Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Saying Goodbye at the Blog

Please wish us a fond farewell. I will do so in the next day or so. This is not a required activity but it is your final chance to "speak" to your classmates and teacher.

Posted by Brad at 6/02/2010 10:59:00 AM

10 comments:

Brad said...

Teaching you has been an honour. You came to me expecting to learn and, as I say goodbye to you, I hope that you have. What you’ve learned may be different from your original expectations, however. But that’s good.

Every term, I begin teaching and hope that my students will experience something new (and yes, something puzzling and interesting, too!). English can be a slog. Learning to communicate ideas effectively is a difficult task. One of the keys to my curriculum is keeping the ideas interesting and useful and up to date.

I agree with a college professor of communications I read about recently. He argues that students need to know how to make sense of the world and to articulate and defend their ideas. It’s not about learning “content” anymore; content changes and these days changes by the hour! He also argues that purely focussing on content bores the average student (and is quickly forgotten). Besides, the Ministry of Education curriculum guide says, in essence, that it is more about the “how” than the “what.”

As Temple Grandin says, “The world needs all kinds of minds.” I hope that you will remember her example and know that each of you has something unique to offer the world. Believe me, the world needs us all to be at the top of our game. The next century, it seems to me, will be pivotal in human history. We face our own extinction.

The days of our lives are indeed as “fleeting” as Szymborska tells us in her poem. But that doesn’t mean we should be pessimistic. The fear we have is “needless” after all.

Every term is different; every class unique. I’d like to thank you all for your perserverance and courage. Please consider coming on June 17th so that we can chat together one last time. And, if not, remember that teachers love to know where you land in life and how it goes. Take care!

June 4, 2010 at 10:23 AM
Raiya said...

Goodbye

Goodbye to PALC School which was became my home,
And thanks to all the teachers who have opened my door;
You have worked hard to make me be who I am now,
And no matter what, I will always be your guest;


Thanks to Brad for his teaching tactic,
And for making me busy doing his homework;
My new career is rising up,
And I promise myself that I will never give up;

I miss sleeping eight hours a day,
But all the stressful are going to turn into a joy;
I believe that there’s a day I will squint
through my window and see a bright,
Then I will realize that this is the moment that
I used to dream during the day and night;


Goodbye to all my classmates,
I believe that in the city we shall meet;
It is good if you want to keep in touch,
And I briefly wish you all a good luck.

Take care!

June 5, 2010 at 4:23 AM
LINDA LIU said...

Farewell, my classmates! For whatever reason you came to this class, it is my pleasure to learn from you and I give my best wish to you all. Thank you, my teacher, for inspiring our minds. Here I would like share a poem written by anonymous.

Each of us must climb our separate mountain
To reach at last our own extended view.
We can be no more than what we are,
Yet that is quite enough for us to do.

The world is far too great for comprehension,
And so we only know what we can know.
But given the abilities we're given,
That's still a long and weary way to go.

Yet on the way, how beautiful the moments!
How good it feels to have some skill or art!
How wonderful to pause in awestruck wonder
At what must fill the unsuspecting heart!

And so we're proud of each of you today
For all you've learned, and all you've tried to learn.
Knowledge brings the deepest satisfaction,
Not least because it's something that you earn.

June 6, 2010 at 12:26 AM
Abbie257 said...

"This is just the beginning," as many say, after they graduate from elementary, or secondary, or even from college or university. And this I want to tell you guys (even if it's an old saying), and to wish you luck on whichever path you may take!

I know some of us will "go" after this -- some of you may start going to college or university, some may go back to their country (for important reasons), start looking for a job, or stay here because you still have to complete other subjects or just because you love this school!

I have enjoyed mingling with you for absorbing such humorous and inspiring stories from different walks of life. I will surely miss this class as I go to college. :)

Again, wish us luck all! And special mention to our teacher, Brad, thank you for making this class work! Thank you for sharing your stories (especially your trip to Amsterdam) and providing various materials that made our brain cells really work!

Keep in touch!
Let us make difference in this world! Yeah!

June 8, 2010 at 1:03 PM
Sophie said...

It's time to say goodbye.
Chatting, while smiling,
the trembling lips
sending a soft sigh,
tears suddenly fill both my eyes.
Missing, and wishing,
follow your mind to the light.
My heart wants to fly,
like a kite in the sky.

June 10, 2010 at 10:50 AM
Qi-Ling said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
June 10, 2010 at 4:26 PM
Qi-Ling said...

“What [I]’ve learned [is] different from [my] original expectations,” I have to say, like a Chinese poem—“I coveted only a flower, yet I harvest the whole spring.”

