Parenting Responsibilities: 10 Things You Are (and Aren’t) Responsible for as a Parent

Parenting Responsibilities: 10 Things You Are (and Aren’t) Responsible for as a Parent

Thrilled day

last week during the character building lesson the general stage supervisor asked the students to write a letter to any teacher of their choice either to thank her or to ask her anything they want her to do to make her lesson better, students will not write their names on these letters.
today I've received more than 10 letters from my students praising the math lesson, my way in teaching them , my patience, my activities, the group work I'm providing and moreover one of my students wrote to me that I'm her best class teacher ever,
I'm sure that two years before I wasn't the teacher I'm today nor the class teacher as I'm now, really for the first year in my long 14 professional years I enjoyed going to school as this year, really I'm enjoying teaching my students this year and regretting the past years which I didn't enjoy being with such wonderful students I had before.
a lot of difference happened I stopped criticising my students and giving up that they don't have the abilities to learn, I believe now that they have their own abilities to learn and I've to fulfil it for them,
I learned that I need to plan, and plan very well to enjoy being with them without any stress.
I learned to expect their success but accept the failure from one or two but never give up.
I learned to be quiet for some time.
I learned that students have different learning styles and it's my job to meet them all.
I learned that motivating my students to learn comes before teaching my subject and finishing my syllabus.
I learned that engaging my students in a life project like serving their community will set a meaning to their learning.
I learned that I as a teacher has the power to change in those kids' life.
before I missed the tools but now I think that I started to own them.
writing on my blog and reading the other colleagues' blogs is such an experience which painted my life with bright colours and enriched me with multi visions, our debates and conflicts are very fruitful and it reflects on me and my work all over my days and I carry some of these debates to my school colleagues.
life isn't like the past.
years aren't added without quality or real gain as it was.
thank you all dear colleagues and dearest Dr Joy.

willingness VS. motivation

 since Mohamed has mentioned that the learner should be willing to be motivated, I'm thinking about willingness, if I wait my students to show willingness to learn or to be motivated so I'll wait for life time because some students aren't willing at all to the learning process and by the way my daughter and my nephew are one of those but sometimes they show enthusiasm and motivation to study a certain subject at a certain time, then I start to wonder why my daughter now is doing her homework alone, keen on pleasing the teacher and showing care, then I found that the reason goes back to the teacher herself, she encouraged the students by a way or another and motivated them then my daughter repaid her back by showing willingness. I think that the core of this course is to motivate the students who don't show any willingness or caring to school learning by engaging them in further education to show them that their learning is meaningful and though we can change them into intrinsic motivators,
I think by that time they will be willing to learn and to be motivated.

Engaging Students in Math | Edutopia

Engaging Students in Math | Edutopia

project based learning

this is a very effective video to design a whole semester not only a lesson I used it this year to plan for my first term syllabus.
I planned a project for the whole term including all the lessons the students are studying and learning this term then I started to design small activities on each lesson to cater students to implement their project.
I recommended it to you it's applicable to all subjects not only math
hope you enjoy it and find it beneficial 

Community Learning

after the summary which Dr joy displayed about we took during the past weeks at this course, some of us started to comment that they use the community learning in classes but I felt that we aren't according to what I understand from our readings and discussions during the sessions, yes there's a community at the class but it isn't designed to create learning may be it helps the students to learn but by coincidence not intended, what I've known during the past couple of months that I as a teacher had to design my class in a shape to motivate students to learn and engage them in a team work and plan the lesson which can help them to learn even if I don't utter a word. again plan, plan, plan.
community learning doesn't come by coincidence it's something we should know practice and plan for, I hope by the end of this course I'll be able to engage my students in such learning.     

Plan,plan,plan

It's so obvious that Dr joy is very persistent on teaching us the APA style of writing our summaries and reflections, so she prepared a well structured lesson plan, she wanted to show us the right order of the reference, surname, first letter of the initial name, year of publishing, then the name of the book. then when we take the first chart sheet concerning the reference of the book, the journal, and                 the chapter of the book, there was a lot of wondering during the activity what are we doing and what's for but when I started to remember the last session to write my reflection , I found myself remembering the plan she made to drag us in the APA trap, so all of us returned our home remembering  most of the steps of writing the reference and if we needed any help we could revise the sheet of referencing she already provided us with.I'd like to engage my student in an activity they could remember with the steps of answering their problems in math. planning well to our lesson is very important to get excellent results.
The second assignment during the second part of the session was interesting to describe how our community at our  school looks like,  Dr Joy was pretty astonished from our description specially to our profitable schools , I'm looking forward to know her impression and feedback about the differences between our schools in Egypt and the rest of the countries.