There are very few things that are more rewarding to me than
making someone smile. Sometimes it’s the more important the person is to me,
the more rewarding making them smile is. Other times it’s the less they saw it
coming that makes it more rewarding. Or the greater the effect it had on
uplifting their mood. Or my personal favourite is when I can think of a way to
make someone smile that only myself and the other person would understand, and
that moment will always be unique to us.
One of the things that is more rewarding to me is when
someone shows you that they recognize and appreciate something that you do for
them, and they completely catch you off guard with it. One such moment happened
in January on Teacher’s appreciation day.
The day started off like any regular Friday morning; pacing
the assembly hall reminding students to tuck in their uniform, wishing others
luck on the test they are cramming for last minute. And of course, just before
the bell rings to begin the school day you have a few students baseball slide
into line in order to avoid being late and receiving an after-school detention.
As the Toronto Blue Jays have just kicked off their season I think they could
take some pointers from my students about sliding into home plate.
But that was about all that was ordinary about that morning.
After the announcements finished some music began and students began running to
different positions in the gym and collecting all of the teachers and bringing
us to the centre of the gym. What followed was a heavily practiced, entirely
student organized, very well choreographed dance in a circle around us. To say
that it wasn’t at least a little bit awkward at first would be a lie, but when
the fear that we might be under attack subsided it was very enjoyable and
touching. At one point there were two circles of students around us and the inner circle
ran clockwise while the outer circle ran counterclockwise. I felt like I was in
a centrifuge but fought the motion sickness so I wouldn’t have to look away
from the dance the students had worked so hard to prepare for. At the end of
the music the students presented all of the teachers with roses and one of the
students said a few words of appreciation followed by a ground shaking round of
applause from all the students. We left the assembly hall feeling very happy.
But the most thoughtful part was waiting on our desks for us
when we arrived back in the teacher’s room.
15 months ago (wow time flies) when I was interviewing for
international teaching jobs I was asked many times what I was like as a teacher
and what my classroom would be like. I would make claims like I was extremely
patient, caring and understanding. I was humourous and would make ever day a
little bit more fun. And most of all that I would have an excellent rapport
with my students. The only problem was I had never taught my own class before,
I was just describing the teacher that I hoped to be.
Sitting down in my desk on teacher’s appreciation day and
reading my card, it was the most incredible feeling that what stood out the
most about me to my students was everything that I had hoped I would become as
a teacher.
And hey, if none of those qualities are noticed by a few
students, at least they can appreciate a nice slam-dunk when they see one.
Another Winter Olympics, another pair of Canada hockey gold
medals
Normally the Olympics are something I follow very closely
and with extreme enthusiasm. Indonesia doesn’t quite share my passion for the
Winter Olympics. Example, one of my students thought the Olympics were in Korea
this year. I suppose Sochi could conceivably be the name of a city in Korea.
But another student thought the Winter Olympics were in Myanmar, to which I
cannot think of a reasonable defence for this confusion.
Indonesian television shares a similar disinterest for the
Olympics but when Canada is in the gold medal game, all true Canadians will
find a way to support their team. Fortunately for me my sister’s boyfriend was willing
to Skype me during the game, and face the computer to the TV, so I could feel
like I was watching the game on Canadian soil.
A screen shot of how I watched Canada shut out the Swedes for the Gold
Physical Education and Health week
One week in early February marked physical activity and
health week. Mostly this consisted of inter-grade sporting competitions, and a
morning of aero kickboxing. But the highlight of the week was the healthy food
competition. Students submitted their best efforts of a healthy food item that
was easy to make, and one of the most important judging criteria was taste. This
was an inter-house competition and as the housemaster of red house I was deemed
to be in too biased a position to be on the judging panel. I disagree. I tried
so hard to persuade, sweet talk, argue, more sweet talk and finally to beg my way onto the judging panel to no avail. Fortunately there
was plenty of food for all and I got to experience first hand the masterpieces
of all of the talented chefs that I teach.
