Yesterday afternoon I rode my bike on the way home at around 6 pm. While passing by the kindergarten I came across a beggar on the pavement, and he was dancing to the children’s music broadcast from the kindergarten. He showed me his back, so I couldn’t judge his age. He is short, in dirty oily red cotton clothes, and with tangled hair. He put all his stuff on his back and also some hanging off his neck all way down his chest. He was just dancing there, or rather swaying his delicate body to the simple rhythm, with his hands waving in the air. He seemed to have forgotten all his sorrows or misfortunes, and was clearly intoxicated himself. 

Judging from his clothes and the stuff he was carrying, this was the second time I had happened to meet him. It seemed that he was messing around in this area, wandering all days long.

In the cold winter people wear thick clothes, even complaining about the cold weather. We walk or drive or ride hurriedly home after work, and nobody wants to make a even longer pause halfway home. But the poor guy has no place to dwell, and no enough food to eat. And he is just hanging about here.

07/01/04

Foggy in the morning with the visibility of around 50 meters. And quite a few snowflakes were falling down upon your face, cold. On the cement ground were the tracks left by footsteps and tires. To my surprise, after I left my living block, there were no snowflakes at all. From last late evening the fog started to generate, and it stayed there and went through the night all the way to this morning.

The whole city was enveloped by the cloudy mist. Lights of the vehicles were all on, driving slowly forward with horns alarming sometimes.

Much to my surprise, my colleague told me that there was a fairly big snow in the south part of the city where she lives. And the fire fighters were sweeping pretty thick snow off the main road when she passed by.

Temperature has dropped below zero and water froze.

Trees have stripped off their green leaf clothes and stand naked and still in the weak winter sunshine. Compared with the summer time, winter obviously lacks greenness everywhere in the north, just leaving the color of dull yellow.

These days we have already waved goodbye to the year of 2006. Looking back over the past time, what did I do? And looking ahead, what is my new year’s resolution? Sometimes these days I am kind really thinking about it. The New Year hasn’t brought me a good mood. Simply due to the cloudy, snowy and foggy weather? Probably a bit.

My students are always confronted with the same conditions as before. Little has changed to them in their schoolwork. Let me put like this: Assign them some homework, and they could drive you mad by making tremendous mistakes. Worse still, they just copy the others’ answers to fool you. Actually they are deceiving themselves. They are not stupid and they know this inside out, but it’s like a habit they have early formed and they are just not able to quit such silly things.

Not having written something for several days, I am feeling that my mind is going rusty, not knowing what to put down here.

These days it is chilly outside, for real winter has arrived. After the monthly test, I am just sensing a little lazy to write anything. Each day after lessons, I just tune in to listen to or watch English programs on the net. I have a strong realization that I have to improve myself in the field of English. Reading what I have jotted down here really makes me nervous and ashamed, feeling that I must try harder so as to improve myself to write better notes.

Days ago Taiwan earthquake damaged telecommunication cables linking the Chinese mainland, disconnecting users with overseas Websites, so it’s hard to pick up native English programs. But I found a very good domestic English website: China Radio International, which can broadcast great English programs. Even it has recorded the key programs, which gives more opportunities for you to repeat listening at your own convenience.

Merry X-mas and Happy New Year

to You all!

Wish you and your family happy

forever!

Very busy in the recent month.

I think you senior high teachers have been confronted with the same situation as me.

Apparently Monday through Saturday is always straight time to work at school. No more mention in here. Just say the sundays in the recent month.

After the mid-term examination organized by Lizi district:

The first Sunday: November 19. Gave 5 lessons in the morning. And held a preparatory meeting for the parents’ meeting the next afternoon.

The second Sunday: November 26. No lessons in the morning, but the parents’ meeting in the afternoon.

The third Sunday: December 3. A tense journey to Yang Si Junior School for the whole day.

