半夜驚魂

昨天喝了一杯漂洋過海被班代熱情推薦的純種從台灣帶來的綠茶
喝完其實已泡過幾回的茶 唇齒間還是回味無窮
只是晚上十點的一小杯茶 卻是來華盛頓 DC第一次的失眠


從快十一點上床輾轉難眠
十樓窗外下 人車吵鬧聲依舊 今天是小週末 週五狂歡夜
就在模模糊糊之間突然警鈴大響 接著有廣播聲音出現
又是女生又是男生聲音 講什麼聽不清楚 只覺得一定是外面出了什麼事有人在處理吧


室友君原本也賴著不起床後來受不了起身去看個究竟
不一會衝了回來拿外套 拿東西
這時賴床的我也發覺不對勁原來是宿舍的警報器在響
仔細一聽廣播
"有火警叫大家改快疏散"(當然是英文啊)
匆忙穿上外套拿起錢包往外走
但實在感受不到恐怖氣氛
另外兩位室友阿怡在浴室洗澡
Jenny也是剛下床
急忙往外走但想到東西未帶又跑回
我往外看無煙無風無人
似乎不嚴重還盯著Jenny把門上鎖
就怕有人趁火打劫!


四周都已無人了我還想坐電梯這時才聽懂廣播
"大家勿搭乘電梯請盡快離開"
原來大家都走樓梯 前面有一個外國學生穿著黃色醒目背心指揮大家從旁邊樓梯下樓

天啊!十樓啊!


半夜十二點多我們的夥伴大多睡眼惺忪
頭髮凌亂抱著重要物品往下走
但外國學生大多衣著整齊 神態自然的走下樓
看的出來很多人都還未上床就寢
雖然不間斷的廣播聲
這時聽來非常刺耳但大家似乎都很鎮靜
沒有人露出驚恐的神情
似乎是訓練有素地遵守秩序


一到外面街道還真覺恐怖
因為消防車已在外面警報聲直響
大樓的燈光某一層一閃一閃
又有救護車 走了一輛消防車又有一輛出現
其實觀察我們的住宿大樓完全沒有火花也沒有煙火
GWU 的 Ivory Tower暑期住宿的學生也很多
外籍學生似乎對於火災已習以為常很多就坐在草地上繼續聊天
倒是我們這一群進修的學生議論紛紛
大家開始討論火災警報後的情形
有人剛進浴室　有人正想上廁所
有人剛結束聊天　　
看來只有我們這幾個老人家上床啦


有人再穿好衣服　有人急忙搶救重要東西　電腦　照像機　護照　金錢等等
大家也討論火災的臨場反應
有人會顧及旁人協助一起出門
也有人無法顧及到週圍的一切
考慮到本身的安全做出本能反應
其實每一個人對所有生活突發的情況處理的方式都非常的不同
很多都是由個性來決定


在外面等了約半個多小時終於看見前頭學生開使進宿舍了
Jenny問了門口的外籍警察因為有小道消息說只是在演習
但這位年輕帥帥有點拉丁美洲裔的警察告訴大家
"真有警鈴響只是未有火
有可能抽煙或誤觸警報器"
雖然有點勞師動眾但也佩服美國人處理事情的認真態度

