AMA ACCESS STUDENTS GRADUATION CEREMONY AND LEADERSHIP FESTIVAL

 AMA ACCESS STUDENTS LEADERSHIP FESTIVAL AND GRADUATION CEREMONY 

Centre d'Accueil des jeunes « Tin Hinan » 

 (TIZNIT, February 3rd-5th, 2016)

Nineteen students  from Tahla High School (Taza Delegation) headed south to join their AMA FY 12 ACCESS fellows in Tiznit in order to celebrate their graduation from the afore-mentioned programme. It has been exactly one year since they met in M'diq for their first Leadership Festival.

DAY 1: (Wednesday, February 3rd, 2016)

09:00-14:00_  OPENING CEREMONY

+ Welcome speech: (Samira Idelkadi) 

+ Word of thank: ( Khalil Zakari & Youssef El Kaidi)

+ Briefings:  (Idris Lamkadem & Brahim Elkabous & Mohamed Abou Abdellah )

16:30- 18:30: Tiznit City Tour

DAY 2: Thursday, February 4th, 2016

09:00- 11:00_  GRADUATION CEREMONY

AMA Access students graduation ceremony was held in the Centre d'Accueil des jeunes « Tin Hinan » and  attended by representatives from Tiznit City Council, local authorities, the Provincial Delegation of the Ministry of National Eduation, Parents' Association and the local press outlets.

11:30- 14:30_ LEADERSHIP FESTIVAL

Leadership Festival Programme:

I- Public Speaking: 

1- Our experience in Access Program (Ikram FADIL) 2- Developing your country is your responsibility (Rajae Rifi) 3- How can simple things change our lives (Salima TOUILE) 4- Education (Adil Boufessi) 5- Turning points (Mustapha BIKICH) 6- How to involve youth in politics (Hanane Berghazi)

II- Singing 1- God Bless Morocco (Jamila) 2- Titanic (Fatima Zahra Haimoud, Chaimae SEFFAJI+ Salima TOUILE + Latifa TIGOUDERNE and Maryam lyajouri )

III- ICT Projects 1- Legends in the US and Morocco (Oussma and Ayoub) 2- Photo story (Aadila BENDAHOU) 3- The Best Destinations in Morocco (Aziz) 4- White skills (Abdellah AMRANE) 5- Volunteering (Badr Lamsiah)

IV- Poetry Readings 1- A Poem by Adil 2- Ikram Fadil 3- Rajae Rifi 4- Brahim Ghafour 5- Rajae Jabal

V- Drama 1- Hamlet (Soukaina Belouch) 2- Unconditional Love (Oussama, Hanane, Fatima Z) 3- Crazy Class (AbdellahAmrane, IkramFADILE, FatimaZahra HAIMOUD, Adila BENDAHOU, Hajar AMARIR) 4- TV Show (Assiya, Rajae and Hajiba) 

VI- Public Speaking 2 1- Drugs addiction (Latifa TIGOUDERNE) 2- Cooperation (Ikram) 3- Five ways to kill your dreams (Abdellah AMRANE) 4- Being Successful in Life (Amal)

VII- Singing 2 1- Someone Like you (Hajiba and Assiya) 2- Zombie (All Students)

VIII- ICT Projects 1- Making Great Decisions (Aziz) 2- Video games (Fatima Zahra HAIMOUD) 3- Hunger and Poverty (Chaimae Seffaji) 

IX- Drama 1- Fashion Fadma (BENAMER+Maryam YAJOURI + Soulaimane GOUIJANE + Yassine AHLAOU + Chaima SEFFAJI + Abdellah AMRANE + Latifa TIGOUDERNE….) 2- Hamid, Abdelaziz, Hanane, Fatima Zahra Lamrini (Short play) 3- My heart and I (LatifaTIGOUDERNE + Salima TOUILE) 4- A sketch by Amal and Fatima Zahra Lamrini 5- Agness (SoukainaBELLOUCH + Ikram FADIL) 6- A sketch by Ikrama and Amal 7- Crazy Teacher (Hasnae Belfeqih and Mustapha Bekkich) 8- My Head is Stuck (Mariam El Yajouri, Abdellah Amrane)

X- Public Speaking 3 1- Maths forever (Oumaima ARBANI) 2- English in the Modern World (Rajae Jabal) 3- Why I chose English (Hassna Boujanoui) 4- How to Realize your Dreams (Nouhaila) 5- How to Motivate Yourself (Hajar Amarir) 6- Reading (Yassine AHLAOU) 7- Obesity (Maryam lyajouri)

XI- Singing 3 1- All of Me (Soukaina Bellouch) 2- Drag me down (Ayoub Id Mohamed) 3- Group Song: AMA Acces

Special Interest Group Exhibition:

AMA  Access  alumni and their teachers, the programme supervisors and  the members  of AMA association are  hereby  expressing  their  deepest  gratitude to those people who have seldom been  recognized  for  doing  good  deeds  to such  big  events;  the  people  who  cooked  the delicious meals  we have enjoyed, cleaned the places we have stepped  in and  gave  us  rides and  asked for nothing in return.

