teacher interview

Peter Lin: English teacher of Jian-De high school in
Keelung cityVincent Hsu: graduate student of TKU, English departmentDate: 4/18/2007Location: Class 301, Jian-De high school

V: You grew up in
Salem village, a very small village lacking of studying materials.  By your late teens you had already decided to become a teacher-philosopher.  What prompted this decision?

P: This first thing I have to say is that teaching was not my first choice.  An old thesis developed by Claude Levi-Strauss affirms that every philosopher had another profession at which he failed and that failure then marked his entire being.

V: …….

P: Ha Ha Ha.  My young pupil.  For Levi-Strauss, his first choice was to be a musician.  This was his kind of constitutive melancholy gloss.  So my original decision was to be a philosopher.  Being a teacher was kind of a secondary choice, the second best thing.

V: What did you understand to be the purpose of teacher and your role as a teacher?

P: Ha Ha Ha!  I don’t think there was a clear vision of your question.  Let me quote Lacanian statement to answer you, ‘it was something in me more than myself which decided,’ because I have no a clear idea.  But I understand the central point that teaching is simply a kind of megalomaniac enterprise—you know.

V:…..

P: (smiling)

V: To what extent have the parameters of teaching-philosophy shifted in contemporary era?

P: I don’t think that philosophy can any longer play any of its traditional roles, as in establishing students’ characteristic, constructing students’ philosophical thinking, and so on.  Rather, teachers in our time simply fulfil their task to educate one expertise.

V: So your anxiety is that the latter role is more necessary than ever today?

P: Our time is one in which we are increasingly confronted with exterior temptation that causes students lose their creativity, and with immature educational constitution that makes teachers cannot develop themselves completely.

V: Please give some advice, since I decide to be a teacher in the future.

P: God bless you!

 

All answers was given by Peter Lin were insoluble.  I never expected that Dr. Lin would leave so many to contemplate, even though when I was a high school student, I had known that he was a philosopher.  It seems that I have a conversation with Plato.  I really learned a lot from him.  He talked about that a teacher is like a megalomaniac and this makes me impressed.  In my opinion, what he wants to say is that a teacher always takes too much responsibility on himself.  A teacher usually thinks that he can do many things—to teach student elementary knowledge, to help students their daily life and so on.  A teacher always worries about his students.  This question really confuses me a lot.  Is that right for a teacher like this?

Lesson plan

Teacher

Vincent Hsu

topic

Learning English from English Song

Grade level

high school

Prior knowledge

high school level

 

Equipment

CD player

Time needed

1 class

Teaching Materials

CD player, CD, handout for lyrics

Lesson plan

Teacher

Vincent Hsu

Can’t Help Falling In Love

Wise men say
Only fools rush in
But I can’t help
Falling in love with you

Wise men say
Only fools rush in
But I can’t help
Falling in love with you

Shall I stay
Would it be a sin
If I can’t help
Falling in love with you

As a river flows
Gently to the sea
Darling so it goes
Some things were meant to be

Take my hand
Take my whole life too
Cause I can’t help
Falling in love with you

As a river flows
Gently to the sea
Darling so we go
Some things were meant to be

Take my hand
Take my whole life too
Cause I can’t help
Falling in love with you

Oh I can’t help
Falling in love with you

Summary of activity implementation (Procedure)

Before class: The teacher sings the song, accompanied with a guitar by himself

During class:

1. Warm-Up: The teacher plays theCD of this song, after handing out the lyrics to students

2. After listening, the teacher explains the song, especially on the part of vocabulary and grammar

vocabulary:

wise; rush in; flow

grammar:

(1)can not help+V-ing

(2) in love with someone

3. play this song again and teach students how to sing this song with romantic voice

4. Summary: Review the vocabulary and the grammar of this song today.

After class: Students are divided into group and choose a song to teach grammar in front of the class next class.

shool visit 1

It is fun to visit a senior high school.  On a sunny Wednesday morning, a young guy emerges with a shy smile from the stairway clutching a bag of his favorite (I guess) cartoon character, Naruto Ninja.  A senior high school student and his naruto ninja.  That’s what it has come to in teenage boys.  A decade of curtain falling has taken its toll, and I wonder how deep the generation gap is between these young guys and me. 

Lishan senior high school has everything you would expect: elegant environment, beautiful campus with
mountain view, and energetic students and teachers.  When in the break time, the students can relax in the tea lounge, bask on the sun terrace or pad around the artistic garden.  The real point of difference, though, is the enthusiastic and friendly teachers. 

I am very impressed by their interesting English textbook which reminds me of my boring high school English class.  The lesson of the first class I visit is about mythology and it is what makes me feel surprised.  In my opinion, it is a good time to give high school students a chance to approach western literature which is grounded by ancient Roman and Greek mythology.  The teacher in this class really did a good job in that day because she paid attention to the reaction of students giving students overall practice, including listening, speaking, reading, and writing.  Besides, she can handle the whole class well and never leave a gap to make students distracted.

It is useful and fun to visit English class.  We can learn a lot from experienced teacher and polish our skill to be a better one in the future.

je pense, donc je suis

A English learner need not only to learn new words, but to remember them.  As a matter of fact, learning is remembering.  However, simply repeating newly learned words is not a good way to move thoese new words to the permanent memory.  A good method to remember words is to integrate new knowledge into old–”practice makes perfect.”  A good method I want to share is “mnemonics.”  The best-know mnemonics is that we can associate an image that connects the pronunciation of the second language word with the meaning of a first language word.  For example the word “pencil” sounds like the Chinese word “拍手,” so we can draw a picture of a pencil clapping his hand.  I think mnemonics is fun for learning words and it may be a good idea to allow students a few minutes to try to find those keywords for mnemonics.

One scientic knowledge that I think it is important is “psychology.”  It helps teachers to communicate with students by their hearts through which they won’t feel  alienated to each other.  What does psychology give me, other than 6 beautiful years of studying life?  Many things that I want to pass on to my friends:  Know how to communicate with others by what Wordsworth said “sympathetic imagination.”  Never judge people by their single outer behavior.  Have a sensitive heart to help people in need.  And so I have patience to all my students who like to study in my class, whether they had talent or not.  And I also learn a lot from them.

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