students

Here is some student-related stuff I've been wanting to post for a while.

On the 14th I went to my school's "Thanksgiving Ceremony," an end-of-the-school-year event that included speeches, student performances, presentations of awards, and some really long speeches. And about 98% of the 3-hour ceremony was in Cantonese, so I had to amuse myself by imagining what was being said. Well, I guess I didn't have to imagine everything that was said, since I like to flatter myself that I know some Cantonese. A translation track of everything I heard was running in my head during the ceremony, with me filling in the blanks. It sounded something like this: "Thankyou_____. _______ students ________ good ______ school _______ ________ ________ _______ ________."

One of the highlights of the evening, for me at least, was seeing and hearing our school's marching band. Yes, we have a marching band. And they have the coolest uniforms! Check out those feathers!

They marched into the hall followed by the ceremony VIPs, and then stood around the perimeter playing The Battle Hymn of the Republic.

When they had finished performing, I went outside to try and get some more shots of them in their uniforms. However, I found that most of them did not want to be photographed in marching band attire. Thankfully my faithful student Jessica was more than willing to strike a pose with her clarinet.And here's Dennis, who I taught this year. It might be difficult to understand why, but I refered to him as Dennis the Menace on more than one occasion (affectionately, of course). On an interesting note, he is one of two Dennis Ngs at the school. Part way through the year I noticed the two of them walking around together sometimes during lunch and recess. I guess they met because of their identical names, but ended up becoming good friends.

And now I come to a younger student. Last week I started teaching the language class at the ICS kindergarten summer school. "Language" is a pretty serious name for what I do with the kids, which is basically reading stories, singing songs, etc. Every day the kindergarten has a letter theme, and last Monday was "K," so I had to find a story about something starting with "K". Well, I looked hard for a book about koalas or kites, but in the end the only appropriate book that I could find was called Kitten's First Full Moon, which incidentally is a very cute book with beautiful illustrations (actually won the Caldecott (sp?) award, the yearly award for best-illustrated children's book). Anyway, after we read the story, I had the children color a picture from the book. I thought Jasper (see his name in the corner?) did an especially good job, so found a round-about way of getting his picture. Love his color choice and technique. And in case you're wondering, the reason the kitten is half red is that some of the kids decided he needed a blanket... he is sleeping afterall. Besides appreciating the kitten coloring-job, I love this photo! I think I like the way the picture is covering half of his face, and that his eyes look so serious.