A teacher's midlife crisis

    After having put years into the classroom I believe I’m experiencing some kind of occupational stress and losing my identity as a teacher. Having grown up in a country where you are valued for what you are and what you achieve makes it extremely difficult for me to work in a school system which does not reward teaching quality and offers teachers no opportunity for advancement.

   How are teachers with broad perspectives, engaged in challenging new initiatives and responsible for their own professional development rewarded if not only with words? When will school systems value  teachers who go beyond their required duties or extend their knowledge and expertise?

   Teachers who display greater commitment do not get higher salaries or extra days off, they do not have earlier retirement options nor do they have opportunities to get grants or to have a school transfer more easily.

   Teaching entails commitment and commitment entails personal cost and personal investment. Commitment and innovation lead to school development more than reforms do.

Why God created teachers

Surfing  the Internet one day I came across this poem  I'd  like to share with  teachers and students.
            

  WHY GOD CREATED TEACHERS

 When God created teachers
He gave us  special friends

       To help us understand His world
And truly comprehend

The beauty and the wonder

Of  everything we see,

And become a bettere person

With every discovery.

When God created teachers

He gave us  special guides

To show us ways in which to grow

And so we can all decide

How to live  and how to do

What's right instead of  wrong

To lead us so that we can lead

And learn  how to be strong.

Why God  created teachers,

In His wisdom and His grace,

Was to help us learn to make

Our world a better place.

  

                                                           Author Unknown

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Imagine

Have a look at this video I made working with a primary school teacher, Carmela di Gaeta,  who  first introduced me to the use of ICT tools in education in 2007.   Our students  were  from primary and secondary school.  They enjoyed  and appreciated  John Lennon's evergreen "Imagine".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yy2UBVV5L2Y

Forget them not, forget it not

Today I have  experienced the  same  emotional  impact  I felt on September 11^th 2001. I  am deeply moved by the solemnity and sobriety of the memorial ceremony that is taking place at Ground Zero in New York City at the moment.  How  wonderful it would be to be  there!

The seemingly endless four hours reading of the  names of those killed in 9/11 attacks is an example of the  extremely profound respect and  gratitude for those who died.

Very meaningful is the speech delivered by Donald Rumsfeld, ex-US Secretary of Defence,
on Sky News:  
“...The purpose of terrorism is not to kill people it’s to terrorize people, it’s to alter their behavior…. Free people, those of us here in the United States and in other free countries, the very essence of their lives  is that  we can go where we want, say what we  want and do what we  wish to do,  and that has not changed, we have not become terrorized. We have had to make  some adjustments to be  sure…… in the main the American people are still the free people they were and that is a blessing because we have not had to alter our lives…

The Perspective of Improvemnt and Progress

I‘d like to share an excerpt from the book The Story of the Italians in America - Your Ancestor Series - ( Doubleday & Company Inc.,  Garden City, New York , 1965) by Michael A. Musmanno, a jurist of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and a politician of Italian heritage. The author depicts the hardships and prejudice Italian immigrants faced in the USA but also their achievement. Here is one of the most touching and meaningful pages of his book:

  Though the children’s garments were left much to be desired, they were getting the best clothing in the world for their minds. They were being dressed with education in the free schools of America. Itwas only a little country school they attended but the teacher seemed to know everything and the children brought home books that excited even Antonio and Maddalena who dreamed of the day their offspring would take their place with dignity and respect in the life of America, earning wages that would supply them with good clothing, nourishing food and warmth no matter how wintry the winds of life might blow.

    When the United States went to war with Spain, Giovanni joined Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, fought in Cuba and came back in a blue uniform with yellow stripes and a sombrero pinned up at the side, a dashing hero to two sisters and three brothers. And as the first three sons reached working age, they got jobs on a railroad section gang, toiling close to their dad. The fourth one, Francesco, worked in a steel mill by day and went to school at night, steering his life by a star which pointed to a lawyer’s career. The other daughter, Rosina, became a telegraphist. Antonio and Maddalena offered prayers of thanksgiving for the opportunities of America to live in self-dependence, self-respect and with a continuing prospective of further improvement and increasing happiness. They now had a more substantial home, shaded by a slight mortgage and five fine mulberry trees, the saplings of which had come from Antonio’s paese.