小想來有點驚險幸好沒真遇上大火
否則本人聽力不好連逃命都慢人家一拍

Yorktown High School

Journal 8
July 23, 2007
Yorktown High School

Yorktown High School is a very special school. There are more students from different countries than those in the other schools we have ever visited.
The first class of observation was Miss Mary Madden’s class. The students had already finished their writings. Miss Madden asked Alison, Jenny,and I to help her correct the students’ assignments. The boy next to me gave me his writing to read. In addition to some minor grammatical errors, he did a good job. The boy’s topic was “when I was a little boy”. He clearly expressed what happened between him and his father. His father always encouraged him to be brave and study hard. He often played soccer with his friends in his hometown. However in the States, he has to work after school, so he cannot attend the school team. He hopes that some day he will play soccer again. When I corrected his writing, he was very happy to find some word spellings that he couldn’t figure out. Another girl is very shy but she loved to share her writing with me. To my surprise, she is only seventeen years old but she has one daughter. She got a baby when she was 15! I can’t imagine how her life is going! She wrote she didn’t pay attention to her school when she was young. She just fooled around all day with boys. Now she lives with her mother and has to raise her own baby. Some of my teenager students don’t have a good achievement in school and the teachers also lack of patience with them. They don’t have any confidence in themselves and fool around on campus.
The second class of observation was Mr. Bruce Merrill’s class. The students formed a circle and discussed the storybook they read. After the class, I’m very surprised that they had lunch at 11:05 and the school provided some desserts for the students. There were a tuna can, cookies, peanuts, juice, and chocolate milk in the box. I was wondering why they had lunch so early and I asked one student, Jose Pineda, He said he had breakfast at 6:00, so he was hungry now. He was from Honduras and he also had to work after school. He and some of his classmates are the beginning learners in English. Gary comes from Bolivia and Douglass comes from El Salvador, in Central America. They even pointed out the location in the map for me and I also showed them the location of Taiwan on the map. One boy, Tony, comes from China and he introduced himself to me. His parents work in China Embassy and he has lived here for two years. His parents thought the schools in Arlington were not good enough for him to read. Yorktown high school is good so they chose this neighborhood to live. The boy has a good living environment and the parents have good gobs. He has a sense of superiority and no doubt he likes to show off.
I had a short chat with the boy, Gary, He had a lot of pressure of living in the States and he said that different cultures and different living styles made people hard to accommodate themselves.
“If you have a good chance to stay here, would you choose to live here?” he asked.
I said, “No. I have a good gob, family and a wonderful husband in my country. When I’m finished my study after five weeks, I will go home quickly”
He was a little surprised. I don’t understand why these young men leave their own countries. I can figure that it is not easy for them to fit into a totally strange living environment.

Jpurnal 7

Journal 7

July 25, 2007

Lincoln Middle School: Two Excellent Teachers

Today we visited Lincoln Middle School. We were divided into two groups and observed the teaching of the math and English classes.

First, we went to Mr. James Dahlgren’s English class. There were 14 students in his class. On the black board, he clearly wrote down today’s objectives and agenda. He separated his students into two groups. The students in the first group were busy working on the computer program. Every student had to keep a record of the time spent on the game. The computer program is graphically cute and lovely, so the students paid a lot of attention to work out the game. The other group sitting by Mr. Dahlgren discussed the storybook they read. Most of the students spoke Spanish. They just started to learn English. Even an easy conversation was a challenge to them. During the discussion, some of them answered the teacher’s question in their mother tongue. To my surprise, Mr. Dahlgren could understand the students to some extent, so he could communicate with them. He answered students’ questions in English, but he did not correct students’ mistakes immediately.

Next, we visited Mr. Matt Tosiello’s math class. He is a very active and energetic teacher. He can speak Spanish, French, Japanese, and write some Chinese words. He is interested in the Asian culture. He gave the students a warm-up math problem to solve. Two teacher assistants helped Mr.T (His students nicknamed him so) translating English into the language the students could understand, which was of great help to students’ learning. Mr.T explained that some students came from the working class family and they even didn’t go to school in their home country. They were forced to leave the school to make a living by themselves. Mr. T paid a lot of patience to help his students to understand the basic concepts of geometric shapes. How lucky the students are!

I do hope I can help my students to learn English well as the two teachers do. Visiting Lincoln School encourages me to have a more open mind to accept the students of different backgrounds.

Lady Bird

News summary 1The National Public Website (www.npr.org) Place: ICC Language LabThe topic is Former First Lady “Lady Bird” Johnson Dead at 94 years oldReport by: John Burnett

“Lady Bird” Johnson was the wife of former President Lyndon. Johnson, the American 36th president. She passed away on Tuesday, July 11 at the age of 94. Her name was Claudia Alta Taylor and she was from a rich East Texas family. Mrs Johnsone was nicknamed “Lady Bird” because her friend said that she was “as pretty as a lady bird.” She was a great help to her husband because she has a remarkable ability to make people like her. She showed great skill to help her husband to go through his political critical issues. Lady Bird’s husband became John. F. Kennedy’s vice president. In 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Johnson became the new president. He continued to be the president in 1964.

Lady Bird kept attending meeting of women’s groups and suggested women for top official posts. She often asked her husband when he came back after work, “Well, what did you do for women today?” So everyone respected her. Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn called her “ the greatest woman I have ever met”. She loved wildflowers and she brought this affection to the White House and even had made a lot of flowers and tress grown in Washington D.C. She also founded a wildflower research center in Austin, Texas. She believed that “ If you want a good life, you have to have a strong connection to the land.” She wants everyone to experience the natural beauty of the world.

I think the first ladies story is very interesting to me. I bought this book in National Air and Space Museum. It’s a book about all the first Ladies’ life. I’m so happy to find it because it gave me a lot of information about Lady Bird. If you have an interest in this book, you can borrow from me.
Thanks. It’s my report.

