My Corner for Education

I love my father and still often think of him. I am the first born in my whole family network. My dad loved me as the first born and was always proud of me for my accomplishments. Everyone knows that I have my father’s personality. Sometimes, that is a compliment because my dad was a very charming and popular businessman and an active member in the labour union. I was just the same when I was studying at school and later working in Taiwan. I was very active in the student unions and clubs when I was at school.

My father and I admired each other because we were so similar. We were both very proud and stubborn as well. Once we had our mind set, we simply would go ahead and never look back. We, however, bucked head often, especially, about his business decision. He was not a very careful businessman. In a traditional Chinese family, no matter how resentful we were about his frivolous attitude, we could not openly express our disagreement towards him, the elder! Although I bear the resemblance, I never want to be like him. He brought us too much unnecessary pain throughout the years due to his poor business decisions.

My father was 49 when he got sick with cancer. My mother gave up her business to take care of him full time. I was working for a convention organizer during the daytime and teaching English at Fu Jen University Continuing Education Department in the evening. Luckily, all my siblings were all grown up and were able to sustain basic financial situation. After the thyroid cancer operation, my father was sent home paralyzed from the neck down due to the spread of his cancer. The doctor told me that my father was “lucky” to have cancer that could be operated; however, the cancer had gotten into his spine and damaged his neuron-system. I was told on the day he was released from the hospital to take him home and let him enjoy his life with a “better living standard”. Basically, the doctor implied that his living days would not be too long and he would be disabled for the rest of his life.

Against all odds, my father lived for another 7 years. He was very alive but discouraged. It was not easy for anybody, especially for a proud man like him. I had planned to come to Canada before he got sick. I kept delaying the departure date due to my father’s health condition. I questioned myself about my decision to leave and I did not have the heart to tell my parents about the final plan. My father did not disagree with my plan when I finally revealed my decision to him. I remember that he just asked me subtly why I couldn’t just find a boy friend in Taiwan. He said, “You are involved in so many activities and have so many “boy” friends, why can’t you just find someone local in Taiwan?” Deep down in my heart, I knew he did not want me to leave, but he did not want me to change my plan because of him either. He had never asked me not to leave. In fact, if he did ask me then, I probably would never make it to Canada.

It’s our family trait that we do not give up easily. I had wonderful jobs in Taiwan. For a single career woman, I was able to maintain substantial income standard. To leave the country, I had to give them all up. I could understand my parents’ concerns about giving up my career there. Meanwhile, my siblings were quite disappointed with me leaving the family behind as well. They knew that I sooner or later had to get married; however, they resented my decision to leave Taiwan. So, I left home under the circumstances like that.

1993 was a busy year for me. Many things happened, good and bad, and with happiness and with sorrow. For immigration reason, I was not allowed to leave the country for two years starting from the date of application. So, I finally became a full Canadian citizen in spring 1993 right after my graduation from the Faculty of Education. With the citizenship, came the passport application. We were happy to be able to finally travel back to Taiwan although we could not do it due to a new financial reason.

While I was quite happy with the completion of my schooling and my new citizenship, my husband’s court case was also finally settled in the spring of 1993. He was involved in a car accident in 1983, with no fault of his own. However, the motorcycle guy who hit him had some disagreement with his own insurance company, which consequently affected the insurance payout to my husband. Of course, they all went to court, the motorcycle guy, his insurance carrier, my husband and his insurance carrier. It was like a farce for ten long years!

Finally ten years later in 1993, the case was settled OUT OF COURT. Who won in this case? The lawyers! More than half of my husband entitlement went to pay the lawyers. The motorcycle guy apparently would be on the wheelchair for the rest of his life, and my husband’s health was also wrecked. It was really a joke of the system. Anyway, with the little insurance payout, we decided to put it down as a down payment to purchase our first detached home. Due to the recession, the interest rate was falling to the all time low. It was a good time for us to finally secure a piece of our own real estate. Since I would be starting working full time at the store, it would make sense to start thinking about our financial plan. So, we purchased our first home and moved in the summer of 1993.

