Words of Inspiration and Motivation

 “Developing workforce strategies that address the well-being of teachers and that recognize teacher development as an ongoing process will ensure that children are not just taught by qualified teachers but by practitioners who are consistently supported and rewarded to enact the best possible education for all.”
 Dr.Marcy Whitebook

"No single one of us can do alone." says Dr.Marilyn Friend about the importance of collaboration.

           Passion is like the snowdrop flower's coming out of the snow regardless of all challenges. 


"The built-in passion is important to make real contribution to the world and fix all the injustices that exist in the world."
Louise Derman-Sparks, Professor Emeritus, Pacific Oak College, CA

My Childhood Web

My mother and my father

They are the most influential people in my life. I am where I imagined to be thanks to their efforts. 

My mother, Melahat, is the most self-sacrificing person I've ever known.She is always there for her children. She raised us alone without the help of anybody in her family. She played games with us and she made us laugh. She has a special sense of humor and makes everybody happy. Whenever we come together, she feels my heart and my mind with peace. She was my parent at school. She went to the parents meetings and followed my development until I was in high school. She is a wonderful cook and she made me this healthy with her talented hands. She was the best example of a good mother and wife for me, therefore, she taught me how to be a good wife, a good friend and a good mother in my family. I am grateful to her for dedicating her family. 

My father, Abdullah, was always very kind to us. He never shouted or got angry with any of us. When I started primary school he went to Holland for his job and he lived there for 8 years.  He came to Turkey in summers and his luggage was full of toys, books, and crayons for us. He worked for us to have good education. When he was in Turkey in summers, we had a lot of time playing, reading books, going to different places. My father taught me to be a self-disciplined person and he is the reason for my having positive discipline in my classes. He loves reading books and he is a very intellectual and sophisticated man. The passion I have for reading is the best thing I got from my father. I am grateful to him for working very much and investing all his money to our education. I am also grateful to him for being a perfect father and keeping our family together with peace.

My sister-Mine

She is 5 years older than me and she was a very helpful and supportive sister. She is still my best friend. When I need her help she is always ready to help. Because my brother and I are twins, she was the assistant mother in our family. When my mother had something to do, she was the one who looked after me and my brother. Sometimes when her friends were outside playing games, she had to help my mother and looked after us. She had a lot of responsibilities despite her young age. Because she was the first child of the family, she was the subject and my family experienced both negative and positive things first with her. As a result, when we grew up we were lucky, because our parents were very experienced about how to raise their children perfectly. My sister taught us how to read and write. She taught us to be responsible. She always shared her clothes and all her accessories with me. Now she has a wonderful son who is 12 years old. She is an awesome mother and friend for her son. I am grateful to her fro her friendship and being our second mom.

My twin brother- Metin

We are twins, but he was like my little brother because he was shorter and thinner than me. Now he is not.:) It feels really special to be in the same small place together with someone else for 9 months. I like the idea of having been nourished by the same source, which is our mom:) and having breathed the same air. He was always very kind and full of love. He never teased me, but I was not as good a child as him. He taught me to help people when they needed me. He taught me how to put myself in other people's shoes. Now, when I feel sad, he feels that I am sad and vice versa. One more thing I remember about him is that when I was scared at night, he was the one who  felt that I was scared and hugged me until I fell into sleep. My brother and sister live together in a different city in Turkey and I really miss them very much.

THANK YOU ALL FOR MAKING ME FEEL SPECIAL AND SHARING YOUR LOVE WITHOUT REMUNERATION:)

Winnie the Witch- The most clumsy witch in the world!

Winnie the Witch is my favorite children's book. The reason why I love this book is that it welcomes the children into a new world with its illustrations and it makes children think about solutions for Winnie and Wilbur's problems. They also have fun with the songs inside the story.

The second reason is that Winnie the Witch books are good sources to teach English. The illustrations in the books are very helpful for teaching the target vocabulary and there are lots of activities that can be done with pre-school children such as coloring, making puppets, playing games, and role-playing.

Soon, I will share some ideas of lesson plans and games and activities that can be used in the early childhood classroom for Winnie the Witch story.

Snowman's New Year Party

This is a photo of me from our New Year Show rehearsals with my students.(December, 2010)

I have three classes and 16 students in each class. We had fun at the New Year Show together. The name of our show was "Snowman's New Year Party". All of my students were great in the show. At the end we had a wonderful dance as a big group.

What will my mother do if I use her tongue?

This is the question!

As educators we all know that we and the learners need to use L1 in an EFL class. First we need to use it in order to communicate. Some of the information that the learners try to impart in the classroom is of great importance to them. And they could do this via their L1. So the mother tongue is important for teacher-pupil relationship. What can we do to turn this into something useful? We could use the things they tell us in L1 as a way to vocabulary work for instance. We could do activities related to their interests if they use their mother tongue and they can express themselves.

Another and to me the most important reason why we should use L1 in EFL classess is security. The children that we try to teach a foreign language mostly come from overprotective families (at least this is the situation in Turkey). Therefore they want to feel secure again when they come to the EFL classroom. Because they come to a new environment and they encounter with unknown faces, they usually feel depressed at least strange unless they are too extrovert. So it will be helpful to speak to them in their own languages and gradually endear them to more English in class.

Of course there are good ways to accomplish this when they become self-confident learners in the classroom. This may take a few weeks. The best ways to avoid the mother tongue are using gestures, using words that are similar or using the same word in the two languages followed by eachother. We could first teach the English words that are same in their language such as taxi, t-shirt, and television.

In the course of time they will get used to English in class and we can use some signs to set the time for speaking in their mother tongue. For example; when we show a white flag or a card this means it is time to speak in their L1 for three minutes especially in group activities. We shouldn't forget that they are only preschool students and they really need this. But when they see the red flag on the board they can only speak and understand English.

I often use puppets to provide the use of English in class. It’s effective because they believe that these puppets can only spaek and understand English and there is no way other than trying to speak English.Another advantage of this is that they don’t feel themselves forced to speak English but instead they feel that they help somebody who cannot speak their language.

As a result they are kids, they are cute and naive. It’s not that much hard to make them believe that they should speak in another language for some good reason:)

Hi!

Hi everyone,

I’m Merve Solmaz and I’m 27. I’ve been teaching English to young learners for 6 years. I’m a graduate of Boğaziçi University in İstanbul,Turkey. I believe the importance of sharing ideas and knowledge and this blog was created as a result of this belief in order to share ideas and information for my courses in Early Childhood Studies: Administration, Management and Leadership at Walden University.

I’m interested in teaching adults on early childhood education. In the future, my aim is first to be the coordinator of a preschool and get some experience about administration. Then I want to own my own preschool. Here in this blog my aim is to share my experience with colleagues and to get feedback from them.

You can e-mail me for your ideas and questions: merve.solmaz@waldenu.edu

Thanks for visiting my edublog and please don’t leave without a comment!

“TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF YOUR FUTURE LIFE.” (Chinese proverb)

ENJOY IT AND SMILE:-)

MERVE SOLMAZ