Press Release:

TIZNIT 24 Press: http://www.tiznit24.com/?p=65512
TIZNIT 90: http://tiznit90.com/تيزنيت-حفل-جمعية-الأساتذة-المغاربة-خر/

AMA FY 12 Access Tahla Center participates in Peace Corps Goal 2 Project in Tangier

AMA FY 12 Access Tahla Center students participate in Goal Two Project, (Tangier- August 25-27, 2015). The three-day program included a bunch of talks, presentations debates and workshops animated by Peace Corps volunteers, tours in the Medina, a visit to the American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies, and an evening in  Cinémathèque de Tanger.

In 1961, President JFK established the Peace Corps to promote world peace and friendship through three underlying core goals:

* To help the people of interested countries meet their needs for trained men and women.
* To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
* To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

Debates and workshops: The objective behind the workshops, talks and debates was to have participants understand what it means to be American, find out how people from other cultures may view Americans as a group as being different from themselves and discover how  understanding one's own culture can help  better understand another culture.

Visit to the American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies:

The Tangier Amrican Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies (TALIM) formerly known as TwALM), a thriving cultural center, museum, conference center and library in the heart of the old medina in Tangier, is housed in the only historic landmark of the United States located abroad. Saved from destruction by a small but dedicated group of diplomats and academics now operating as the Tangier American Legation Museum Society (TALMS), the Institute now operates with a locally-hired staff under the leadership of the Museum Director, Gerald Loftus.

As the AIMS research center in Morocco, TALIM has hosted many conferences on a wide variety of subjects. Through these AIMS conferences, TALIM encourages communication among North African scholars introducing them to the resources of the TALIM research library. The AIMS Maghribi scholar program administered in Morocco by TALIM compliments this objective by offering short term grants to Tunisian, Algerian, Mauritanian and Libyan scholars to conduct research in Morocco.

Cinémathèque de Tanger: (RIF CINEMA)

To wrap up the Tangier Peace Corps Goal 2  program, AMA FY 12 Access Tahla Center participants visited the Cinémathèque de Tanger (RIF CINEMA), watched "BOYHOOD" and voiced their opinions about the movie.

After six tireless years of renovation, Cinémathèque de Tanger opened its doors in 2006, in the historic Cinema Rif, with the aim of offering to the public films rarely seen in Morocco, and preserving and promoting the cinema of Morocco and the Arab world. Cinémathèque presents diverse screenings—from short films to documentaries, artists’ videos to narrative features—both within its own walls and abroad, as traveling programs. In addition, it also features educational programs, workshops for all ages, artists’ talks, and residencies, and continuously expands on an archive that represents the collective memory and vitality of Moroccan cinema. 

BOYHOOD:

A 12 year story of Mason the Younger, and his sister, Samantha lived a rough life with their mother, Olivia, divorced with their father, Mason. Mason is always giving them advices about living a simple life, when they were hanging out on the weekends. In their American-life journey, Mason Jr. must face the reality that his parents will never be together, started when his parents chose to marry again with other persons, and he must try to focus chasing his own career and achieving his dreams, step-by-step, even when the conditions are awful and full of ugly truths.

It has always been a pleasure to be there where youssef El Kaidi and his AMA FY 12 Access Tahla Center participants get together or move in order to improve their interpersonal communication skills, make new friends and acquire life-long learning resources. Big thank you goes to Charles Hintz for all the time and effort he has invested to make the journey happen and to all the young Peace Corps volunteers who shared their knowlege and expertise with our future interculturalists. 

Thank you, John Davison, Director of the Tangier American Insitute for Moroccan studies, for your friendship and for the warm welcome. Thank you Mohammed Assetih, continuing teacher development activist, for your company and thank you to everyone we joined and everyone who joined us, offered us food and lodging, made our beds to lie proud, talked and listened to us or shared his/her knowledge and know-how with us. 

Congratulations, Youssef EL Kaidi , for your on-going successful endeavor to serve not only English Language Education, where English Language Education is at stake, but your community as well. There is, I verily believe, so much Access Micro-scholarship program runners can learn from your expertise in talenting participants' English Language interpretive and interpersonal communication skills. Thank you for giving....

