A Turkish Shepherd Calling His Own Sheep (and someone else's!)

  About a month ago, one of the most interesting videos I've seen came into the news here in Turkey (news article about it). It had been preceded 8 years earlier by the first video which is below. I have transcribed and translated what I thought were the most interesting parts of both videos (except for the shepherd's call itself, which didn't seem to need translation).  

First video: The Shepherd Calls Another Shepherd's Sheep (Youtube)

The interviewer from TRT news channel is welcomed by a shepherd, İlhan Orak. He asks his occupation and how long he has been shepherding, 40-50 years, since he was a child.

The interviewer says (0:33), “And your sheep are here.” The shepherd responds, “These aren’t mine. They are a friend’s. Mine are way down there.”

Interviewer (0:38): The sheep, if you called them, they’d come?
Shepherd (0:40): If we went over there – they’d come right away!
Interviewer (0:42): Then, let’s call these.
Shepherd (0:43): These won’t come.
Interviewer (0:45): Why wouldn’t they come?
Shepherd (0:46): These don’t know me. Mine know me.
Interviewer (0:48): You’ve been a shepherd for 50 years…!
Shepherd (0:49): Mine know me!
Interviewer (0:51): Let’s try and see if they’ll come?

The shepherd demonstrates how he calls his sheep. 

The presenter laughs, “There’s no movement among the sheep. They didn’t even blink.” The shepherd responds, “Vallahi, they aren’t mine! They didn’t look.” Then, the presenter asks whether the shepherd’s own sheep would have come if he’d called them. The answer is yes, if they went over that way. The presenter asks how the shepherd reaches an understanding with the animals. Finally, they begin discussing the shepherd himself.

Second Video: The Shepherd Calls His Own Sheep (Youtube)

In the second video, the same interviewer visits the shepherd again, 8 years later. The shepherd says (0:37), “I’m 63 years old now, and the TRT interviewer came before. Those weren’t my sheep. They didn’t know me. Mine know me." 

The interviewer asks (0:45), If we call yours, will they come?
Shepherd (0:47): Now? ... (calls)
Shepherd (1:05): Look how they are coming. Do you know it? … Last time, those weren’t mine. See, these are actually mine. They know me.

Watch it happen!

  The shepherd is not expressing this out of knowledge of Jesus' words in the gospel of John: in the later parts of the second video, he expresses his Islamic faith. But for those of us who have not grown up around sheep or shepherds, this is a really beautiful way to understand the words of Jesus more deeply. (Incidentally, the shepherd, like most believers in Islam, would probably say that he believed in the gospels, the İncil. Thus, I trust that he would not be bothered by my making this connection.)

John 10:2–4, 14-16, 27

But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.

I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 

(ESV)

Key Resources on Academic Writing - Canagarajah and Hinkel

  In over 13 years of blogging, the 3+ months since my last post is the longest I have ever gone without a post. Then again, I've never written a master's thesis before. Since the final version of my thesis got submitted last night, I can now begin sharing some of my thoughts here again.

  My thesis was on academic writing, and I developed a curriculum and the accompanying materials for a course that can take learners from the earliest stages of learning English writing up to being ready to start university in English. My studies ranged all over, but two books proved particularly critical to my understanding and expression of academic writing - Eli Hinkel's Effective Curriculum for Teaching L2 Writing and Suresh Canagarajah's Critical Academic Writing for Multilingual Students. Neither of them sounds like much fun, but they are both fantastic - if you are interested in academic writing!

 Hinkel has written a number of other books, but Effective Curriculum is a masterpiece. It is packed with the practical resources that any English academic writing teacher can use, but especially those who teach English as an additional language for the learners. Not only does she show the research behind her assertions, Hinkel also supplies the details that are needed to implement it. As a minute example, we learn not only about the importance of the passive voice in academic writing, but we are also given the particular passive verbs that are most commonly used. This is an extraordinary resource!

