach these kids, how to do well in life, in their relationships, families, careers and so on.
When I think of my immigrant students in Germany I knew, I was there Superwoman, because I was one of them. We had the same background and my students knew that I went through what they were going through.
I was able to see in their eyes what they expected from me. Therefore, it was never important for me, how much money I would make as a teacher because what I gave to my students is to valuable to give a price.
Waiting for “Superman” (2010) is a documentary film from director
Davis Guggenheim and producer Lesley Chillot.
The film analyzes the failures of American public education by
following several students
trough the educational system.
Waiting For Superman’ is a look inside the education system of America,
its flaws and what’s being done to fix the problems inherent to the system.
Many people know that the U.S. education system has flaws,
and this movie does a lot to bring out and highlight the problems.
The text “What no bedtime story means: Narrative skills at home and school” written by Shirley Brice Heath explains an experiment called “Maintown ways”.
After I have read this article I was very upset. Children, with educated mothers have more chances to become good students and go to a good college and what about children, whose mothers do not know this kind of information? How can we fix this situation?
Teachers children become teachers, and doctors children become doctors. We have to discuss how we can close this gap between students from educated homes and non educated homes. My parents are workers, and my mother has only completed elementary school. In elementary school I worked hard to close this gap because my parents knew and were worried about this gap. And additionally, I grew up bilingual, which is still not excepted and viewed as a positive thing in Germany.
When I started to teach in an “afterschool program”, I have tried to close this gap by my immigrant students. I knew, their parents were not well educated but they spent a large amount of money to join my “afterschool program”. I have worked with the parents. I knew, that I had to guide the mothers first and then I can teach their children.
First, I visited my students in their homes. I saw their environment. How is the communication between the families. My main interest was, where was the TV placed in the house? On the basic of the placement of the TV, I could see how often the family watches TV. I talked to the mothers and convinced them to put the TV not on the “main place” of the living room.
My second step was, to talk to the fathers. I told them, if they do not read books or newspapers to educate themselves, then they cannot expect their children to read a book while he is watching TV. So, the fathers agreed and the made a subscription to a newspaper and they promised me to go with their children once a month to the library.
After I talked to the parents, I could now start my teaching with the kids. I bought diaries for my student, ice cream in summer and hot chocolate during the cold winter time. When they did their homework very well, I always had a gift in my bag. All these motivated my students and they felt comfortable in school and they earned very good grades. Some of the teachers called me and they asked me for more advice, so they can use my techniques for the other immigrant students. By the end of the school year almost all of my students got the right to visit the “Gymnasium”, which is the best school system in Germany. Only when you graduate from this school system, you can go to college.
Twice a week for ninety minutes I taught them. Once a week I called their parents and asked how their children were doing at home. When the parents are not well educated, then we need teachers, who can sacrifice more than they should do. For me is teaching is a holy job. When I want our society should become more open minded, tolerant,and so on, I know, the best way to improve our society is to teach and create “good people”.
