Saturday, July 18, 2009

She Kills Herself

I got a shock news after I came back from Bei Jing. A Chinese language teacher killed herself in May. She came from China this January, and has been here for just five months, she committed suicide.

Heard from the news, she is a very talented Chinese teacher, and Singapore Ministry of Education recruited her this year. She is just 26 years old.

It is really a shock and sad news. I searched internet and tried to find out more background information about this case. There are quite a lot of comments about her death. Most of them come from her former students in China. Nobody believed that this lovely teacher will kill herself…

I have no intention to blame anybody about this teacher’s death. I understand that this is all about her own problem to kill herself. But I just can not help myself to keep thinking of one question: “Is there any possibility of this kind of thing will happen in my school?”
The answer is absolutely “NO”. I came from China as well, I have been here for seven years, up to now, I still work happily in my school! And I really appreciate what the school has done for me. I am grateful for all the help and care I got from the people around me!

Sometimes we have to admit: “To a foreigner, how well she feels about Singapore, feels about Singaporean, it mostly depends on what kind of immediate environment she is in.”

To a China Chinese teacher, what kind of school she works for, what kind of colleagues she has, what kind of people she met here, is her whole world about Singapore.

Very sadly, that young teacher did not like her immediate environment, she chose to kill herself!

Every school wants to create a conducive environment for the well-being of the teachers and students. Maybe the school leaders can ask themselves: “Does this will happen in my school?”

Friday, April 3, 2009

Check In


Hi, I am here! I am coming back!
It seems that I have been away for a long time. Actually I have never left the blog for a single day. After Dr. Quek introduced blog to us, I already had some ideas how to apply it into my daily work, how to introduce blog to my students and help them to improve their Chinese. Not only helping them to improve their language ability, but also building up their Characters, nurturing the whole child to help them be the best they can be.
I would like to help them to create an environment where they can feel safe to express their opinions and feelings, get support and encouragement from their peers and friends. And motivate each other to learn, to grow together. Now I can say, I keep my promise, I have done it!
I did introduce blog to my students. They started to create their own blogs from this school year. Guess what? Some of them started to love blogging! They wrote Chinese e-journals on their blogs, decorated their blogs to make them attractive, and gave comments to each others’ blogs.
Blogging becomes a habit of my students, they do it from their intrinsic motivation. I am really happy to see the outcomes.