 Canagarajah, on the other hand, designed a masterpiece on how to think about academic writing. Critical Academic Writing provides a philosophy of teaching and of writing that is mindful of the competing needs of respecting and preserving cultural diversity and individuality while also integrating learners into academic conventions to give them maximum opportunities for success. Again, extraordinary!

2018 recommended reading

This year's list of top books from my 2018 reading is as eclectic as ever. A number of the books come from my masters studies in teaching English; others come from my reading to my children, and still others are from my reading for enjoyment or learning, which are often the same thing.

Theological

Family of Pi in Matthew & Reliability of Our New Testament by Russell N. Champlin - These two works were written by a distant relative whose other major publications were in Portuguese. He died this year, but I benefited from his firsthand work with the Greek manuscripts which form part of the textual legacy of the New Testament. The first work is his PhD dissertation; the second is a booklet which he wrote to present the evidence for the New Testament's reliability for non-scholars.

Historical 

John Adams by David McCullough - This book had been waiting in my reading list for quite a while, and it lived up to its reputation. It gave fascinating insights not only into America's second president, but also into the time period in which he lived. A man of the soil in ways that many of America's (famous) early nation builders were not.

Means of Escape by Philip Caputo - This was a gift to me last Christmas; and as the giver has never given me a book I did not enjoy, I gladly read it though I would not have bought it for myself and had never heard of it. It was worth it! It ranges all over the modern world and era as the author relates episodes from his work as a journalist while also managing to turn his story into a narrative.

Teaching English / Education

The Grammar Book by Diane Larsen-Freeman & Marianne Celce-Murcia - My only regret with this book is that I did not spend the money to get the most recent edition when I purchased this. In another context I commented about the book as follows, "I am beginning to associate Diane Larsen-Freeman’s name with the highest quality of materials. As I have explored chapter 33 on “Reported Speech and Writing,” the breadth and depth and level of detail in the chapter was phenomenal, and very useful. Nearly every page of my book has new markings, many with whole paragraphs of key information." The only other grammar book that I feel about like this is Murphy's English Grammar in Use, which has a completely different, and rather minimalistic, approach.

Other People's Children by Lisa Delpit - I have not yet posted about my takeaways from Delpit's book; this is because there are so many of them, not because they are in any sense lacking - and I haven't even finished it yet. It's worth any teacher's/educator's time.

Türkçe ve İngilizce Açıklamalı English Grammar by Seven and Seven - This fascinating work is written by two Turks as an English grammar with explanation in both English and Turkish. As such, it contains fascinating insights and is useful in some unexpected ways.

Second Language Acquisition by Rod Ellis - This is a solid overview on how additional (aka "second) languages are acquired. (previous post)

Fiction

Barbarossa by Iskender Pala - I have not quite finished it yet, but this book has been a fascinating and surprisingly positive journey across the Mediterranean world of the 1500s. This would be a great read for someone who wanted to venture into another nation's literature and worldview.

River of Death & The Dark Crusader by Alistair MacLean - I enjoyed these two books by MacLean; I thought I had read all his works but was pleasantly surprised to find that I had no memory of these two, though they do not rank with his great classics.

Children's

Last Stop on Market Street by Matt De La Pena - This was a book that was quietly beautiful; its message was not flashy. Rather it allowed its message to develop and be powerfully latent within the story and the illustrations without finding it necessary to verbalize it explicitly.

The Quiltmaker's Gift  - This book is another example of exquisite illustrations complementing a deeply-told story. The 'moral' in this story is somewhat more explicit, but it is not preachy. While there is no suggestion that it is "Christian" in the book itself, I feel the story harmonizes at a quite deep level with the message of Jesus.

Songs & Artists

Song: "Awesome" (artist: Charles Jenkins)

Group: The Gray Havens (song - "The Train Station")


Recommendations from years past: 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011

Who owns your beautiful idea? Who should? - African Insight

  After teaching a class in which we talked about plagiarism and how to avoid it one week in Expository Writing, the next week I was struck by the below paragraph about music and musicians within African society. This paragraph suggests, of course, one of the major problems that is associated with the concept of plagiarism... who can possibly own an idea? are ideas ever really developed in isolation from the community?

