Keep Fighting - Zhanghe 10

Today, Aug 13, marks my last class with the junior high students, and wow. Words cannot begin to express what I'm feeling right now. I feel emotions from both ends of the happy-sad-spectrum; as well as a plethora of other emotions that are ping-ponging inside my head. Over the course of a month, I've had the opportunity, honour, and pleasure to teach four junior high classes (grades 7-8). My lesson plan looked like this:
1. Who I Am
2. Differences: Canada and Taiwan
3. Canada's History
4. Modern Canada (Winnipeg)
5. Storytelling
6. Visual and Performing Arts
7. Dreams
8. Final Remarks
The last class, Final Remarks, was more of a reflective class. In this class, I went over everything that we learned about in the previous classes. Then expressed my gratitude, in both Chinese and English, and got the students to write me a little note about how they felt about their summer spent with me. Of course a lot of pictures were taken with the students too! It was very melancholic, every time I got to the slide about the four principles (their homework) I almost started crying in each class.

Reading the little cards that they wrote, gives me such a warm and touching feeling. Some students even wrote that they will be happy, and that I should too. Another word that came up a lot was fighting - I hope they continue their journey with a "fighting" spirit, try, make mistakes, and, most importantly, learn. Also, i told them about how I'm still learning English. I spoke in Mandarin too, just to show them that I am still willing to try, make mistakes, and learn from them. A couple of students even wrote that my Chinese was good (one person even said it was cute, and I'm sure you don't have to guess which one - a side story, she always runs up to me and asks if I remember her, to which I always reply, "of course I do!" - I love her bold tenacity, she's the first person to call me cute in the fashion that she did, hehe)! They wrote about how much they liked me as a teacher, and how much of an impact I've had on them, I don't think they realize just how much they've impacted me. I'm proud of what I was able to accomplish in one month with my students, and I will remember them forever.

I hope that they remember the crazy Canadian that made them sing and dance after every class.

我的學生是我的家. 我是他們的大哥. 耳且我愛他們<3!

With a warm, but heavy, heart,
JC(3.14)

[Pictures to be added later]