November 29, 2007 by admin.

Hi all,

Today I need your assistance. I have just received an incredible gift that came from someone in Shanghai. When I opened it, I could not believe my eyes. It is a large painting on canvas done from a photo that someone took of Mason and me. It is so well done. It shows the two of us standing on the Song Jiang campus with our college building in the background. From the clothing we were wearing, it was obviously taken during warm weather.

I am overwhelmed that someone would do this for me and want to express my appreciation to the person or people responsible. However, this is the problem. There was no note inside or other identifying material. From the shipping label I could see that it was sent from Shanghai, but that is all I could make out.

I have wracked my brain trying to remember the photo having been taken, but I can not recall when that might have occurred. I know it wasn’t this year because he and I were not both on the SJ campus at the same time. I think it was probably taken during the spring of 2006, but that is all that I can figure out.

So, if the person who was so kind to have this painting created and sent to me is reading this, PLEASE get in touch with me and let me know who you are. For everyone else please ask around and see if you can find out the doer of this kind deed, will you?
Thank you all very much.

Love,
Dianne

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November 21, 2007 by admin.

Hi all,

I do not expect any of you to know what day Thanksgiving comes on, because it is a “movable” holiday and not one celebrated in China. It is always the fourth Thursday in November. This year, November 22, 2007 is the day on which we give thanks to the powers that be for all the blessings that have entered our lives. It is not a religious holiday such as Christmas or Easter for Christians or Yom Kippur or Passover for Jews or Eid for Muslims. For this reason, many people consider it their favorite holiday - because it is everyone’s holiday. Also, there are no gifts given although some people still send Thanksgiving cards. Many of them today are sent by email instead of post.

The biggest airport delays and crowds of the year normally occur on the Wednesday before and the Sunday after Thanksgiving, which tells how important getting the family together for the holiday is to Americans. We have a song entitled “Over the river and through the woods,” which tells the story of past times during which it was customary to gather at grandma’s house, and in the story grandma lives some distance away in a very rural area. The lyrics tell of the people traveling by horse and sleigh, so that gives you some idea of the era in which it was written.

Sometimes when I was in SISU students would ask me if I wasn’t sad at being away from home. My answer was always the same: being a teacher in SISU was one of the things I was extremely thankful for and spending the day with those I loved was a cause for celebration.

This year, of course, I am unable to do so, but a former SISU student who is in the U.S. getting her Master’s degree will be visiting me on Friday and Saturday, so it sort of carries on the tradition.

Also, you are all in my thoughts as I think back to this past spring when your kindnesses and assistance helped immeasurably in recovering my health. In the previous posting I included photos of some of your good wishes and handiwork and told you how many cranes you made for me - what an outpouring of love I received. That memory is very vivid to me in this season.

Finally, let me say that I hope there are many things in your lives - family, friends, happiness, good grades, etc. for which you can be thankful today.

Love,
Dianne

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November 18, 2007 by admin.

Hi all,

Remember last spring when I was sick and so many of my classes made cranes and other mementos to send to me in the hospital or at my apartment? Well, they all came back with me to the states except for a few that I couldn’t take from the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital. Before my sister left to return to AZ, she arranged all of them in the groups in which they had been presented to me. took a photo with the digital camera, and put it on my computer. Mason is now going to help me load the picture below this message so that you can see the cranes plus the other things that were given to me. Of course I intend to keep them as reminders of your love.

How many cranes were there? Close to 1,000. Is it any wonder that all of those bacteria in my body were no match for the strength your gifts provided for me? I was simply overwhelmed by everything that you did for me during that period and will carry warm memories of all of you with me forever.

So, here is a photo of your handiwork in all of its glory.

Love,
Dianne

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November 10, 2007 by admin.

Hi all,

There is no special theme to the notes today – just an assortment of comments, thoughts, etc.

In the responses regarding the quotations made about teaching, two people mentioned that number 4 was the one that impressed them the most. I wanted to mention that when it comes to a classroom, this quote is not only true of teachers but also of students. How students respond to the teacher also sets the mood in the classroom and can either give the teachers confidence or deprive them of it.

I remember explaining to some people why I always called students by their English names if they had one. For those of you who haven’t heard the story, I will repeat it as I think it may have relevance to a matter some of us have been discussing in emails.

When I arrived in China, I was determined to use Chinese names and not the English ones of students because I felt it was the respectful thing to do. So, I asked the dean to give me a list of students’ names in pinyin and I practiced saying them.

The problems began in the first class. I was going to call out the names and ask the students to respond so that I could put a name with a face. As soon as I began to speak, the laughter began. Sometimes it was not laughter but silence. The harder I tried the worse it got.

