Love & Squalor in the Middle East

burns the fire

As the trauma in Israel/Palestine rages on, I try to keep my focus on growing peace between people, far from politics, wherever I see the light. Meet my friend Tali. Her life story is more stunning than most, but it is what she does with her experience, that makes her a poster child for love.

Tali Goodfriend was five when her father had a dream that he could help bring the Messiah to life. He moved their family from Miami, Florida to the Negev desert in Israel, and started to build a Jewish settlement in the sand. Tali was the first of nine children to come, with her Dad’s two wives, her two Moms. They lived and went to school in a tent, with no running water or electricity, while her father and his followers worked to make the desert green.

Aravah: south of Beersheba, borders Jordan to the east.

Growing up, Tali became close to a family of Palestinian-Bedouins who lived in a…

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96 hours in outworldly iceland

In a Search of Balance

That’s all we had, exactly 4 days. And yet looking back on the trip to Iceland (right as the Bardarbunga volcano was stirring up memories across Europe of that Eyjafjallajökull eruption in 2010) and the below photos it seems like a lot more.

View original post 731 more words

96 hours in outworldly iceland

In a Search of Balance

That’s all we had, exactly 4 days. And yet looking back on the trip to Iceland (right as the Bardarbunga volcano was stirring up memories across Europe of that Eyjafjallajökull eruption in 2010) and the below photos it seems like a lot more.

View original post 731 more words

Just how easy is ‘high expectations for all’?

Reflecting English

Image: @jasonramasami

As the new school year springs – or lumbers! – into life, I have been thinking about the beliefs I have about my students. Like all dedicated teachers, I would vehemently argue that I have the highest expectations for each and every student I teach. How dare you suggest otherwise!

But do I really? And more to the point: is it possible for any teacher to have genuinely high expectations of every student?

Psychologist Daniel Kahneman, in Thinking Fast and Slow, shares the following experiment. Participants were given this question:

An individual has been described by a neighbour as follows: “Steve is very shy and withdrawn, invariably helpful but with little interest in people or in the world of reality. A meek and tidy soul, he has a need for order and structure, and a passion for detail.” Is Steve more likely to be a librarian or a…

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