Yellow house with their healthy shake, and last minute effort at a sandwich only a mother could love
Green house (the eventual champions of the competition) with their diverse array of submissions
Red house (my house) with the winning dish for the individual challenge
A feast fit for a king!
This food competition has revolutionized the way I assess my
student’s knowledge of biology. Here is a glimpse at my unit plans for the next few chapters:
Unit: digestion
Topics: The alimentary canal, macromolecules, mechanical and
chemical digestion
Final assessment: Make a delicious food item for Mr. Trevor
and write a two page report explaining the steps involved in digestion when he
eats it.
Unit: Infectious disease and immunity
Topics: prevention and control of infection disease, the
immune system
Final assessment: Make a delicious food item for Mr. Trevor
and write a one page report on how the safe food handling and cooking methods
you used to make it for him will help to prevent the spread of harmful
bacteria.
You get the gist, I will be eating very well until I retire
from teaching.
Camp Rock, the musical
My school year is divided into four terms of 10 weeks and
term three is by far the busiest. This is in large part due to the fact that close
to 50% of our students are involved in the annual musical that our school puts
on. Two years ago the school performed Mulan. I confess that this was one
of the first things that caught my eye about Bina Bangsa School back at the job
fair oh so long ago. Last year was the 10th anniversary of the school
so they wrote their own musical called “This is our story”. This year they
decided on Camp Rock. I think it’s a Jonas brother’s movie. To give an example
of how legitimate these shows are the school actually purchased the rights to
perform the show from a Broadway company in New York.
It would be an understatement to say that I was blown away
by the acting, singing and performance the kids put on. It was incredible.
This is one of my wonderful secretary friends Cynthia and I in our Camp Rock Swag
Did I mention every song in the musical was performed live by our band?
At one point in the musical the actors were asked to point to their favourite teacher. . .
Now you know where my seat was :P
A very, very relieved cast after the show
Our male and female leads speaking to the media
Grade 10 and 12 pre-exam camp
The school system I teach in is very exam intensive. It is
difficult to count but I think the grade 10s will write 22 exams in May and
June. Which means they will also write all of these preliminary exams in April,
and have been taking all of these practice exams throughout March. The grade 12
students don’t have it any easier. One thing that our school does right before
the term break is put on an overnight camp for the grade 10s and 12s. The goal
is for the students to have some fun, bond with each other and their teachers,
and hopefully if all goes well they will leave the camp motivated to study hard
for their upcoming exams and believing that together we can succeed.
A strange thing happened in the week leading up to the camp.
About 50% of our teachers, including our principal, and about 40% of our students
got sick. Some sort of bug causing a nasty cough and fever was going around. I
was a little worried they were all being turned into zombies. Since when
teachers are absent other teachers who aren’t sick cover their classes, I
estimated we were about 2 or 3 teachers away from having to cancel school for a
few days. I had a very good reason not to get sick so through shear
determination and a daily dose of about 6000% of my daily recommended vitamin C
I was able to escape the zombie plague unaffected.
As a consequence of being one of the few healthy teachers
remaining I was able to make all of the decisions about the itinerary of the
camp. And as a result there was evidence throughout the camp that I was the decision maker . . .
For the biology portion of the camp we made homemade ice
cream
Students got creative with ways to shake the bag without getting their hands too cold
Some of the girls were able to trick the boys into shaking their bags for them so their hands wouldn't get cold at all.
It seems I have a few things I still need to teach these boys
For the movie portion we watched my favourite movie
For dinner we had an awesome BBQ
And in the evening we played my favourite game.
I think everyone had a great time?
Now, on to the reason I was able to will away the Zombie disease that
was infecting the school.