Remembering the first time being grouped up and discussing “What success means to us,” I recalled my awkwardness of blank staring and unclear mumbling—I have nothing to share, especially with someone (Fatima and Wazhma) so different from me in terms of age and culture.

Brad has stressed that using the filter of “something new, puzzling and interesting” (and yes, over and over again!) to look at the world and our classmates. Surprisingly, I was starting to talk to myself in English and being eager to meet my classmates. And at the end of term, when I was grouped up with George and Douaa, helping each other with the meaning of Szymborska’s poem – Possibilities, Douaa said, “It’s a pleasure to be in a group with you two.”

“It’s being a pleasure (and a privilege) to learn from you, Douaa.” –and from all of my classmates, too. As I say this now, I remember Fatima’s delightful smile, Somayeh’s inquiring eyes and Raiya’s beaming teeth. Also, I remember that Ivana’s quick remarks always helped fill the blank moments during a group discussion, and I was always amazed by her youth and capability of claiming English, a second language, as her mother tongue.

Like Abbie said, “Brad, thank you for making this class work!” This is the best English class I have been to; Brad, you are “at the top of [your] game.”

Besides, thanks for Amanda sitting beside me whole term, even after spilled your aromatic raspberry tea. Thanks for my fellow Chinese classmates— Linda and Sophie— for letting me have a break and a sense of relaxation and comfort.

All the best wishes to you all for very good lives; An ancient wisdom from Seneca is, “As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.”

Especially to Wazhma for a healthy and beautiful baby.

June 10, 2010 at 4:40 PM
Wazhma said...

It seems like yesterday when we first came to English- 12 class. Now it is time to say good by. First of all I would like to thank Brad for his interesting and full of hard work classes. I feel more comfortable with my writings after this class. I loved our group works, we learned a lot from each other. Also I want to thank my classmates for their good attitudes. Special sad to say good by to Qi-Ling, Abbie, Somaya Duaa and Ivana, I really enjoyed communicate with them. I wish all the best to all of you, successes in the future, and happiness in personal life. Good by and good luck.

June 12, 2010 at 8:21 PM
George said...

Last years, I began to be a student again, and it became a daily behavior for me to study English and communicate with classmates. Surprisingly, English 12 have been finished and I will graduate from PALC. It was strange that I have studied English for one and half years, and English has become an interesting subject. Trying to say something, but nothing can say. In my heart, it is just full of the imagines of classmates and Brad and I will keep them in my mind forever. Expecting classmates and Brad can communicate with me when they remember me.

June 12, 2010 at 11:34 PM
LINDA LIU said...

To those who want to write provincial exam, i want to share you with the video i found from you tube, just for your better understanding the poem. it surprised me when i found this peice of sand art espressing same theme as the poem The Dumka we learnt from English 12. it also inspired me that human feelings can be expressed in so many ways such as luanguage, music and art, etc.
here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0byrQrld50

for your convenience, i posted the poem below

The Dumka

His parents would sit alone together
on the blue divan in the small living room
listening to Dvorak's piano quintet.
They would sit there in their old age,
side by side, quite still, backs rigid, hands
in their laps, and look straight ahead
at the yellow light of the phonograph
that seemed as distant as a lamplit
window seen across the plains late at night.
They would sit quietly as something dense

and radiant swirled around them, something
like the dust storms of the thirties that began
by smearing the sky green with doom
but afterwards drenched the air with an amber
glow and then vanished, leaving profiles
of children on pillows and a pale gauze
over mantles and table tops. But it was
the memory of dust that encircled them now
and made them smile faintly and raise
or bow their heads as they spoke about

the farm in twilight with piano music
spiraling out across red roads and fields
of maize, bread lines in the city, women
and men lining main street like mannequins,
and then the war, the white frame rent house,
and the homecoming, the homecoming,
the homecoming, and afterwards, green lawns
and a new piano with its mahogany gleam
like pond ice at dawn, and now alone
in the house in the vanishing neighborhood,

the slow mornings of coffee and newspapers
and evenings of music and scattered bits
of talk like leaves suddenly fallen before
one notices the new season. And they would sit
there alone and soon he would reach across
and lift her hand as if it were the last unbroken
leaf and he would hold her hand in his hand
for a long time and they would look far off
into the music of their lives as they sat alone
together in the room in the house in Kansas.

** in Ukrainian music, Dumka means "a type of instrumental music involving sudden changes from melancholy to exuberance

June 20, 2010 at 10:34 AM

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