Right after we moved into our new home, I also got myself a part time teaching position at the local Chinese School which was not too far from the house. I accepted the teaching position for September not because of the money. They certainly haven’t paid teachers enough to teach those multi-level heritage language classes. It was more of an opportunity to be in a Canadian classroom, to meet Chinese people in the community, and to establish a sense of belonging here in a new country. All heritage language schools have been run by the local Board of Education. In fact, there were at least 10 different languages being taught at the time. That tells you how diverse Canada has become.

About a week before September 1993, I got a phone call from my brother in Taiwan. He warned me of my dad’s deteriorating health and asked me to standby and be prepared to go home. My heart just sank! I called the airline immediately that night and got the ticket to fly home. A week before my full time job and the brand new class, I had to take time off and fly back to Taiwan with my new passport. Sad! Irony!

After all the hassles of daily long-distance commute, I finally graduated from the Faculty of Education in 1993. My mother-in-law and my husband were at my graduation to celebrate with me. It was a proud moment for my mother-in-law because she was there with me when I first visited the university. She knew how frustrated and determined I was to graduate from this particular university. Now I had officially graduated with another degree in Education. It would be easier for me to get into teaching profession in Canada. (Or, at least, that was what I thought at the time.)

All the graduates were excited about the end of another phase of learning journey, but most of us actually had a looming concern about job prospects in the future. The average age in my class was 32, so most of my classmates were older, the middle aged crowd. Most of us took time off work to study or had a career move, and we had to find a job as soon as possible due to our family responsibility.

The school boards usually would come around to the Faculty of Education all over Ontario in April to promote their Boards to the new teachers and to hand out job applications, but not in 1993. By then, we had officially stepped into recession, and jobs were scarce. Many Boards did come to present some basic information to us, but they frankly told us upfront that they were not planning for a massive hiring that year. The only people got interviewed that year were teacher candidates with French or music qualifications. In my class, only three teachers were interviewed. So, here we go. Now what? Three years after landing in Canada, I was still unemployed, except now I was an unemployed teacher.

I sometimes read other people’s stories about how they have struggled to survive in a new country and I can definitely relate to their experiences because I myself had been through similar situations. I am lucky to have a loving caring husband who encourages me to pursuit my dream without pulling my leg or holding me back. I, on the other hand, was my own worst enemy. I was depressed with the fact of my joblessness which later became a sense of worthlessness. I was depressed with going nowhere after three years in Canada.

I didn’t really know what hit me. I guess I just realized one day that I could not simply sit at home and mope about my depression all day long. I could drive myself crazy, or I could do something to keep myself busy or make myself useful. So, I found a part time job working at a furniture store. At the time I thought if I could get hired by a Board, it would be easier for me to quit a simple job from the store and no transition would be required.

I have a Canada Day barbeque party to go to this afternoon. It is a book launch celebration for a friend's sister who is a poet. I have been dreaded of attending the party because everyone is supposed to bring a piece of their own poetry creation to the party. Well, I am a reader of poetry, not a writer. I kept thinking about bringing a "Roses are red, violets are blue" type of poem as a joke. Late last night, I chickened out and quickly whipped up a poem for today. Here it is to share with all of you on July 1st, and Happy Canada Day! 

Torn

I have to carry on
When the world intends to stop.
You drew the line
Where I continue to keep on.
It would be easy to take sides
As bystanders, to look on.

Most of the friends I have here are related to schools. They are either my co-workers or my students’ parents. This afternoon, I had lunch with a friend who has been a parent volunteer at my school for 12 years. Her oldest and youngest sons were taught by me when they were in grade 1, 2 and 3. Her youngest son finally finished the grade 5 this year, which means that she will no longer be around at my school. It is very sad to lose these parent volunteers. Fortunately, I have made friends with many of these parents so we still can go out once a while for social gatherings.

Shortly after I got home this afternoon, I got a phone call from another parent whom I met through Chinese school. I taught his daughter in my Mandarin class twelve years ago when their family first landed in Canada from England. They were originally from Beijing, China. Over the years, I have kept in touch with most of my students and their families from the Chinese School. His daughter was one of the younger ones in the class. While many of my Chinese students just graduated this year from universities, she still has one more year to go. She is determined to follow her parents’ footsteps to study health science (nutrition). The parent told me that I had made an impact on his daughter because she always talks about me and I am the only teacher that she would visit whenever she comes to town.