The Role of Questions in Teaching, Thinking and Learning

In collaboration with Moulay Ismail University, the Centre Régional des Métiers de l'Education et de la Formation Meknès-Tafilalte held a workshop dedicated to Making Students Ask Pertinent Questions on Monday May 25th, 2015. The workshop was provided by our lovable friend and colleague Rachida Guelzim and attended by some fifty teacher trainees and Master students from the Department of English in Moualy Ismail university.

Rachida adapted her workshop duration to seven thought-provoking concentration-demading tasks and missions which participants enjoyed performing. Typical of her contributions in seminars and conferences, the two-hour workshop managed to combine so much work and a great deal of fun. 

 Professor Mohamed Larouz Questionning Rachida Guelzime!!! 

 Questioning plays a critical role in the way instructors structure the class environment, organize the content of the course and has deep implications in the way that students assimilate the information that is presented and discussed in class. Given that questioning can be a tremendously effective way to teach, and recognizing that teachers are willing to engage in the process of asking questions while instructing (Leven and Long’s research shows that the typical teacher asks between 300-400 questions per day), the purpose of this paper is to articulate a taxonomy of questions that will help instructors to recognize how to more effectively use questioning as a pedagogical strategy (1981).

Khadija Nour El Attar, Meknès MATE Local Branch president, questionning Professor Mohamed Larouz

Teach Talk, a newsletter for educators dedicated to promoting best practices in the classroom, suggests that successful questioners utilize several skills when crafting and asking good questions. These include: phrasing and sequencing questions effectively, responding to questions so that class time is used efficiently, keeping questions from leading to digression (unless the 7 digression is useful), and using the right tone and delivery both when asking and respondin.g to question. (1995).

Click HERE for Rachida's PPT
Click HERE for Levels of Questions in Bloom's Taxonomy

Thank you Rachida GUELZIME and Professor Mohamed LAROUZ for all the time and effort you have so magnanimously invested to make the event successfully happen.

Ed-Links-Morocco

edlinksmoroccokhalil@gmail.com

AMA Access Tahla Participants Warmly Welcomed at Al-Akhaywn University in Ifrane

Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane' s mission is to provide a learning environment in a Moroccan setting to a multi-cultural community. Employing a North American pedagogy, we provide a broad, holistic and child-centered education delivered within a safe and healthy framework. The school aims at developing each student’s cognitive, emotional, and physical potential to create self-confident, autonomous future citizens imbued with social and ecological awareness.

AMA Access Tahla welcomed at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane

(Wed. may 13th 2015. 10:30 a.m)

With some officials of stone-age bureaucratic mindset in administrations, it was not easy to get all the paper-work done on time  to take students there where Youssef and  I have once promised to take them.

  It was a great day, full of inspiration, learning and fun!

 Mohammed VI Library at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane

 Mohammed VI Library at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane

 Briefings on the Gymnasium rules and regulations

 End of the visit

 Mohammed Zakari ( Housing Guest Coordinator Students Affairs Division) with his guests

 Lunch in Source Ain Vitel (Ifrane)

 In Ain Sultan (Sefrou)

 Big thank you si Mohamed Zakari of Al-Akhawyn University for volunteering to guide our tour and show our students around for more than two hours! Today visitors of AUI, tomorrow students there and why not teachers!

Groupe Scolaire Al Falah Taza Commemorates Earth Day's 45th Anniversary

In colaboration with  the Provincial English Inspectorate  and Ed-Links-Morocco , and in coordination with Earth Day Organization the Groupe Scolaire Al Falah Taza set the tradition of the Annual Earth Day Festival on Wednesday, April 29th on the viewy ground of Al Falah 3.  Students, teachers, parents, educators, administrators, delegation officials and school-bus drivers all took the Earth Day challenge and  participated in a variety of hands-on educational activities which highlighted on the crucial role of nature conservation in sustainable development.

This year’s event included special features: recycling workshops for children, litter-cleanup, painting and school mural for young students, presentations, booth display and posters, short plays, songs and poems.

The theme of the festival was a message of inclusion “Earth Day Every Day”. This free-entry event was also attended by teachers of English from both neighbouring and remote areas like Bni Lent, Zrarda and Hed Msila,  and some friends from Peace Corps Morocco. 

The Groupe Scolaire Al Falah Taza's Earth Day 2015 Festival was " a welcoming place where we huddled together, celebrated and learned". said LIoyd, a Peace Corps volunteer.

Earth Day is one of the most celebrated secular holidays in the world, and the reason it has been such an integral part of the environmental movement since 1970. This year's event was planned in coordination with Earth Day Network  widely credited with launching the modern environmental movement.

Ed-Lins-Morocco and the Groupe Scolaire Al Falah Taza, now partners of Earth Day Network ,  are extremely grateful to each and every single person, school and institution who has joined their endeavour and made the  Wednesday April 29, 2015 event happen.