The fourth Sunday: December 10. Had four lessons in the morning and visited an exhibition of Li Zhenhua’s education career in the afternoon.

Being very busy, I haven’t visited and renewed the blog for a few days. I ever swore one day that I would write one article each day and persist in writing for a whole year. You see, it is so hard. I have  been breaking  my own promise for several times. Said is easier than done.

In fact there is nothing special to do every day. Just give lessons, attend meetings, and do some other trifles which happen every day. What big changes could you expect to take place? Quietness and peace is the main theme of teachers’ lives. In other words, this is also one kind of dullness and boredom.

Christmas is fast approaching. And VOA is repeatedly broadcasting a Christmas song, whose title I don’t kn0w. I like to do some paperwork while listening to English programs, even though I can catch nothing as a result. I think the only good point is that I can merge myself in the English atmosphere. Even when I don’t listen to anything, I prefer to wear the earphone. I don’t like to be disturbed.

Chill outside. But in the multimedia classroom it was warm. The heat system worked well.

We had a gathering here. Mr. R organized two teachers to give two open lessons. They were great. Ms Lu, from Xuegong School, speaks excellent English. She took advantage of her fluent English in the lesson. And the second teacher, Ms Zhang from No.3 Middle School, also did a great job. I was deeply impressed with her PPT demonstration, into which I could see she had put a lot of efforts.

After the open lessons, Mr. R made comments on them as usual. I agreed with him, especially to the following points:

1.     Activate students to take part in the lesson tasks. Enliven the lesson atmosphere.

In order to receive tomorrow's joint inspection by the municipal and district education authorities, we  give up the last lesson this afternoon to do thorough - cleaning. The students don't even know how to do cleaning work, even though they have started to  practise this from  primary school phase.

I think the most important thing is that they lack the sense of responsibility. They are all only child in their family. Their parents don't assign them to do any housework at home. And they just hope that their children can become persons who will do big things in the future.

If a child even don't clean his own bedroom, how can we expect him or her to clean the world when they grow up?

The students, either from city families or from village ones, have been spoiled. They are not being fostered in a right way.

Schools, parents and the whole society should be responsible for this bad education.

Comapred with foreign kids and their basic education, our students should  feel shameful on themselves. And so should we adults, and the whole nation's education, too!

It's reported that goalkeeper Wang Dalei has been expelled from China's olympic football team. But not comfirmed yet up to now.

But If it is true, it will not surprise me at all.

Tell you what. when playing with IR Iran team the other day, Wang Dalei was once passed by Iranian striker Arash Borhani after the Iranian beat the offside trap, And worse still, Wang Dalei gave in and didn't chase after the ball, just standing there, looking stupid very much.

If he never gave up running after the ball, how could Borhani do the humiliation on china's team, just like some people said?

He is talented, and  surely has a good future. But he has no right to become proud and undisciplined and careless.

If the news is true, he deserves it!

So annoying! And so useless!

I am referring to the education supervision given by the district education bureau. This time they ask for more paperwork (even including some from the students) than before.

As is known to us, teachers are very busy every day. Teachers have been doing their utmost to work. But who cares about this? They are still assigned more extra paperwork to write and compile.

How can they deal with it? So they have to make the work up irresponsibly. Even the students are involved in the complete fabrication. What kind of persons will they be in the future if we teachers set such a bad example to them like this?

This is the real current situation in the middle school education.

Each time the education inspection comes, the whole school and every teacher will start to produce batches of useless materials to muddle through the work.

After Iranian striker Arash Borhani beat the offside trap and dummied past goalkeeper Wang Dalei, he didn’t kick the ball into the net immediately。And He looked back but saw no Chinese footballers chasing after him. So he just stopped the ball at the goal line, and waved his teammates to come close to him to share the joy. At this moment Chinese players gave up doing something, just staring hopelessly at the Iranian goal scorer. Iranian No.10 forward really surprised me. Really he was mean and stupid.