I really appreciate the compliments from this parent. Our conversation brought back the memories of my days of teaching in my Mandarin class at the Chinese School. It was not an easy task to teach at a small Chinese School in a suburban city like mine. I remember I had about 20 students ranged from age five to age thirteen (kindergarten to Grade 8) in the one and only Chinese Mandarin class in town. My students all came with different language abilities depending on the families. Some of them were born here to parents from Hong Kong, so Cantonese would be the family language. Some of them were from China or Taiwan and had extensive conversing and listening abilities. Others were either born here with no Chinese cultural experiences at all or Canadian kids who just wanted to learn the language. It was not easy to teach a group of students with multi-levels and multi-ages. I simply had to take it like teaching ESL students with different abilities and cultural backgrounds.

I remember that I taught traditional Chinese characters to all the students regardless where they came from. After each instruction on writing strokes, I would also show them how the simplified character would look like. I always told my students that they needed to know the origin and progression of the character formation. If they know the traditional characters, it would be easy for them to recognize their simplified formation. It was my belief that I had to do everything possible to show them both ways of the character formation. It was not that difficult for them to learn since all of them were really smart. The difficult task was really how to make the learning interesting and fun for those students.

My students, as well as many Chinese kids overseas, lacked motivation to learn the language. I couldn’t blame my students for not showing motivation because they were learning a language they didn’t not have opportunities to use or practice outside the classroom. Some of their parents don’t speak the language either. I did try my best to make each and every lesson fun and interesting. I had different activities and stories all the time in hope that they at least absorbed just a tiny bit of Chinese language and culture from each lesson.

School Is Out!

The year is finally over. Due to the extreme heat for the last two

days, my room temperature was literally up to 42 degrees Celsius because of no

open air through the window, malfunction air vent and no sun-blocking curtain in the new room. We were all on the edge of breaking down because of the heat plus we all had a group of kids who looked extremely hot and sweaty in a stuffy classroom. We had a luncheon one day

and a movie day on the last day. My students voted to have luncheon and movie because of the many awards they have received. As a teacher, what can I say? I am just too proud of their accomplishment. Anyway, my friend did a slide show of photos she had taken at

On Friday, I received another lunch award in my mail box. At school, we give out two awards each week to the best Primary class and Junior class. This week’s award is another addition to many that my students have won this year. The other day I was going through some of the boxes I packed for the new classroom. I came across all the weekly lunchroom awards that had been awarded to my class this year. (I took them down from the wall before the move and I was too busy to notice the number of awards in the pile.) So, I counted all them when I took them out of the box. They have won 26 awards all together. That means, in addition to the latest award from last week, my class has won 27 weeks out of all 38 school weeks this year! How amazing they are!

I have the most well behaved class ever out of all classes I had taught for the last 11 years. I am really amazed at the way my students have turned out this year. They are able to take in every bit I taught them and internalize the rationale behind each and every rule in the classroom and at school. Our Behaviour Teaching Assistant praised me for the way I have trained them because this class has been as well-behaved as the one last year. I humbly told her that it is really the students’ effort. The class I had last year was under my care for two years, so all the students were familiar with my set of rules for the second year. The class this year has a very small group of 18 students. Usually a smaller class is easier to handle. I told her that if the class next year will perform just as well as the last two, then I would be glad to accept her compliments. But, honestly, deep down in my heart, I was just so proud of my students, all of them!

For the last two years, I spent a lot of time on promoting character development within my class. The community where I teach has been through a lot of changes, unfortunately, not for the better. The school location is becoming a very rough neighbourhood. Children come to school with baggage from home, some of which are due to societal factors that simply beyond school’s realm of responsibility. For a school community like ours, teachers have to take up a lot of professional responsibility for promoting academic achievement as well as social responsibility for ensuring the well beings of the students. The most difficult part of the job is dealing with students’ behavioral problems.

