Today, we got our
students to talk about music for the second Skype session with their Japanese
counterparts. Again, due to some unknown technical problem, two laptops were
down right in the beginning of this video conferencing. It was quite chaotic and
disorganized then, but immediately I decided to ignore it and made do with the
rest three ones.
The midterm is
around the corner, and they didn’t know what the topic was until this Thursday.
Some of my students were not prepared at all though we managed to create a
worksheet as scaffolding to equip them with relevant words and phrases
regarding music. To avoid awkward moments of absolute silence, I took over one
of the groups and talked with the Japanese students about my visit to Kyoto
this summer, which was quite amusing to them.
Fortunately, the others quite anticipated this meeting and were well prepared. They obviously enjoyed sharing their
ideas about music and worked hard asking as many follow-up questions as they
can. The wow factor of the whole session was without a doubt two of my students
actually played the ukulele and sang an English song with their beautiful
singing voice. We rotated our students so that students on the other
end must be very impressed. I already told mine that this was the last
meeting of this semester; however, they begged me for another one.
Akiko was
virtually dragged by her students to the principal’s office to demand to keep
this exchange project going, too. After reading her such a vivid description
of the students’ determination, I was so moved that I would definitely do my
part not to let them down. I think those kids must already know how much their teacher
had been through to go this far and make this happen despite all the hurdles in
the school. That’s also why I kept reminding myself that I was so lucky and
grateful to meet such a passionate teacher like her.
Overwhelmed by so
many tasks, Principal Hu still came over to participate in our second Skype
exchange and gave us a pep talk. She encouraged all the participants to seize
this great opportunity and really use English in such an interesting setting. However,
it was also a bit embarrassing that she also witnessed the chaos at the very
beginning. Well, if any other teacher who is interested and wants to give it a
try, this is exactly how they have to expect the unexpected. Also, with her
resourcefulness, I think maybe some new equipment will be introduced.
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