Calling that first roll seemed to take an eternity. I was so disappointed with myself, but I persisted throughout the first week. It seemed to get worse in every class. At the end of that week my self-confidence at being able to speak your names in Chinese had disappeared and was never to return. Over the years I sometimes tried to say one or two names in Chinese to individuals with whom I was working in my office, but I could always see the amusement in the faces of the students even when they said nothing.

Maybe I could have eventually mastered it if I had had a list of names with the tones as well as the pinyin spellings, but the laughter in my ears that first week never left my memory. I knew the laughter was innocent and a natural reaction to what must have been terrible pronunciation. It certainly never affected the mutual respect we developed or the love I felt for those students (and, I hope, they for me), but the experience did definitely have a stunting effect on me. There were many other times over the years when students laughed at me and I at myself when I made errors, but the experience that first week was different because it occurred at a time when I was just beginning, trying so hard to do a good job, and was, therefore, very vulnerable.

Please never forget how much of an impact you also have on your teachers. How well you pay attention, how readily you answer their questions, how prompt you are in getting to class, etc. send a message to them. Your respect for them as teachers is something they must earn, but your respect for them as human beings is something they have a right to expect. And, you can help them to become better teachers through thoughtful words and actions and by discussing with them problems that may arise.

Please realize that I did not write this to make you feel sorry for me. Who could feel sorry for a woman who had six of the most wonderful years of her life in SISU? No, I mentioned it because, as I said earlier, it may make you realize that you can help to change what you some of you have told me is not a very good environment in one of your classes.

You are all wonderful people, and I want the other teachers to realize it as much as I do. So, if there are some classes in which you think you have no power over the situation, remember that you have far more impact than you could imagine.

= = = = =

I wanted to tell you that we had our first snow flurries on two days this past week. There was no accumulation; in fact, not enough to even make the grass or roads white, but it was a sure sign that the weather is changing here. It brought to mind a very special moment.

During the time I was in Shanghai I think it only snowed about 5 times. The first time was in 2001 when I was walking over to classes on the HK campus on December 25th. I used to cut through the Financial University to get to SISU. Halfway through I saw what I thought were little pieces of paper falling from the windows of one of the buildings. However, I quickly realized it was snow. Not the kind of snowflakes I was used to seeing, but it was definitely snow. I had read that the Esquimos have more than a dozen words for different kinds of snow, and I was sure they would have had a specific term for what I was witnessing. It was enough for me, however, to see that it was snow.

I walked the rest of the way with an enormous smile on my face because, you see, it was Christmas, and snow and Christmas in at least northern parts of the states are inextricably linked. The weather gods had made it snow for me on Christmas in a land halfway around the world in a city that hadn’t seen snow in years.

When I got near my building I stopped and did something I used to do as a child – opened my mouth, stuck out my tongue, tried to catch the flakes, and enjoyed every one that fell on my face and body. The whole “snowfall” didn’t last more than 20-30 minutes, but it remains one of the most beautiful Christmas presents I ever received.

All my love,
Dianne

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November 4, 2007 by admin.

Hi all,

I bought a book last night that I had seen before but which I had not yet had a chance to look at. It is one of the “Chicken Soup” series. This one is “Chicken Soup for the Teacher’s Soul. I browsed through it at the store and decided to buy it. Although I think the series sometimes gets overly sentimental, I do think there is also considerable food for thought.

What drew my attention to this book were the quotations at the front of the chapters. They featured thoughts regarding the power and potential of teachers from several well-known authorities on teaching and also philosophical thoughts from people known for things other than teaching but related to the influence we all have on each other. I wanted to share some of them with you. You may be familiar with a few of them already, but I think they bear repeating.

- 1) The kids in our classroom are infinitely more important than the material we are teaching them. –Melladee McCarty

-2) Blessed is the influence of one true, loving soul on another. –George Eliot

-3) One mark of a great educator is the ability to lead students out to new places that even the educator has never been. – Thomas Groome

-4) I’ve come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher I possess a tremendous power to make a person’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an object of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a person humanized or de-humanized. –Haim Ginnott

-5) Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame again by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light.
- Albert Schweitzer

-6) The direction in which education starts a person will determine their future life.
-Plato

-7) Teaching is the choicest of professions because everybody who is anybody was taught to be somebody by a teacher. –source unknown

-8) Teaching is not a profession. It is a passion. – source unknown

-9) The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. -William Arthur Ward

-10) Benevolence alone will not make a teacher, nor will learning alone do it. The gift of teaching is a peculiar talent and implies a need and a craving in the teacher him or herself. – John Jay Chapman

There are many others that I will share with you at another time. I think what these people’s words demonstrate so vividly, however, is the responsibility that is ours when we stand in front of a classroom. However, it is not only those who will be professional teachers who can learn from these words. We are all teachers in innumerable situations – whether as parents, bosses, co-workers, or friends. How we behave toward others can have a great effect on building their self-confidence or in destroying it.

Love,
Dianne

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