About teaching

The work of teaching is simultaneously mental and social. It is also physical, emotional, practical, behavioral, political, experimental, historical, cultural, spiritual and personal. To sum up, teaching is very complex.

When language teaching in particular is in focus, the challenge is even greater, shaped by teacher’s view of the nature of language, of language teaching, and learning in general.

So to speak, the teacher is practitioner and theory builder.

Opportunity

This morning, a crazy idea came across my mind somehow, and I found it could be a great opportunity & treasure if we can seize it properly. The idea is we can build a blog network of our high school class, and each one of us is capable of writing, editing, & managing his or her own blogs in convenience, but meanwhile be able to view other classmates’ blogs, and leave a significant or funny comment. Surprisingly, I found WordPress is good one for this. Besides, it also provides a shared library (the Media lib), which means you’re allowed to use the uploaded images, audios, & videos by other authors.

(Following content is added on Apr 4, 2020)

Well, the shared library (the Media) may be undesirable for some authors who want their posts & the media published to be only seen by themselves or people they would like to let see. This is reasonable, human needs privacy. It is natural to think is there a technique that can allow authors to encrypt their posts if they want keep their content secure. After Googling it, I find it is possible.

Doing…

(the wee hours of Apr 5, 2020 )

Amazingly, WordPress provides a substantial number of plugins, which virtually renders every idea you think possible. With those plugins, you are capable of encrypting your post with a password and you can give it to anyone you want for accessing your secret content; each author can also have their own media library, thus further saved their privacy from other authors; co-authors working is also available (like this post, I added some other authors so that they can also edit it), etc. In a word, there are tremendous of awesome stuff we can do in WordPress with those incredible plugins.

So, if privacy is no longer a issue, I really wish my dear classmates can do join our legendary Class 1 WordPress Blog Network. Writing can be really funny, especially when you get lots of companies who by any chance are your old old friends (good buddies). By that time, noting down & sharing the wonderful moment can be a really a delightful thing (Your amazing friends may leave you a significant or funny comment. You will be so gonna love it!).

Lastly, I wanna say that writing can be really an agreeable & fruitful thing, for the writing duration, you are doing an incredible thing – thinking, one thing that distinguishes people from animals. (Oh, no! Some might say, animals DO think too. Yes, precisely. But we humans are thinking logically, emotionally, & intuitively.) And I genuinely wish each guy of our awesome class 1 can get involved into this activity. You guys even went through the hard-ass college entrance examination, so I do believe all of you guys can nail it!

Confession

Today is Apr 1, 2020, also known as April Fools’ Day, on which day people tell jokes and try to fool each other by some brilliant tricks, such as hoax calls, sticking a hilarious label on other’s back without telling him or her, etc. For me, it’s nothing special, and I didn’t realize it’s April Fools’ Day until this afternoon. But then I found it’s a great opportunity to do something incredible.

The thing is that I have a very huge crush on one of my best friends Ania, and due to various reasons, I didn’t even officially confess my love to her. So, our relationship is very subtle & convoluted, kinda like the situations in sitcoms Friends & How I Met Your Mother.

You know, in Friends, Rachel is always the most beloved one by Ross, regardless of what happens. Hilariously, Ross even says Rachel’s name at his wedding with Emily, which suggests how much Ross loves Rachel. There are too many scenes to count, but each of them is phenomenally terrific. In How I Met Your Mother, Ted is kinda another Ross who is passionately devoted to Robbin, a Canadian girl worked in NYC as a news reporter. This sitcom I just stared to watch yesterday, alright, for a whole day. It is really awesome! Exceptional! I was very much touched by Ted’s obsession with Robbin. There are many interesting and impressive things that Ted have done in order to date Robbin, like giving 3 consecutive days of parties only for one meet of Robbin, doing a rain dance for a whole afternoon in the fond hope of keeping Robbin staying home from going a camping trip with her colleague (unbelievably, he makes it), etc. Those are, by Barney’s words, legendary, totally legendary!!

Also, there is one scene that really impressed me, I can’t remember which episode and the complete words, but approximately like this, Barney tells Ted that he and Robbin are never gonna happen (in a way, it extremely likes Joey tells Ross that he and Rachel are never gonna happen, ’cause they are already into dangerous friend zone), Ted says “…But it’s Robbin (Rachel/Ania), the exact one I have dreamed for, the exact one I have a perfect feeling for. And even though it is a mistake, I’ll still wanna make, ’cause it’s Robbin (Rachel/Ania), it’s someone else, someone special that I have the right feeling for.” That is an awesome speech. And that’s also what exactly I wanna say to Ania.

