et·y·mol·o·gy (
t
-m
l
-j
)n. pl. et·y·mol·o·gies 1. The origin and historical development of a linguistic form as shown by determining its basic elements, earliest known use, and changes in form and meaning,-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MEYER (1)
SOURCE: Occupation
USAGE: German
Meaning & History
From the Middle High German word mei(g)er which means "higher, superior" and was used for landholder's stewards or great farmers or leaseholders (nowadays a Meier is a dairy farmer). Meier and Meyer are used more often in Northern Germany while Maier and Mayer are used in Southern Germany.
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Ethics
Ethics
I sweat, I'm a sweater...you know like when you go to the gym and you hop on the treadmill and are all grossed out because there was "that guy" before you who left great pools of sweat on the equipment and never cleaned it off with the spray? yeah, I'm the kind of person who leaves pools of sweat when I exercise. I can't help it-when I get going I just sweat. ( BTW: I never forgot to clean the gym equipment because I used to work at a gym and HATED people who did that!)Where am I going with this? Right. My father always extolled the virtues of a good day's work outside and getting the "furnace kicked on" into high gear and getting dirty, getting something accomplished, and being okay with hard physical labor. It was impressed upon me at an early age that "we Meyers" NEED to have this as a function of our daily lives in order to stay "normal." It's the same with runners who become addicted to the endorphine rush following a good run. I myself have been addicted to that; of course you wouldn't know it to look at me now, but I understand how people can be so "into" running and exercise. I feel it in my bones sometimes that in order to clear my head, or approach a complicated situation objectively I have to break a sweat. All I know is that my mind and my physical work ethic are closely related. I enjoy working hard on things, heck, my summer job in college was basically operating a chainsaw for the town/county highway department for 8-hours a day for weeks on end in some cases. After that it would be shoveling hot asphalt into and around a paving machine on a 95 degree day. I enjoy the simplicity of it. Like Morgan Freeman said to Jim Carrey in Bruce Almighty: "Some of the happiest people go home stinking to high heaven." I count myself as one of those people. My work ethic that was impressed upon me as a child has molded me into a working professional that takes his job seriously, works hard, and places high value in those that can commit to working hard, alone or in groups, to achieve a goal.
While overseas you see many different cultures and you see how that culture values "work." It is said that Americans work harder than most Westerners. I don't know about all that, but I guess if you look at "time off" you could back that up. Europeans certainly get more vacation time off for holidays as we do. Capitalism is based on the hard work = more $$$ principle. So it makes sense to me that if you want to succeed as a business owner you have to work work work to get ahead. (Pun intended).
In the Middle East, you see very different views towards work. And it all depends on what class in society you're looking at. In Kuwait it's very stratified as to who works and who doesn't. Most Kuwaiti's don't/won't get their hands dirty, and look down on having those who do so for a living. This makes the concept of working hard for your grades a little challenging. On the one hand I had students who genuinely struggled for their grades, earning them through their own toil and tribulations, and had parents who were genuinely concerned with their son's progress. Those parents ensured that their son was learning on their own. I also had the opposite: students who would just pay a "tutor" and the tutor would do 100% of the work for them. This raised a lot of ethical questions for me. What do you do when you're faced with a significant percentage of students who are turning in work that they are representing as their own but you can clearly tell that the writing style, handwriting, quality, etc. is NOT on par with what you see that student produce in class under your close supervision? They put you into this situation, and since it's a common practice, and deemed socially acceptable to do, how do you navigate those rocky ethical waters? It really made me uncomfortable at times. Sometimes there's no proof that the student had someone else do their work for them, but you have a hunch or a backlog of work to refer and compare to...so you're forced to ask yourself "Is it worth the battle?" Tricky.
I just found it very frustrating to think that in a school, which is supposedly one of the merit-systems last bastions, that you can find behavior/practices/norms that are fundamentally opposed to the merit system in full swing and socially accepted. That was one of the major things that troubled me in Kuwait as an educator. There was no changing that, at least not on my level. I could tailor my assignments to inhibit work from being "farmed out" by students to their tutors but I knew I couldn't prevent it outright. So in the end, I had to accept that certain assignments were going to be questionable, and certain students were like me who knew that studying meant hard work, perseverance with a much greater reward at the end.