Musicians are respected, but only in the context that the music itself belongs to the community - not to the person who is playing an instrument or singing a song. Those instruments have been developed over many years, while the songs themselves are inspired by the people as a whole rather than by any individual.

~ "The Art of Africa: The 50 best African artists" (emphasis added)

  This topic has a multitude of roots and branches to explore, but it deserves much more nuanced consideration than the average person gives it when they encounter it, often in high school or some related educational setting. Often, the word "plagiarism" seems to be a collect-all term for shared community wisdom, re-used clear expression, laziness, concept-theft, inability to paraphrase, flattery (imitation), and more. Fantastic differences lie concealed within this offensive word.     

another less-explored refuge of quiet in Istanbul

  About an hour by ferry ride from Istanbul (though technically still within the city limits) lies the chain of islands known as the Princess Islands. I have previously posted about the largest one, Büyük Ada and one of the smaller, rarely-visited ones, Sedef Adası. This year, after many times of passing by them, I have visited two of the other main islands in the group, Burgazada and Heybeliada.

Burgazada, from as seen from Heybeliada

 Like Buyuk Ada, these two also have old Greek Orthodox churches or monasteries on them. On Heybeliada, there are supposed to be many old unexamined manuscripts of Christian writings and Scriptures in the library. Anyways, on the recommendation of a friend, I visited Burgazada on a day early in the summer when I needed a chance for quiet. I wandered through the wooded areas, finding my way to the top using paths instead of the main road. You can see my approximation of the path I followed in the picture below.

Burgazada

on Burgazada

Through the open window, looking into the chapel on top of Burgazada

Heybeliada

  Now as a family, we have visited Heybeliada and thoroughly enjoyed exploring it, its lovely national forest, and the quiet streets. 

with the little buddy, watching the boats and the water

Istanbul, in the distance - panoramic from Heybeliada

  In the Orthodox cemetery on Burgazada, there were a variety of interesting headstones: names that seemed to be a mix of German and Turkish (Ingrid Stiedl Ülker), headstones with German, Greek and possibly English on them; and some weren't even really accessible.

Christina K Koymake ??? 2 March 1890
Aomnika D Maypake ??? 6 October1881

from 1946 

Add caption

Ingrid Ulker (1949-1990)

Rene Glaser (1927-1947)

Franz Muhlbauer 1928-1992

  With my interest in family history, hidden cemeteries and their possible histories always interest me.

Elbow's "Illiteracy" - on education, excellence, resistance and compliance

  As I prepare to write my MA thesis in the field of EFL writing and as I am teaching a new class on Expository Writing, I am doing substantial reading on the topic. One of the most insightful writers about writing that I've read is Peter Elbow; below are selections from his article "Illiteracy at Oxford and Harvard: Reflections on the Inability to Write. (A version of the article is here.)

If you can’t write, you can’t be a student. But the inability to write doesn’t get in the way of teaching at all.

...falling in love with teachers is such an efficient way to learn because it solves all motivation problems.

Learning wasn’t enough for them; I had to be made to unlearn and then be built up from scratch.

These commentators emphasize not only how learning leads inevitably to resistance, but also that we can’t learn well without resistance. It seems clear that an important goal for teachers is to help students find fruitful or healthy ways to resist.

That is, in the very act of writing itself—at least if we want to be understood—we have to give in to the code or the conventions. The conventions. To write is to be conventional.

True excellence is rare because it consists of something paradoxical and hard to explain: the ability to be extremely assertive or even resistant while at the same time managing to comply very well with the requirements of conventions, teachers, assignments, and readers.

Elbow, Peter. Everyone Can Write: Essays toward a Hopeful Theory of Writing and Teaching Writing (pp. 8, 16, 17-18, 20-21). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition. (Emphasis mine)

research on Motivation and Education (both Teaching and Learning)

 Besides teaching English, I also at times proofread academic articles as one step in the publication process; this naturally gives me the chance to learn academic things that I would not normally get to learn. Sometimes it is in my field; sometimes it is not. Anyways, through this process, I have come across the quotations below about education, each of which I felt were well worth sharing. 

