Day 27: Don't use a metal spoon

During the break in a lesson, I had my honey drink. Then D told me it's not healthy to use a metal spoon with honey as it decomposes some of the nutrients.

As far as I know, stainless steel is a chemically unreative substance, but I'll take her advice. There're a number of traditional Chinese formula that haven't been proved (or proved wrong) by scientific researches anyway.

Day 26: Learn and change

Honestly, I've always been a procrastinator. Although I've become slightly better at time management now, I still like to put things aside and wait until I've the right mood.

K, on the other hand, is entirely different. She turned to me for advice yesterday, about the university study programmes and her personal statement. She was especially concerned about the organisation and cohesion of ideas in her personal statement so we spent almost half an hour revising it together. It was an enjoyable experience and K also said it was interesting looking at the piece in great detail.

Today she came over with another piece, borrowing the features that I had introduced to her yesterday. What an efficient learner! Her change was impressive and I gave her a bit of compliment as I returned the piece to her, along with some feedback.

So let's see if I can stop procrastinating and be efficient like K.

Day 25: Give constructive feedback

Yesterday I conducted a survey in class for my paper about writing feedback. It was an anonymous online survey so basically the students can write about whatever they want.

The results, however, was a bit surprising. There were both positive and negative feedback, but when students pointed out the limitations, they focused more on what else I can consider in the future. (Or did they learn it from my feedback to their writing? hahaha)

I feel thankful for their suggestions and their care for me, and I think in the future, when I have to evaluate someone, I'll also focus more on the strengths and give "suggestions for improvement", instead of pointing out the "weaknesses" as if it's some kind of sin.

Day 24: Attend to inspiring questions

S is quick and pretty good at the subject that I teach. She often raises issues that make me ponder. In the first semester, she asked about the difference between "most people" and "most of the people" as her secondary school teacher did not allow them to use "most of the people", and that started my exploration about these two expressions, as it seems to me that they refer to different contexts and there's nothing wrong with "most of the people".

Yesterday she asked about the use of articles "the" in front of place names. Is there any rule at all?

Mid-term review

I haven't updated this blog for a few days, since my days have been fully packed and I hardly have any time to sit down and think. My previous job in the business field was also busy, but it's entirely different from teaching at school level.

One, there were assistants who could help me with the administrative duties. Now I do everything from data entry to arranging photocopies.

Two, when I had lunch, it was always my own time and I could do whatever I wanted. Now things are entirely different, leaving little room for recovery of energy.

Three, teaching involves a lot of routine. When you spend extra time preparing a lesson, you risk having little time left for assignment feedback and other duties required by the school. But then if you can manage to spend extra time researching for teaching ideas in the library, getting well prepared for lessons and marking all the assignments, it only means you have done your job.

It seems that if you take a macroscopic view, "learning" is everywhere, but if we look at the Bloom's taxonomy below,

it can be seen that most of the school admin tasks requires only the bottom two levels, whereas lesson preparation might involve the higher levels including "synthesis" and "analysis", but it all depends on whether a teacher has enough time to think over it. Evaluation of the effectiveness, on the other hand, can be luxury, as the lessons often come one after another.

As for stimulation, staying at the same place teaching the same subject for a long time can kill the creativity for teaching; therefore, it seems that doing plenty of travel and getting out of the school to attend talks and talking to the others seem to be a good way to stay refreshed. Reading can be another way. The only problem is: do we have the time to do all that?

So maybe one more thing that we can learn from teaching is, how to manage time and prioritize tasks well. haha

Day 23: Pay attention to the needs of others

In an award presentation today, a student shared her experience in voluntary services. She mentioned one important thing: pay attention to the needs of others; when visiting the eldery, she would play the role of a good listener, but when working with the kids, she would approach them actively and try to resolve the arguments that often occur among kids of different age groups.

As I listened to what she said, I was thinking whether we adopt similar approaches in teaching. In some cases we have to be excellent listeners, but in other situations we have to be proactive and even "control" what is happening.

Day 22: Weddings in Shanghai

Before the afternoon sessions, I had some time to chat with D, who just came back from Shanghai. When asked about her trip, D told me that she went to a wedding in Shanghai.

The banquet dishes served are different from those in Hong Kong (I wasn't aware that roasted piglet is uniquely Cantonese), and so is the music and the games. I told D about weddings I went to in other places and in Hong Kong and we laughed a lot about the strange bits.

It's nice to learn about the world outside through D. I'll try and talk to N who also went away during Easter later.

Day 21: Interview by reflective listening

Yesterday two students interviewed me for their final year project. It was supposed to be a stuctured interview, but they tried to ask extra questions when they found necessary.

It had a very good flow, and one of the students didn't ask a lot of open questions but with a lot of "it seems that you think... could you tell me more about it?", evidence of reflective listening.

After the interview, I told her that the interview was very fluent, especially the follow-up part. One of them also said she tried to not to ask too many new questions but to develop from the previous question.

I haven't done a formal interview for a while and thanks R for reminding me some of the good interview techniques.

Day 20: Be a "benefit finder"

I stayed up all night for some school work. In order not to look like a walking mummy, I tried to wear a vintage colourful one-piece minidress with a pair of colourful earrings that matches the outfit.

In spite of what I wore, I still looked tired and maybe a bit pale. A janitor noticed that too, but when I told her what I did, surprisingly, she said "then you can manage time well later and don't have to rush".

This made me feel much better. She's definitely a "benefit finder", as she sees the benefit in an issue, rather than the downside.

Now I've to take the benefit of quality sleeping. Bonne nuit!