Sometimes, teachers are in conflict with many parents who are helpless with parenting strategies or with parents who are delinquent themselves and lack respect for themselves or the school. Often times, they simply choose to ignore or openly despise school’s authority. Children who grow up in this kind of family environment also learned to disrespect others. It takes tremendous effort to teach these children to become future rule-following and law-binding citizens, and more importantly, to respect others.

This is from my first Yam blog. I think it is about time for me to consolidate or delete some of my old writing. So, here are a few just for the record keeping. Please read them in reversed chronical order.Unfortunately, the computer input device for writing Chinese is not working any longer. I promise I will try to get it fixed in July.

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August 16, 2006結緣體育系雜感

我身在海外多年，由於多次搬遷，已經與很多過去的老朋友們失去聯絡，我甚至連閱讀或書寫中文的機會也變的很少了。幾個月前我新增了一套中文硬體之後，終於可以開始在電腦上找尋中文的資訊。當我無意中閱讀了一則與輔大女子划船隊及謝茂松老師有關的新聞之後，我很興奮地送了一封email給輔大新聞網，請他們代我向謝老師恭喜有關他們的成果，並且代我向其他師長問好，沒想到竟然出乎意外地和体育系辦公室聯絡上。体育系秘書很誠意地邀我寫一篇感想，我雖不是體育系的校友，但我常往自己的臉上貼金地自認為我是體育系的榮譽會友，所以我也就欣然的接受邀稿。現在回想起來，我與體育系最初結緣也大約是在二十多年前了，當時我還是輔仁大學夜間部英文系大一的學生。

選擇英文系是我的興趣，上夜間部則是家庭經濟與聯考現實的無耐，而選擇輔仁大學卻是我多年的期望，因為我是標準的輔大棒球迷。從小我們全家常以老家嘉義的棒球隊為榮，許多球員後來都陸續地保送輔仁大學體育系。中學時我的願望就是希望有一天我能見到我心目中棒球偶像們，特別是明星投手許正宗！只是萬萬沒想到，我竟然陰錯陽差地跑到體育系辦公室打工。

大一時由於參與了不少社團及學生活動中心的活動，為了經濟需求及能就近參與社團的活動，我便開始在中美堂下的福利社打工當影印小妹，福利社的曾媽和曾姊非常照顧我，所以我可以白天打工，晚上上課。由於福利社地理位置非常接近積建樓，因此它也就成了體育系學生常聚集聊天聚會的地方。每天我都有機會看到好多明星級的運動選手們，可想而知剛開始我是非常興奮！

What a Week!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My report cards were due last Wednesday. What a relief when I sawall the printed reports in my mailbox! I thought all I needed to donow was just to proofread them! Surprisingly, right at the end ofthe day we were called into the staff room for an emergencymeeting. I was on traffic duty out in front of the school when myprincipal came out to call me in, which usually meant it must beBAD news. Sure enough, it was really bad!

We found out that we had to move out of the portables into the newclassrooms by the end of Friday. What! It was late Wednesdayafternoon, and students were supposed to be at their seats in thenew room by Friday afternoon? We were more than surprised. Everyoneimmediately put up this major panic mode. It would not be easy toteach and move at the same time unless we could get some help.Well, the only help we would have was from the custodial staff. Wegot five extra custodians for 4 hours on Friday to help move allthe heavy furniture. Four hours of five custodians for twentyteachers!

As you could imagine, when we heard of the news, all twentyaffected teachers were just hopping mad about the decision. All wecould think of was that it has been 30 degrees out there every daywithout any moving air. Some teachers have almost 30 kids in ascorching hot portable. Forget about teaching, now imagine they aresupposed to pack, move and set up the empty room with 30 rowdy kidsat the same time.

It was not an easy decision either. We had to follow this drasticmove because of safety reasons. Apparently, the hydro would bedisconnected in each portable in order to attach the new intercomand security system in the new classrooms. We could not have hydroin the portables or both sections, which posed as a major safetyissue for us because we would not have any communication with theoffice. In a portable out there, strangers could easily get in, andaccidents or any emergency could happen anytime. We can’t risk ourchildren for this kind of logistic nightmare. Did we have a choiceother than hopping mad? Hahahhaha.