Tuesday morning

Yesterday morning we covered the subject of classroom management in our TESOL class. As always, it is one thing to talk about the theory and quite another to work it out in practice. It was interesting, though very disturbing, to feel the weight of some of the empty dogma with which paid teachers are harnessed. In our homeschool experience we always had complete freedom to try creative alternatives and because the class size was small and we knew our students quite well we were normally able to come up with lessons and exercises that worked. Of course, it was not always possible to activate an interest in certain grammer exercises when the wonders of spring were blowing in the window, but in our setting we had the option to make an impromptu change in the lesson plan and take the grammer lesson outside and talk about crocus and daffidils and new buds on the treees.

In the afternoon we had intended to visit the Citadel above the heart of Amman. It is a good place to get the long shot overview of the city which captures the croweded hills covered with tightly packed concrete block houses. However, the sky did not have the best photogenic character so we spent the afternoon doing homework.

Today we plan to head for Salt, a town about an hour northwest of where we live. We will walk down to the Balad, the city center, catch a servis (taxi with a fixed route) to the Abdouli bus station, then catch a bus to Salt. We have done this before, but we always got off at the University. This time we plan to continue on to the end of the route and do a bit of the tourist thing.