The Comfort Zone April 23, 2010

As many of you who know me know: I spend a great deal of time on learning and teaching languages.  I am fascinated by the process, especially in young children (my own, most of all) and measure personal success by days when all the effort seems well-rewarded.  I continue to be surprised by the degree to which I am held emotionally hostage by this endeavour: it is after all more than just words, it is a cultural connection and a comfort level that I work towards.

I see my own anxiety mirrored in many, many of the parents I come across: especially those that like myself were raised bi- or multi-lingual effortlessly, where floating in and out of dialects is the norm.  The most common observation I hear is ‘my children understand but do not speak back’: how well I know that frustration!  My response: I do not give up.  I will carve out a time and call it Urdu-time when no English is allowed.  Or with the youngest one (belligerent enough at two, but belligerence that I can match with persistence), I will patiently repeat until he repeats my words.  I realized also what I mistook as stubborn denial, was often just apprehension: a fear of sounding silly, making mistakes or not-knowing.  I find that offering to help construct a thought (‘tell me what you want to say and I’ll help find the words”) took us further in the process.

I had the chance to speak with a brilliant educator friend of mine yesterday: she does wonderful, immensely valuable work in preserving indigenous languages.  Her work takes her the world over, meeting communities and cultures threatened by extinction.  She spoke of a tribe she met in Canada, of which only six remaining members speak the language, all of them over the age of sixty.  Children in the communities are learning only English, and the eventual goal is to revitalize the traditions and words of their forefathers.  The beauty of what she does is that it takes learning language from the realm of pure education and the mechanics of grammar and syntax to the spiritual.  Success, she explained, in the process comes from explaining to the children and the youth, the history of their language and understanding it as a nation, as heritage, as land, as identity.  With respect for the language, and love for it, comes ease and encouragement.

I have had to re-configure my ultimate goal many times, as I spend more time working with my children.  I understand that their learning, even supplemented by multi-media resources, classes, travel abroad, will probably be fractured by the absence of a true immersion environment.  But, what I would like for them is a sense of ownership: that the space they inhabit within each language, the real estate that comes with entering each lingual culture, is theirs.  That they have the confidence to articulate words, and make them their own.

My older one asked me last week if he could take a French class, driven I suspect by a classmate that learns it.  This morning we made our way to the Alliance for a Mom, Tot and Youngster immersion class.  I fumbled and kept resorting to English while he, laughed, mimicked and repeated diligently.  While fluency may not happen, at least he’ll be enthusiastic.  The lack of self consciousness in learning is a wonderful thing.

More on language development later!

Oh Yale January 28, 2010

Admissions Office meets meets Bollywood meets Broadway: an ode to Yale.


This really is a little nuts.  But so wonderfully illuminating and accurate.

Love me, Love my language January 28, 2010

I am passionate and downright sentimental about teaching my children languages.  It isn’t easy: they tend to resist, english is of course more ‘natural’ in a world where they hear it most often.  But barring trips abroad, I have found a friend and saviour in technology.


My new-found obsession: the very brilliant Urdu at Home program.  It’s simple, click here and get a monthly subscription.  I download worksheets and lesson plans, purchase flashcards and with a bag full of goodies (junk, really, pencils, crayons, folders), we have a genuine urdu language school running at home.  The children love it for the interactive, illustrated materials and it makes my life much simpler.


And the iPhone (yes, I am resisting the urge to pitch a tent and camp out for an iPad), it has helped me through Arabic class, when my own limited understanding of the language fails me.  My favourite programs follow, though by no means is this list complete or exhaustive:


Arabic Language Buddy, which truly is so magical that I feel compelled to share this cheesy video.

Let’s just say it’s saved me a great deal of angst helping my son with his homework.





Arabic, simply titled, yet amazing.

Screenshot below, so you’ll get the point: even my two year old can tap on the letters and repeat the sounds.  And then, can trace the letter anywhere on the screen.

Really.  This easy.

Enjoy.

And be sure to contribute with any apps that have changed *your* life.

Seriously. November 12, 2009

I have very little to say on the Octomom reality show.

 

Read for yourself.

 

Actually: this was probably my favourite line in the entire article:

 

It was like something from a Greek tragedy, or at least something horrible, traumatic and if not antiwoman then campily celebratory of femininity gone awry, along the lines of “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” or perhaps more aptly, “Aliens.”

 

Save Your Resources October 20, 2009

Today, a great talk by Helene Gayle at the Council on Global Affairs, urging her audience to appreciate the significance of girls and women on development.

My next project: to pick up a copy of Half the Sky.