First and foremost, a commitment to lifelong learning requires an ethical responsibility to remain competent in their work as educators. 

- Tanju Deveci, Job Adverts

*****

The needs learners target does [sic] not have to be their own; they should also be mindful of the needs of others in their surroundings. Should they realize that they can contribute to the wellness of others, they will likely develop a sense of civic responsibility (21). 

This indicates that a learner’s receptivity to others’ contributions to his/her learning is as important as his/her enthusiasm for supporting their learning. (23)

Another interpersonal communication domain identified as important for lifelong learning is ‘engagement with instructors’, indicating that the type of interaction students establish with their instructor during their studies has a determining influence on the effectiveness of learning experiences in later years. (23)

 - Tanju Deveci, "Life-long Learning Skills" in The Skill Approach in Education: From Theory to Practice by Yusuf Söylemez & Firdevs Güneş

quotations from my reading and learning in education and EFL

As a classroom community, our capacity to generate excitement is deeply effected by our interest in one another, in hearing one another's voices, in recognizing one another's presence. 

- belle hooks, Teaching to Transgress 

The worst thing for student security is teacher insecurity.

- Marti Anderson 

We can formulate a rule of thumb: the more context, the less grammar.

Scott Thornbury, How to Teach Grammar, 4

 As mentioned, UBL posits that grammar is not an "out there" system but an emergent property of human communication and, furthermore, that actual language experience shapes language over the full life span.

(

Multilingual Turn, page 40; 

Bybee, 2010) 

...monolingual bias become unsustainable for the field of SLA...

Lourdes Ortega, "Ways Forward for a Bi/Multilingual Turn in SLA", The Multilingual Turn

(The question of bias is expanded on insightfully in Kachru's and Sridhar's articles in the Winter 1994 TESOL Quarterly.)

Regarding reading audience problems: 

Each writer has its own audience (intended readers) that might be part of a discourse community in which there is a degree of shared understandings and knowledge. Your class (the actual readers) may not be part of that discourse community and so they will make very different meaning and will need scaffolding if they want to read it as part of a particular community of readers. This is something to consider as you teach—what is your role as a teacher in this dilemma? 

- Leslie Turpin (4 Skills class) 

The magic of teaching happens when we can get the students off the page, out of the book and into the classroom community sharing the language together. 

Is serving a privilege? (Luke 1:73-75)

  Over the last week or two, I have been pondering these verses which come from Zechariah's prophecy following the naming of his son John the Baptizer - Luke 1:73-75. I read them in the HCSB translation of the Bible. The translation itself aligns extremely closely with all the other translations I checked, but this one is particularly beautiful.

  

  The context includes God's promises to Abraham and David, as well as John's role in bringing about those promises for the Lord's people. There is so much depth here; each phrase is worth pondering individually.

Dancing on the three tips of the Teaching Iceberg

Hawkin's model of the I, Thou, It Triangle which is meant to provide a balanced classroom. Sometimes a circle surrounds the triangle to signify the context or environment in which the class unfolds.

Get ready to dance on the 3 tips of this Triangle / Iceberg Source

In some recent feedback, my professor Elka Todeva used the expression, "the dance between the three tips of the triangle." We know the three tips of the triangle as Hawkin's "I," "Thou," and "It." The beauty of Elka's metaphor, though, is in the subtle reference to icebergs and the suggestion that each of the three tips of the teaching triangle have uncalculated depths beneath them.

So much we don't see Source

The metaphor also highlights the fact that we may be focusing on one tip at any given instant, but we are constantly in motion among the three, in a dance. This implies the emotions of teaching: we may associate dancing most easily with joy, but the other emotions of the classroom may also find expression here.

The 3 Tips of the Triangle, ready for dancing Source

"I need to learn that the pain I sometimes experience in teaching is as much a sign that my selfhood is alive and well as the joy I feel when the dance is in full swing." 

- Parker Palmer,  The Courage to Teach, 75.