A voice soared up on the net that we China’s Olympic football team was humiliated by this score. Actually I was struck dumb for the moment on the spot when I watched this. But I didn’t feel that we Chinese players were humiliated.

For long it is trendy that everybody will mention Yang Si when talking about school education reform. It seems that Yangsi experience has become the Bible for Chinese middle schools to follow. Media play the most important role in heating it up.

But the fact is if there is only one voice existing in the education field，this will be abnormal and quite dangerous.

Frankly speaking, I have no objection to their class reform: Learn first and then teach, practice on the spot, thus the students have formed a great habit of self-studying, one of important studying abilities. I think this is challenging and feasible and has set a good example for us to follow.

We can refer to Yang Si experience, and nonetheless just focus on its class reform experience.

以热爱祖国为荣，以危害祖国为耻；
以服务人民为荣，以背离人民为耻；
以崇尚科学为荣，以愚昧无知为耻；
以辛勤劳动为荣，以好逸恶劳为耻；
以团结互助为荣，以损人利己为耻；
以诚实守信为荣，以见利忘义为耻；
Qiguogudu@2006-12-6 16:49:26

On The Way to Yang Si

(December 3)

On the morning of December 3, we took a bus to set out for Yang Si Junior School with the purpose of learning school-running experience from this school.

We 40 teachers left Linzi at 7 am in the morning. And the bus was something wrong because the driver filled two different grades of oil. At last it broke down in Qingzhou city. When it was fixed up it was about 10am. Finally we arrived in Taixing city, Jiangsu province, at 6pm.

Foggy in the morning, cold.

You know what? When we were doing jogging on the playground, the fog became heavier all of a sudden. At the beginning of jogging, I could see the outlines of the other class squads on the other side of the playground. But I couldn’t see them in the dense fog when we took the second lap, just hearing their footstep. Leaves were blowing down onto the ground in the cold wind.

Some guys said that the suddenly generated frost is a little poisonous. I didn’t know that. Maybe.

The heavy fog vanished after about an hour.

Today I had no lessons. Just did some preparation for tomorrow’s lessons.

When Zhang Ke was given the second yellow card, he suddenly became confused and caught in a despair, and as a result he didn’t know what to do at all, just trying to explain it in Chinese, “ not me , not me!”

How helpless!

I think his mind must have gone blank at that moment.

As a young football player, can’t he speak English, even a little? Who has caused such a terrible situation? They should learn some daily English to defend themselves when in need, at least some related to football games.

But they can’t. They played football when they were young. Even they didn’t finish basic schooling.

Most Korean players are at least university graduates while ours are not. We have lagged behind compared with our neighbors. They give up school education. Or else, they just care little about it.

I had four lessons today. There are two extra, because the Chinese teacher will have a public demonstration lesson soon. And she needs to do some preparation, including searching for relevant materials and doing power point work. So she gave her lessons to me temporarily.

We did some exercises mainly focused on the first module. The students made me quite disappointed. We started this module 10 days ago, and have spent too much time on the vocabulary. But today’s dictation came out to be totally a failure.

Sighing……

After super, I browsed through the net and happened to find a blog in Sina：老唐的BLOG, in which the guy just translates Xu Jinglei’s blog articles. There are many mistakes of grammar and sentence structure. Actually we don't need an English version of Xu's Blog.……　　

Yesterday afternoon we held a parental meeting. After each big examination, we make it a rule to have a parental meeting. In this meeting I introduced to their parents the examination and the students’ situation of this past period , and asked them to make suggestions on our class or school work. I think this is a good chance to communicate with parents, and can also further mutual understanding and improve our teachers’ job. As far as some students’ personal affairs are concerned, we can handle them with the help of their parents.

After the parental meeting, we several head teachers had a meal outside, eating hot pot. Perhaps it will never be changed at all that teachers meet together at any occasions and always talk about their students and schools.  And we did so, too.