Journal 6

Journal 6
July 19, 2007
Barbara Formoso

The class had an important guest to give a speech about teaching students in ESL Classroom. She is Barbara Formoso. She teaches in Gunston Middle School in Arlington , Virginia, and has great experiences of teaching immigrant children. Today she demonstrated how to teach reading through a mini Literature Circle.
We watched the real teaching scenario in her classroom from the video she brought to the class. There were four students in the small group and they were expressing their opinions about the storybook they read. One student could speak English fluently and expressed what he thought. On the contrary, a young boy seemed to have problem expressing his opinions. However, all of them bravely talked with each other with Barbara’s encouragement. Yet, I was wondering where the other students were. If the teacher takes part in one of the groups, it means she can’t observe the work of the other groups. Take my class for example. I divided the 39 students of my class into several small groups for group discussion. However, when I focused on one group, the other groups would sometimes lose control and made big noises. I had to stop several times and yelled to them to be quiet. It’s a headache problem. In a big classroom, there are a lot of difficulties for a successful class discussion.
In Barbara’s presentation, she asked us to read the short story in silent way. After the reading, she gave us a worksheet for discussion. The silent reading is a good way to encourage students to read the storybooks by themselves. Once, I took my students to the library and asked them to find some interesting books they liked to read after the mid exam. Nobody made big noises, and they just paid attention to the books they chose. It’s a good strategy to motivate the students to read by giving them a regular time in class for reading. The teacher’s job is to help them find the interesting books to read.

Journal 5

Journal 5

Kenmore Middle School

Today, the MOE class visited Kenmore Middle School. The first classroom we visited was Miss Debbie Pettit’s class. Miss Pettit used the overhead projector to show a letter to the students. She read loudly and asked the questions about the letter. Ms. Pettit is an energetic teacher and knows how to use body language effectively. During the teaching process, she kept giving the students simple questions and encouraged them to answer the questions. She kept saying,”Students, we are learning and nobody is perfect.” The words impressed me a lot.

Two students got my attention. Ms. Pettit’s students come from different countries. One girl from China was quiet all the time. One boy appeared a bit slow to learn and he couldn’t keep up with his classmates. He even turned his head to look at us and seemed to need some help from us. I wished that I could have helped him immediately. However, his classmates and the teacher helped him come up with the answer. He had a bad pronunciation. I guessed that he was quite new in class to learn English.

The students in my class also come with different learning levels. Some have extra English classes in an English cram school for a long time; some simply learn English in school. The good thing is that they all learn English well in the first semester. In my observation, the beginning-level students in Kenmore Middle School didn’t seem to perform better than the students in my class because there are a lot of immigrants from different countries in the States. It is a big challenge for teachers to teach students with different levels of English proficiency.

The students in the other two classrooms were reading story books. The classes were teacher-centered. A male teacher read loudly in class and asked his students to write down their opinions about the story. After finishing writing, the students shared their opinions with their classmates. However, I felt sleepy because the teacher didn’t have much body language and even no facial expressions. The monotonous intonation made me almost fall asleep.

Journal 4
July 14, 2007


The slow Learner

To be honest, I got lost in the library when I wanted to leave to take the shuttle bus home. It was the first time that I didn’t go out with my classmates. In the past few days, I did pay attention to the direction and memorized the campus map, so I knew exactly how to get to my dormitory safely. I’m not familiar with the library for the lack of practice. I just couldn’t find the door to get out the narrow hallways in the library and tried different doors to get away from the piles of books. Maybe I’m a slow learner just like some of my students.

Ginny asked us to design one beginning-level and one intermediate-level task for different learners. It is easy for teachers to provide difficult tasks for students. However, it’s not easy to design an easy one for slow learners. In my class, some students are slow learners. They choose to ignore the difficulty learning tasks. If they feel frustrated all the time, they give up learning English quickly. It’s the teacher’s duty to give them an appropriate task and make specific instructions for the students to understand clearly what they have to do.

In the morning class, I did not quite follow what Ginny asked us to do, so I couldn’t smoothly join the discussion with classmates. At that time, I felt anxious and desperately needed someone to help me. Until then, I realized what kind of situation my slow-learner students dealt with.