    When America declared war on Germany, two of the brothers sailed away to the battlefields of France. One did not return and the mulberry trees spread their melancholy shade for young Raffaelo resting in eternal peace and glory in Flanders Field. Maddalena, with a sob in her throat, placed a golden star in the window. Antonio hung in the next window the American flag. He knew now he was truly an American because the blood of his boy was in the red stripes.
    Fifteen years later, Francesco, who had become a successful lawyer, was elected judge. On the day he was to be installed in office, Antonio and Maddalena sat in the courtroom, trembling in their ecstasy. It was true and yet it could not be true. The forlorn immigrants who had landed in America many years ago had had many dreams, but even in the rosiest clouds of hope and promise they could not visualize a shining judicial robe for one of their own children. At the moment that Francesco took the oath, Antonio lifted to his lips the folds of an American flag at this side and kissed the nation’s ensign, murmuring at the time some words. That night at home, Francesco said to his father: “Papà, I saw you kiss the flag at the swearing-in ceremony and I know you spoke some words because I saw your lips move. What did you say?” Antonio lowered the large-bowl pipe at which he had been puffing and, as creamy clouds of smoke ascended to the ceiling, he replied: “My boy I said: ”Thank God for a country where even the son of an Italian immigrant coal miner and railroad section hand can become a judge.”

The Creative Life at Terezin Concentration Camp

The Terezin Promise

I am very interested in the Holocaust and have been fascinated  by the rich cultural community  at Terezin concentration camp (or the Thereisenstadt  ghetto as the Germans called it).  Here is one of my works:  
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24i4ZtnCKA4

Terezin was a town near Prague which was walled and transformed in a concentration camp by the Nazis.  Hitler  wanted the world to know  that it was “a city for the Jews” where  Jewish scholars, professionals, artists, musicians and  political prisoners from several countries were encouraged to lead a creative life and could  be protected  from the stresses of the war. The Nazis  created  this façade  in order to deceive the world, especially the International Red Cross, into believing  that the Jews were safe here.  On the contrary, they were not safe  at all. TerezinConcentration Camp was only a way station: inmates were to be sent to die at Auschwitz-Birkenau, if ever they survived.
In this singular ghetto the artists exposed the truth of this horrible place  through art, poetry  and music. Also children were taught to do so.
One of these artists was Friedl Dicker-Brandeis who secretly  taught art to hundreds of children in the camp from 1942  to 1944. She saw drawing as a means for children to understand their emotions. In  September 1944 she was sent to Auschwitz  where she perished  the next year,  but before she was taken away she gave two suitcases with 4,500 drawings to  one of the chief tutors of the Girls’ Home.  After the war,  the director of the Girls’ Home  brought the suitcases with children's drawings to the Jewish Community in Prague. Today  the drawings are in several museums.One of the many poems found in Terezin is “Butterfly” written by the inmate Pavel Friedman at the age of 21.  It is included in  a collection of works of  art and poetry by Jewish children who were prisoners in  Terezin  Concentration Camp .  The poem “Butterfly” inspired the “Butterfly Project” of the Holocaust Museum  in  Houston. This exhibition features  1.5 million paper   butterflies;  the number symbolizes the number of  children  that died in the  Holocaust. 

 Fifteen thousand of the Terezin inmates were children of which 132 have survived.

I was   also very impressed by “The Terezin Promise: the promise made by a Jewish girl at Terezin, Raja Englandergova, to her teacher, Irena,  not to leave the camp without the poems and drawings of the children of Terezin; the real promise was to live and  hope and to NEVER FORGET.

 

Brother Sun, Sister Moon

I successfully engaged primary school students in a Peace Project on St. Francis's message of love for man and nature. The song in the video is "The song of Saint Francis"  by Donavan Leitch in the  Franco Zeffirelli film "Brother Sun, Sister Moon".
Watch  my students pretending to be "God's creatures":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omO_5wLQXX4

Proud to be American

Peace Tags

I find working on songs in the classroom  very useful to convey ideas and values as well as a means of improving and enlarging students' vocabulary. The use of ICT tools makes learning easier, more enjoyable and  helps fix language. Here are some of the works  my students created with  power point. The students distinguish ideas with a positive or a negative connotation using words of different colours and  sizes. Watch a video containing their works:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsPMYe2GZhI

Make a better world calendar

Have you ever heard of the " Make a Better World Calendar"? Working on a  school peace project I   found out that there are many very important  days in the year.  The  most meaningful one is  " Make a Difference Day". So, remember, each of  us has the power to do good deeds to change things.
Do you know other important days?  

Visit:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpHkD8sQ2D4&feature=channel_video_title

Excellent book: Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Ever since schooldays my favourite book has been  Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach.

Don't miss it. It's  profound message will help you live better: the wellspring of happiness is seeking perfection through continuous learning, purposeful deeds and cultivating ones interests and passions.  A  masterpiece to work on at school. 
Watch  my video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH1ShTNh-9k