Why i love my iphone (or my three favourite apps)! October 1, 2009

I am a huge-huge fan of the Duck Duck Moose applications: previously, the Wheels on the Bus, and now featuring, for the very first time: the Itsy Bitsy Spider and Old MacDonald.

I can’t say enough great things: the music is fabulous, the animation is superb, and the fact that you can pick your options for each song (violin, piano, french, spanish, german) means the applications aren’t just interactive, they are completely customizable.  For those of us that are working on languages that may not be included, we can record our own voices, which admittedly, spooks my children a wee bit.
These are age-appropriate for pretty much every age (my 18-month old started fiddling around early and by now is an adept user, my four year enjoys them too).  In fact, I find the fun fairly limitless.

Check out the beautiful images:

And, click here to purchase.

You’ll LOVE it!  (I have these both on my iPhone and iPod).

The consequences of it all September 15, 2009

Here’s something from last year, I had forgotten but not quite.

Click below to watch.

The consequence of it all

Ask Now September 8, 2009

This may be *your* chance to get your questions answered.


The Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Harvard College, William R. Fitzsimmons is fielding comments at the New York Times.


Click for details, and of course write in.

Finally, Much Ado about Effort September 8, 2009

Welcome, and a happy back-to-school start to you with an important message from the President:









And if you missed the media circus and outraged reaction from some quarters (an outcry against ‘liberal propaganda’ for asking students how they can help the President) and widespread speculation that policy issues would be highlighted (they weren’t).

But really, it was all about personal responsibility and effort.  Some excerpts below (lengthy but direct).

As always, here’s wishing our children clarity, purpose and focus.

“You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math
to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and
protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain
in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and
discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the
creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that
will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you
can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school
– you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have
challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old,
and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t
always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed
having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit
in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud
of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a
turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to
college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle
Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t
have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the
best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your
life who give you the support that you need.

Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go
around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends
who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where
you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home –
that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no
excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of
school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s
written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make
your own future.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education
– and to do everything you can to meet them.

Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention
in class, or spending time each day reading a book.

Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your
community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied
because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids
deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care
of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all
wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we
can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at
it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful
without any hard work — that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball
or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those
things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you
study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will
seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily
succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK.  Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had
the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times
before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school
basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during
his career. But he once said, “I have failed over and over and over again in my
life. And that is why I succeed.”

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures
define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to
do differently next time.

If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to
try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just
means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard
work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit
every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with
your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it
right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a
paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do
that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It
shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn
something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach
or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like
other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when
you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from
each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself
down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.”

new beginnings August 8, 2009

Three common mistakes parents make when sending their children off to school – straight from Babble.com:

“1. Forgetting to Prepare

“A few weeks before school starts, visit the school, drive by it a few times. Talk about it. Play on the playground. Meet the teacher so your child knows he or she is a trusted adult, someone they can count on. Most parents are good about those points. But you should also do some other homework, like familiarizing your child with their routine. For instance, if your child is attending school in the morning and they’re still hanging out in their PJs until 10 am, start waking them up around the time they’ll be eating breakfast. Also find out what type of activities and games your child’s going to play at school or if they’re going to sit in circle time, so they know what to expect on the first day. Another good idea: Have your child talk to other kids in your neighborhood who attend the same school; older kids are the best salesmen!”

2. Focusing on the negative

“Many parents inadvertently say things like ‘You might miss Mommy when you’re at school,’ or ‘Don’t let kids pick on you,’ and even go so far as to warn kids about strangers or germs. While it’s important to address issues as they come up, like if your child’s being picked on, it’s not the way to prep kids for school. You want your kids to see you as confident and feel as though you see their school as a positive place; a place where they’re going to learn a lot and where there are fun things to do. Say things like, ‘There will be really nice teachers,’ or ‘You’re going to make lots of friends,’ or ‘They have a really neat playground.’ You don’t have to overhype it, but don’t plant seeds of negativity before their first day.”

3. Not transitioning well

“This is the biggest mistakes parents make, and I hear it all the time from teachers. It’s imperative that you arrive on time, so kids get in the right routine. Coming in late when other kids are already settled is discombobulating. Another tip: Follow the teacher’s lead when it comes to separating. Teachers will often say, ‘Give Mommy a kiss and a hug and then Mommy’s going to go.’ After that, don’t linger and don’t walk in and out of the classroom; be short and sweet. Also, stick to a schedule. Arrive and pick up your kids at the same time every day. Let them know in advance if Mommy or Daddy won’t be picking them up. Kids get very anxious if you schedule a last-minute playdate without their knowledge, and suddenly another Mom is taking them home. And if you have a babysitter or nanny, let your kids know what days to expect them.”"