Journal 3
July 11, 2007

Kennedy Center
Alison introduced us to see Shear Madness at Kennedy Center. I thought I should dress up for the show. After all, I was going to Kennedy Center. To my surprise, some people just wore their short pants and slippers. Most of the people came to see the show with their family. In Taiwan, it is not a common scene to see the whole family to go to the theater.
Shear Madness is a crazy suspending story which happened in a modern hair salon. The barber couldn’t focus on his job, and he was always keeping chatting with his colleague, Barbara. He almost drove his customers crazy. Suddenly, there was a murder upstairs. The woman upstairs was killed and everyone in the salon got involved in the event. The detective had to find out the murderer. The most attractive part is that the audience could participate in the plot and give their opinions to the actors. The interaction between the actors and the audience got our attention. The actors encouraged the audience to try to figure out the clues and guessed who the killer was. Even a little girl from the audience was not afraid to express her opinions and discussed the plot with the actors on the stage.
The little girl in Kennedy Center made me reflect about my teaching. What can I do to encourage my students to talk with each other in English without anxiety? What kind of education made a little girl talk loudly in public and speak out her ideas without fear? The class discussed the communicative language learning. I enjoyed the discussion because Ginny gave us a comfortable learning environment. Group work also made me feel less anxious. I listened to the opinions of my group members and shared my ideas with examples or practical evidence. However, in my English class in Taiwan, I didn’t give my students enough time to communicate in English with their classmates. For most of the time, I hurried to finish my teaching materials. As a result, the students kept silent all the time and lost the chance to practice English in class.

Diary in Washington DC

I wake up in the early morning and the outside is shining.
The weather here is a little cool and it is very dry.

Last night, I had a good sleep so I don't have any jet problem.
I got some trouble here that I can't do my writing on-line because there is no Chinese
key board in the computer lab. I can't imagine what I can do in the future if I have to
write my opinion here. Maybe I have to talk to Sue (our assistant) to help me to solve
the ptoblem.

I envy my classmates who can talk to their famiy throughsky-pe.
I hate Sidney a little because he persues me to be indepentant
and not to use phones so often. But it is improtant to talk to your family
and make them sure you are safe.

Right now, We are waiting for our assistant, Sue, to take us to go around the city
and make us familiar with the roads. It is a big city and it's easy for me to lose my way.
However, I'm eager to take a walk and visit the city.
Maybe I can buy a phone and get a number from the office
so that I can talk to my family easily.

The light in our room is dim but I think it is ok for me. By the way, the lighe in the bathroom
is strong so maybe I will study there. Ha!

機票風波

沒有想到拿個機票也會忙的人仰馬翻

有時候我老是杞人憂天 擔心未發生的事
事到臨頭還真的有一大堆突發的事件
如果不在意反而事情變得簡單了

到美的機票是臺北旅行社代辦
全團是在桃園機場集合
南部只有貞君與我
所以我們兩個都很注意訂機票的問題
信用卡與護照資料早早都已傳真給旅行社

這一兩天一直等不到旅行社傳mail電子機票
原來有些老師還未傳真資料給旅行社
航空公司要等全部資料到齊才能統一開票
等大家都傳真齊全
手機一直不離身
深怕漏接旅行社服務小姐通知收取mail文件資料
等了一天 到傍晚小姐通知
機票電子文件無法用網路只能傳真
但到哪兒接傳真
學校都放假啦
便利商店可以代客接傳真文件
但住家附近便利商店好像沒有傳真機(太偏遠啦)

幸好老公的辦公室有傳真機且工讀生白天都在
可以幫忙接收訊息
終於有具體解決方式
昨晚九點多旅行社的木玲小姐通知已傳真機票文件來啦
終於不用擔心上不了飛機了

今天早上和老公享受獨自出國前一起吃早餐
出國前的早餐當然是豆漿 蚵仔麵 小籠包 蛋餅 肉丸 飯團
但老公只想吃麥當勞(天啊 我未來的三十幾天搞不好每天都得吃漢堡)
老爺堅持當然我們當賢妻良母得退一步
享受完大餐後 到學校拿資料
哪知工讀生說沒有任何傳真訊息
該我傻眼啦啦?

再與木玲小姐連絡請她再傳一遍
等了半天傳真機沒有任何聲響
這時後我還真開始緊張了
檢查半天找不出問題在哪
我心理已在盤算再找個傳真機吧
傳真機字幕一直顯示
"back cover .... "
弄了半天原來是卡紙
整裡好再請木玲傳真一次
資料一張一張傳送過來還真是慢
頭一張國內接駁機文件
油墨太深不太清楚只好硬著頭皮請對方再重新傳送一次
終於大功告成

光等個機票也死了不少細胞
看來到明天到出發到美國研習
未來挑戰應該不會少