Since November I had flights booked to Thailand on March 22nd
to visit a couple of my best friends for the weeklong term break. On a side
note, if you are under the impression that best friend is a person that is
incorrect. Best friend is a tier and my use of the plural is correct. Many
things in life don’t always go as planned, and in Indonesia, things never go
as planned. Due to visa issues I was told I was unable to leave the country at
this time. Despite my best attempts at it, sulking and complaining wasn’t helping my situation so I finally
sucked it up and emailed my friends to inform them I would be unable to join
them in Thailand. Within 30 minutes of sending the
email I was on Skype with one of my friends, and by the next day all flights
had been redirected to Indonesia. That is why these guys belong on that best
friend tier I talked about.
Meet Lucas, my partner in crime.
Everyone has that one
friend or sibling with whom they can finish each other’s thoughts. Lucas and I
have an eerie ability to read each other and think what the other person is
thinking with such subtlety that most people wouldn’t notice the exchange of
information that has taken place. At one point on this Bali trip (at Soma Soma,
the Reggae bar I mentioned back in August) Lucas and I intuitively and
instinctively did an improv synchronized dance routine. Not only did we both
spontaneously decide we would do this, but I’d like to believe we put on a
pretty good performance. Although, in fairness it may have been absolutely
awful from an outside observer, but I am basing its quality on how much fun we
had doing it.
Meet Cole, my partner in travel.
Cole and I have visited a
whopping seven countries together (I’ve only been to nine) including Canada,
US, Dominican, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and now Indonesia. Eight countries
if you count Montreal. Cole and I have shared a number of cultural/language
barrier experiences that are so confusing that we could never begin to explain
them to someone else. Most memorable was our 36-hour transit by boat, bus, car,
minivan, and more boats from Belize, through Guatemala and onto Honduras,
through three currencies of unknown value to us, and almost entirely in Spanish
and the universal language of charades. At one point we accidentally crossed the Guatemalan border without
going through customs, and it wasn’t until we got on the bus on the other side
when someone overheard us saying “I thought we would have needed to talk to
customs or get our passport stamped” before we realized we needed to run back
and enter Guatemala the much more legal (and slower) way of entering a
country.
These are my best friends. There are 3 more of them out
there currently in Toronto, British Columbia, and Colombia (real Colombia).
Lucas and Cole are in Australia and Calgary respectively so we are nice and
spread out across 3 provinces and 4 continents. But I’ve learned that the
strength of a friendship is not determined by proximity, and our current living
situations gives us all a reason to travel the world.
I can’t share too much about my Bali trip because 1) None of
us took any photos and 2) Let’s just say my students and grandparents read this.
This photo should give a reasonable picture of how great a time we had
The highly fashionable, paten pending shirt hat
Cole and Lucas both had one of their friends from high
school join us for our trip. Both girls and both had so much to bring to the
table. Both also had cameras, which serves as the only evidence that any of us
were even in Bali.
The blonde with the shades on is Ali from Calgary. Ali made the excellent life
decision of getting her scuba certification while in Bali. She also performed
one of the least graceful back roll entries off a boat in the history of
diving. She has permanently left her legacy on Gili Trawangan by breaking the
girl’s record for a challenge that one of the bars had. For comparison I scored
3rd for the boys and she shattered my time.
Directly on my right is Kaitlyn from New York. Like Ali, a very cool
girl, with impressive sports knowledge and a strong passion for travel and
culture. She’s been living in Australia since November and is currently travelling
through much of Asia. Its always interesting
for me to find out what motivates other people to travel and Kaitlyn and I spent lots of time sharing travel stories of our favourite countries, where you can find the most beautiful
sunsets, the best food and what our dream destination is. Not bad considering
she’s American.
I think I would like to share in every blog post what my
current top next destination is. After October I was certain I would visit
Canada in June and Australia in August or visa versa. In November I was without
a doubt going to India and the Maldives in August. After December I was eagerly
awaiting my trip to Thailand in March (visa issues *shaking fist). Currently in
2014 I plan to visit Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar and Laos. The only
part that seems uncertain to me is who I will be able to convince to join me. (Direct shout out to Adonis - See you in Thailand in June)
