Wok and Roll and lots of laughter

............................................................... This Friday night the students,some colleagues and I will sit down for a Chinese dinner and reflect on those almost five months of teaching and studying - were we ( was I with English as my subject ) able to motivate them? Did we cover enough material?Have their skills improved? When will the better ones move from our present rather mechanical conscious competency level to the more magical unconscious competency one? None of this "serious stuff" happened..instead there was a lot of laughter,good food and easy togetherness and a few guest joiners as well.


It seems and feels like the atmosphere in the class has gotten a bit "rougher" and a bit less inviting.....maybe the more difficult tests are to blame for this heating up? Or maybe the students know more of each others' knacks and neurosis(es )and have they not also figured us out - their teachers by now? Again - no heaviness here - just a lot of sympathetic good will!Whatever - school shuts down on December 18th and we won't come back until January 5th,2009.

There is a nice Christmas tree in our building and I hope you will enjoy the embedded John Lennon Happy Christmas ( War is Over ) song as well.

Thinking or sinking: my resolutions for 2009

The young coast guard cadet in the embedded video has a hard time to be precise with his English prenunciation....I,too would like to improve on my up to now rather diffuse 2009 goals and desires.....So what changes do I truly want to bring about in 2009?

1. I definitely would like to continue teaching beyond the summer vacation of 2009- the tricky part here is that on this one I am dependent upon outside readiness or hiring willingness.

2. I plan to remodel my downstairs...new carpet;new lighting;much less clutter and maybe a wider bed as well.

3. To throw away some of my books and magazines - a painful process - but necessary.

4. To drink more tap water during the day.

5. A good idea would be to control the volume of my outgoing emails.

6. It would be wise to eat even less meat products and to allow for two 5 to seven days fasts in 2009.

7. To clean my car and to check it on a more regular basis.

8. To accept "what is" in form of the "present moment" much more often and in many more situations i.e. a restaurant or crowded places.

9. To soften my facial expression - so that my gratitude and goodness will more readily shine thru me.

10. To stay away from impulse buying of books or DVDs especially at Amazon.de by reflecting if I really do need that particular product.

11. To find a certain number of motivational speakers for my/our Paderborner Gesundheitsstammtisch.

12. To create situations where I can generate this feeling of I AM more often and thus to deepen this sense of knowing.....

Especially the last resolution will help me to stay well afloat throughout 2009 - thus no SOS signal and no sinking scenario will be necessary.

No longer just YouTube - here is Yappr

The opportunities to practice our English have never been better....and now there is this new service called Yappr...just watch the video and see if Yappr provides additional possibilities for you...for me as a teacher the best parts would be: to see and read the text and the ability to hear the last senstence again...let's try it out at school real soon.

In English - please!

When I came home from school around noon today - I saw this new poster with its picture perfect message - easy morning - and only my students will understand why this image cheered my up!

Presents or Presence

What will the coming holiday season bring you: presents or presence...if you watch the attached video it will be an easy answer...and you wonder how folks at the end of 2008 can still be so "unenlightened" - or is this satire? Not when you look at their bodies.

If - Second Category: Past and Conditional I

I just discovered this short song plus text by Beyonce - it is not only a nice melody but the text is also a great way to deepen our understandings concerning our second category if-sentences..who next will discover a song for our class where the third category will be used??

Obama is ONE with us

Here is another new word - I learned it today: edublogger

Edubloggers are mainly teachers , educators or students who blog about topics that relate to the vast field of education...so here I am: Jay - the edublogger....if only more folks or more colleagues took an interest in my/our writings.....hallo! We need your feedback...is there anybody out there??

Stuff-Lust and Road-Rage

As a teacher of English it is still fascinating to learn new words...stuff-lust is the latest one - I came across it yesterday while I was reading about the Black Friday shopping spree and the trampling ( killing ) of a Wal-Mart temp worker on Long Island the day after Thanksgiving at 5:00 in the morning.Another word I learned some time ago is road-rage and it suddenly dawned on me that there is an underlying connection between these two nouns.

"Stuff - lust" ( die Lust nach Zeugs ) describes the desire to get or buy more THINGS and "road-rage" ( im Verkehr in Rage sein ) refers to the anger and frustration that occurs within you when another driver doesn't conform to the way you would like that traffic situation to be...and there too - killings have taken place - all based on and triggered by road-rage.

What then seems to be causing these two conditions? Both are centered on and created by a fictitious sense of self - like: if only I had this flat screen TV (i.e. from Wal-Mart ) on my wall before Christmas I would and will be a 'better' or at least a happier person than I am now....road-rage happens when I base my fictitious sense of self on the amount of horse power or the dimensions of my car...like: watch out - don't stop me now - I am driving an Audi 8 and I am entitled to a high-speed driving style on any lane not just the very left one!! and especially so when I drive up the three lane hills of the Bielefelder Berge.....in both cases I am trying to derive my sense of self-worth from an object: the flat screen TV or from my powerful car - what a strange world!!

Why am I writing about this? I am thinking about my daughter and my students and their attempts to establish their sense of self through MORE...how do they go about defining who they are?As their parent and teacher I of course encourage them to pursue and to succeed in their schoolings - in other words: to pass their Abitur.And there is nothing wrong with this - except: what if my daughter and my students derive their sense of self from this endeavor as in: I have now passed my Abitur - I am therefore more 'complete' now - I am thus a different or 'better'person than my friends - whose schoolings stopped a long time ago etc. etc.

If they searched for their selfhood in this dimension they would do so on the same level where stuff-lust and road-rage manifest themselves...so the real question is:what school subject ( Schulfach ) would allow my daughter or my students to hear and be exposed to a different message or method of finding out who they really are or where to look for an answer in this daunting quest??

Paris - je t'aime

..................................................... Have you ever been on a train that travels at 318 km per hour during most of its journey? Well - that is the constant speed of the Thalys TGV once it leaves Brussels.From there it takes less than ninety minutes to reach Paris Gare du Nord...very impressive technology - although the German ICE may look more stylish and it may have more room inside its first class coaches than the Thalys - it can't measure up to the power of the Thalys! Plus in their first class they serve free drinks and a delicious cold meal - all included in the price..and you are even handed a printed menu card as a souvenir!! An adventure and a great start for my fifth trip with my daughter to the city of love and lights.

Our main intention was to visit the European Education Fair - see photo.I had hoped to get my daughter excited about some of the institutions that she may want to consider once she graduates from Highschool.... it worked out ok but the many booths presented quite a challenge for both of us.

We had much more fun in front of and on top of that famous Eiffel Tower.I had a chance to speak some French while exploring the sights - and it was my daughter's job to navigate us through the City using the metro - the cost for ten rides is only € 11,40. We plan to return in May/June 2009 when it is warmer and more inviting.

When I arrived in Paris for the first time in 1963 with my girl-friend from Kiel I had a one year contract with La Librairie Hachette on Boulevard Saint Germain as a stagiaire...and we lived not too far from where our hotel was this last week-end...so I pretty much felt at home in "my" 15eme arrondissement! My daughter had fun to revisit with the American owner of the Mon Bon Chien pet shop near by....see its home page at: www.mon-bon- chien-paris.com