I'm really optomistic about my new host country. I'm in Myanmar now! Yeah, news flash...this blog hasn't been updated in a while so I'm posting this from Yangon. I'll be teaching on a 2 year contract here and I'm doing High School! I haven't started classes yet so I'll have a better readout of the students, their ethics, their level of respect for teachers, how the system works in about a week or so. New teachers are all around the building attending meetings, seminars, orientations, etc and the "old guard" teachers from last year have yet to arrive. I'm teaching World History to 9th graders, Psychology to 11/12th graders, and AP Psychology to 11/12th graders. I don't have a classroom that is my own and so I will be traveling just on one floor (going across the hallway basically) so it'll be fun once I get going. I'm looking forward to meeting the other teachers from last year and sharing/collaborating with them on what works, what doesn't and what to expect from the students.
Overwhelmingly I've been told that students here really respect teachers. The number one most respected "person" in Myanmar is a monk. Number two are teachers. Exciting!
As for me, I'm just ready to get down to work and break a mental sweat with my job.
As for the physical sweating...yeah that's been happening a lot seeing how it's been rainy and humid here--I'm still acclimating to the weather. I think the number of times it hasn't rained equals the number of times it DID rain in the desert in Kuwait last year!
Hope y'all are well! More to come soon. Including pictures! :)
While overseas you see many different cultures and you see how that culture values "work." It is said that Americans work harder than most Westerners. I don't know about all that, but I guess if you look at "time off" you could back that up. Europeans certainly get more vacation time off for holidays as we do. Capitalism is based on the hard work = more $$$ principle. So it makes sense to me that if you want to succeed as a business owner you have to work work work to get ahead. (Pun intended).
In the Middle East, you see very different views towards work. And it all depends on what class in society you're looking at. In Kuwait it's very stratified as to who works and who doesn't. Most Kuwaiti's don't/won't get their hands dirty, and look down on having those who do so for a living. This makes the concept of working hard for your grades a little challenging. On the one hand I had students who genuinely struggled for their grades, earning them through their own toil and tribulations, and had parents who were genuinely concerned with their son's progress. Those parents ensured that their son was learning on their own. I also had the opposite: students who would just pay a "tutor" and the tutor would do 100% of the work for them. This raised a lot of ethical questions for me. What do you do when you're faced with a significant percentage of students who are turning in work that they are representing as their own but you can clearly tell that the writing style, handwriting, quality, etc. is NOT on par with what you see that student produce in class under your close supervision? They put you into this situation, and since it's a common practice, and deemed socially acceptable to do, how do you navigate those rocky ethical waters? It really made me uncomfortable at times. Sometimes there's no proof that the student had someone else do their work for them, but you have a hunch or a backlog of work to refer and compare to...so you're forced to ask yourself "Is it worth the battle?" Tricky.
I just found it very frustrating to think that in a school, which is supposedly one of the merit-systems last bastions, that you can find behavior/practices/norms that are fundamentally opposed to the merit system in full swing and socially accepted. That was one of the major things that troubled me in Kuwait as an educator. There was no changing that, at least not on my level. I could tailor my assignments to inhibit work from being "farmed out" by students to their tutors but I knew I couldn't prevent it outright. So in the end, I had to accept that certain assignments were going to be questionable, and certain students were like me who knew that studying meant hard work, perseverance with a much greater reward at the end.
I'm really optomistic about my new host country. I'm in Myanmar now! Yeah, news flash...this blog hasn't been updated in a while so I'm posting this from Yangon. I'll be teaching on a 2 year contract here and I'm doing High School! I haven't started classes yet so I'll have a better readout of the students, their ethics, their level of respect for teachers, how the system works in about a week or so. New teachers are all around the building attending meetings, seminars, orientations, etc and the "old guard" teachers from last year have yet to arrive. I'm teaching World History to 9th graders, Psychology to 11/12th graders, and AP Psychology to 11/12th graders. I don't have a classroom that is my own and so I will be traveling just on one floor (going across the hallway basically) so it'll be fun once I get going. I'm looking forward to meeting the other teachers from last year and sharing/collaborating with them on what works, what doesn't and what to expect from the students.
Overwhelmingly I've been told that students here really respect teachers. The number one most respected "person" in Myanmar is a monk. Number two are teachers. Exciting!
As for me, I'm just ready to get down to work and break a mental sweat with my job.
As for the physical sweating...yeah that's been happening a lot seeing how it's been rainy and humid here--I'm still acclimating to the weather. I think the number of times it hasn't rained equals the number of times it DID rain in the desert in Kuwait last year!
Hope y'all are well! More to come soon. Including pictures! :)
