A Teacher's Biggest Fulfillment

I hardly check my old Taiwanese yahoo e-mail account anymore; but don't know why, I decided to check it today, and surprisingly found out a mail from my former student J among hundreds of junk mails...

I was overjoyed to hear from her again. After all, it was the most wonderful feeling a teacher could have to have a student remembers you and contacts you, even after 6 years apart.

Here's what she said in the mail (in purple text, no editing at all, just delete her full name):

Dear Minnie, (yeah, don't laugh, that was the old English name I used when I was teaching ESL for kids. Why Minnie? Remember who's Micky Mouse's girlfriend? Minnie! Kids dig that!)

I havn't kept in touch with you for a long time. Do you still remember me?

I have been really busy during the past three years in senior high school. Luckily, now I get admitted to the department of foreign languages and literature in National Cheng Kung University, which is located in Tainan and is famous for its outstanding college in science and engineer.

As the matter of fact, I'd like to be an hotelier in the future. However, there isn't any department about hotel management in prestigious universities in Taiwan. As a result, one of the reasons why I want to study foreign languages is that I want to study hotel management abroad in the future and bilingual ability is important to a hotlier.

What do you think about my idea? Is it "correct"? Could you give any advice? I wonder that it is correct for me to major foreign languages just because I want to be an hotelier.

Sincerely Yours
J 5/3/08

Sure I replied her right away with absolute delight and some advice she wants.
Life is all good.

My Lovely Students

September 15, 2006 (old blog entry)

I have to continue our target lesson for this week: Asking and giving directions. So, I let my students listen to the following conversation on the tape:

• A woman: Hi, I need some directions. Do you happen to know where the hospital is?
• A guy on street: You bet! It’s on …..

OK, I let them listen to it a couple of times without any written handout at hand, and had the lights off. In the dark, they can have better sense to “hear” things. Then, we had a great discussion about what they heard.

• S popped out first: “I sink the man say: ‘You back’, be-causi the woman want to hospital, her back is pain, so, it ‘you back’.”
• L disagreed: “No, no, I think the guy is not good. He is kinda ‘bu` hao`’ (not good in Chinese), so, it is “You bad”…”
• X continued: “I think it’s “bed”, she want to go hospital a bed, tired, you know, sleep on bed…”

!@#$%^&*.....

Anyway, I put all the possible answers on the whiteboard, along with the correct “You bet” to help them make a decision. It turned out, everyone thought “You back” make more sense in this dialogue. When I announced the accurate answer and explained this colloquial expression to them, they all said “English is difficult!! Strange!!”.

BTW, B gave me a fresh fig grew in his backyard 2 days ago. A gave me some home-made dim-sum yesterday. J brings me vegetarian food almost every day. Mostly fresh fruit salad. And she’s gonna bring me some vegetarian moon cake tomorrow. Don’t you just love them?

Filed in ESL Teaching Tagged: ESL, Teaching No Comments »

Too Fast?

September 23, 2006 (old blog entry reposted)

Done a personal survey among my students today. The most common feedback from them are– friendly, cheerful and nice personality, dynamic teaching skills, never a dull moment (one student said that, yeah, I’m an entertaining hostess…), patient, bilingually beneficial to them.

However, almost all of them put this answer on Q2:

Q:What do you dislike the most about this class?
A: You talk too fast!

Maybe I’ve been far away from the lower level of English proficiency for a while, so I can’t remember the pain the 2nd language learners have to suffer from the fast speech of the instructor. Oh, yeah, I clearly remember one of my previous grammar professors back in college, Professor Hilbert, she is absolutely the champion of speaking fast on campus. Not only in class, in real life, she speaks even faster. I guess she’s been holding herself back really hard in class already.

That’s the reason why I want to get some feedback from my lovely students–to make myself a better teacher for the next cycle.

Always try to advance my career. Yeah, like the pyscho test Jesse gave to me yesterday, my imaginary ladder on the movie theater screen is the sturdy, old, solid oak one. The one looks like the monstrous one in the public library, that can be steadily fixed on the floor, with wheels, helps you reaching the top of the bookshelfs and take you to any books you want to get. The underlining meaning of the ladder is– how you see your career. Which seems to be the major comfort and sense of security I can provide myself for the rest of my life.

Being professional; stay professional. It must be easier than stay beautiful. After all, I’m already too sexy and pretty for being a teacher.

Tutored I,aka my new TOFEL preparation student from Taiwan, this afternoon. Still feel good step into the familiar, same old campus. Glad that I help her a lot in grammar. She told me afterwards: “I wish I can know you earlier so I can suffer less from my classes… H should introduce us as soon as I got here!!” And she handed me the tutoring fee in a cute envelope with a thank you note and personal signature stamp on it… That’s a totally Asian way to show respect to the teacher. No matter what kinda of teachers that might be.

Filed in Cultural Differences, ESL Teaching, Mandarin Teaching 1 Comment »

Dynamic

August 31,2006 (old blog entry reposted)

Gosh, I really LOVE teaching here.
Dynamic, energetic, creative… etc. These are the most common compliments I received from my fellow teachers, coworkers and supervisors. Along with pretty, beautiful, “subtle” sexy from my students.

One of my students– B, hugged me yesterday and said “I love you, Miss Y” without a reason. She simply just wanted to do that after each class. Another student, I don’t have much interactions with, so I don’t even remember her name (yet), asked me the other day: “Why can’t you teach us in every class?” That surprised me a little, though I know that’s what she(they) really wants. So, I had to comfort her (and other students) that it must be some reason that my supervisor arranged other teachers to teach them instead of me for other classes… blah blah blah… you can learn from different teachers, cause every teacher has different style… you happened to like mine….

And today, R told me that she fought so hard to stay in my class 2 weeks ago (when this new cycle began), even though she didn’t belong to this class at the first place and had to change all her schedule to accoomdate to mine. “Cause I like you a lot since the day you subsituted us once. I want you to be my teacher, and I’m glad that I’m your student.” Aye… almost all my students are mid-aged women from China, but they”re not afraid to show me their affections.

They are sooooo cute, and reminds me my mom a lot. No matter they’re kids, adults or elders, they can always easily find out if you’re paying attentions to them. If you really care about their learnings, so they reward you whatever they have learned from you. You show them your heart, they return bigger hearts to you.That, my friends, it’s the meaning of life. Also the meaning to be a teacher. A great one.

Another GREAT thing teaching here is — free food.

Every Thursday on the staff meeting, of course, there will be homemade chocolate cookies (or other kinds), hot coffee or tea, and biritos (sliced into bite sizes already). And from time to time, there’re some complimentary pastry produced by the students in baking classes around. And, not mention every afternnon around 1:10~1:30 pm, I can always “observe” my students in their cooking class, then I HAVE TO eat/share/taste/give feedback on their works, aka my free lunch. I had my special lunch today– which was roasted beef serlions, seasoned rice, aside with Cesar salads. Taco Salad last Thursday. Fruit Salad a day before, and Potato Beef soup 2 days ahead of that.

Nice, huh?

Can’t wait to have my long Labor Day weekend, though. Teaching 4 classes, 5 hours in a row from 8am to 1pm DAILY is taking out off a lot of my energy.

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