I was afraid to tell Ania how much I love her, ’cause we are friends, and I’m so afraid to lose her if I tell her I’m in love with her. This is kinda like Ross is afraid to loss Rachel. However, today, April 1, is a special day, I can say that with this excuse, and it’s reasonable. :)-

Anyway, I just wanna be straightforward and tell her I love her. Done. Just don’t think, don’t consider the consequence afterward, it would be of ease. Don’t be an emotional-freak any more. All you have to do is to shut down your sanity system, and show her your love and affection from the bottom of heart. Legendary!

I KISSED Ania

This morning, I had a very sweet, fabulous, incredible dream – I dreamed that I was kissing Ania passionately & madly, the thought of which had crossed my mind tremendous times, all of which, however, had been retreated due to my chicken.

It should be my first kiss and it was so intense that I can clearly feel an enormous excitement in my physical body. Meanwhile, I was so afraid to wake up as it was really such an agreeable dream whoever don’t desire it and wish it would endure forever.

The kiss was really an amazing stuff, one I’ve never experienced in real life. I can hardly describe it but in total, it was kinda like a sex-hormone-induced euphoria that just drove me crazy (I like being crazy and those crazy stuff, for they never fail to surprise me). The excitement & elation evoked were like, maybe not very aptly, superman’s orgasm (●’◡’●). Anyway, it was an absolutely terrific feeling. The kiss seemed to last a couple of minutes, during which I had the most exceptional time in my life as of now.

Yet, all the fantastic dreams so are gonna be disillusioned, and afterward we’ll have to face the reality. Kinda cruel, it was so beautiful a dream!

I don’t know why I dreamed about Ania, maybe because I haven’t seen her for quite a long time and, you know, absence makes the heart grow fonder; or maybe due to the guilty that I haven’t even attempted to contact her, though, which would be of ease; or for some other reasons. But no matter waht the reason is, I’ll seriously consider establishing a relationship with her (I used to be too cowardly to profess my tremendous love to her, and it invariably keeps upsetting me). Somehow, she possesses some incredibly charming attributes that is irresistible to me. She is a peerless beauty, smart, funny, kind, generous, wild & unconstrained, caring, as well as her peculiar mystique, all of which totally impressed and overwhelmed me.

…

I wanna end with a song by Savage Garden – Truly Madly Deeply

I’ll be your dream
I’ll be your wish
I’ll be your fantasy
I’ll be your hope
I’ll be your love
Be everything that you need

I’ll love you more with every breath
Truly, madly, deeply do
I will be strong
I will be faithful
‘Cause I’m counting on
A new beginning
A reason for living
A deeper meaning, yeah

I wanna stand with you on a mountain
I wanna bathe with you in the sea
I wanna lay like this forever
Until the sky falls down on me

And when the stars are shining brightly in the velvet sky,
I’ll make a wish, send it to heaven then make you want to cry
The tears of joy for all the pleasure and the certainty
That we’re surrounded by the comfort and protection of the highest powers
In lonely hours
The tears devour you

I wanna stand with you on a mountain
I wanna bathe with you in the sea
I wanna lay like this forever
Until the sky falls down on me

Oh, can you see it, baby?
You don’t have to close your eyes
‘Cause it’s standing right before you
All that you need will surely come

I’ll be your dream
I’ll be your wish
I’ll be your fantasy
I’ll be your hope
I’ll be your love
Be everything that you need

I’ll love you more with every breath
Truly, madly, deeply do
(I love you)

I wanna stand with you on a mountain
I wanna bathe with you in the sea
I wanna lay like this forever
Until the sky falls down on me

I wanna stand with you on a mountain
I wanna bathe with you in the sea
I want to live like this forever
Until the sky falls down on me

For A.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods…
There is a rapture on the lonely shore…
There is a society where none intrudes…
By the deep sea and music in its roar…
I love not mean the less, but Nature more…
From these our interviews, in which I steal…
From all I maybe, or have been before.
To mingle with the Universe and feel…
What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.

                                                – Byron