paths memories

Notice to all students of SAGC who read this blog

Hi all,

Can all students sign off with your FULL NAME and your CLASS after you've commented on my blog?

Cheerio,
Ms C

weeeeeeeee!!!!!

back from camp

yo. back! finally....
1. had a great time @ camp.... our little girlie group of 6 staff members had fun in our dorm room, as did our big girlie group of 42 1D students...
2. there are now students @ SAGC who can who can read my blog so i'd better be "disney" about everything (yes, you, simmy :p )

a few things:
* i hit my head on a fan on the first night
* i dropped countless things, including my camera, my new toothbrush (onto the shower floor... ewww) and the social workers' walkie talkie
* i had a "24 hour solo" deja vu while waiting to be "rescued" by my group from the "aliens"
* chucked waterbombs made out of plastic bags and not being very environmentally friendly in the process
* while waiting for the students to walk pass prior to the whole water bomb business,
* i am no longer the biggest germaphobe in the world! i don't even come close.
* 1D is the best!

a few more memorable things:
* k's phoebe-ness
* l's sleepiness
* n's worldliness
* w's strength
* q's resourcefulness

cool!

ninty. ninty. ninty.

i've been correcting all my students' books---- 90, as ninety. anyone who spelt ninty got a big fat cross. a fellow hksinger named claudia alerted this to me at rehearsal tonight. thank you, claudia!!

i swear that i COULD spell before i started this job, but now i can't even spell bloody ninty.

how embarassing!!!!! what a complete brain blank! i'd better start correcting everyone... just like the "febuary" episode :(

ms cheung is off to camp!

signing off for the next few days... we'll be back on friday afternoon. let's hope us teachers will still be alive then! rumour has it that we'll be involved in water gun fights and the younger teachers will be attacked with water at various moments of the days.

meanwhile, my class monitoress pointed out the following to me today: "ms cheung, your undies are showing". quite stunned, i said, "thank you." i'll never wear that witchery light flowery skirt with those lovely M&S hot pink undies ever again...

and to those students and teachers who are still refer to playing basketball as "playing fanny", please stop this practice immediately.

so am i off on two days worth of holidays or two days of hell?

(elaine, being my cool form class teacher partner.)
me: we're doing group marches and stuff.
elaine: argh.
me: and we have to inspect their rooms at 7:30am.
elaine: argh.
me: and--- we have to be in the thursday night water fights.
elaine: arrrrrrgh...

bright eyed and bushy tailed..... raring to go....

blue skies?

We've had a whole week of rain and today it's suddenly sunshine and blue skies?
must be the calm before the storm....
shan shan- stay away!!!!

two weeks down!

teaching is not easy. i had my first teaching "flop" this week. yes, it is indeed possible to "flop" in the arena teaching. role- teacher. audience- students. reaction- snoring. Is it possible to teach grammar in an interesting way? can we perhaps write a pop song to teach our students singulars and plurals?

okay, it's not that bad. everyday, it's the little things that keep me going, even if i had been up the hill at glenaly until 1015pm tearing my vocal cords apart: the smiles i get from the students, the outrageousness of our 215 staffroom, and the kindness of the other staff members. when i almost tripped over my laptop cords for about three times on friday, the little kid in the corner said "be careful, ms cheung!" for the same amount of times. i had kids offer me their fruit from their lunches (hopefully spare and not unwanted!) :p... i had d&ms again with people, not just bullshit (blowing water). us new teachers shared our own little challenges (e.g. flash animations... dreamweaver.... software and hardware... grammar...)

i made an effort to teach without using a microphone these two weeks, but i have decided to give in and start to use my portable mike again. my voice has taken quite a battering this week with all the singing at the singers and although i have never really shouted at my students at school, a lot of people have commented that my voice has sounded decidedly huskier over these few days. it's time to get with the trend, i guess.

oh, oh, oh, WE GET TO GO TO CAMP THIS WEEK!
(fellow form teacher and happy camper) queenie: you're more excited than the students!
me: ya-huh!!!!!
it'll be a fun time cos we'll be camped up at this funky facility at sai kung. fingers crossed, the typhoon won't get to us and make our three days a soaking wet experience.

---- random thoughts 1---- the hong kong cricket girls are in pakistan, training their butts off now. thinking back, mum was probably right about not going to pakistan:
1. i would have missed camp
2. i would have a crap load of work to catch up with the week after, seeing as i'm probably one of the last ones to leave the school every day...
3. i wouldn't have as healthy a relationship with the kids and the other staff at this point in time.
so... everything does happen for a reason.

---- random thoughts 2---- we had an earthquake this week here in hong kong. it was about 3-4 on the ricter scale. i was at the hk singers rehearsal up on the hills of the hong kong island, nearer the epicentre than the rest of hong kong. bloody 'ell, everyone there felt it, and it was really, really freaky. the last time i experienced an earthquake was back when we were still living here full-time. dad was snoozing on the easychair and mum thought he was being rude and having a fun time rocking on the chair. turned out he wasn't being rude after all.

when will it stop?

yes, the rain, that is.
The Hong Kong Observatory sure has some strange standards for their weather warnings.
A few months ago, it was T3, but the whole city felt like it's been put inside a wind tunnel complete with a hose down. The Observatory did not budge and kept with the T3 warning. There was much uproar of course on the next day.
What about today? it's been pouring down for the past few hours and does not look like it's going to stop anytime soon. so at bloody 8:00 am it decides to put up a yellow rainstorm warning! what use is that going to be?

.
..
....

on her "off" day from form class duties, ms cheung is watching the torrential rain from her office....

school piccies

My office & the lovely colleagues who work in the office.

I'm a chalk allergic teacher.

yeh.... the chalk dust makes my eyes water, and my nose run.... it's horrible!! so i'm in the middle of a sentence and all this stuff comes out.... argh... ms lam offers her science lab goggles... i remarked that it'd be interesting to teach the subject of English in laboratory goggles.

my students still cannot spell 30 in ordinals.

goal for next week. to make sure all of my group 1 kids can spell "thirtieth", and not "thirtyth", or "thirdtyth".... "first" and not "fast" or "firth" or "frith".

you can do it, kids!!!!!

so it's autumn!

the winds are here! the rains are here!!! ti's no longer the season for sweaty armpits and backs!!! huzzah!!!!!!

paper... paper... and papers

There's still a whole heap of paper that's lying everything in my house, and I STILL can't get rid of it all!

In other news, I've rediscovered my university days. Why? I just stayed up until 2am correcting my students' composition papers. Some already show encouraging signs while others have to work hard on correcting some bad habits. e.g. "there have three people in my family"

zzzzzzz....

Ms Cheung has marked her first worksheets.

And am madly happy with my drama club team. we have one colleague who's grade 8 piano (and has offered to transpose everything!), one who's taking her jazz dance teaching certificate exams, and another who can write scripts!

:)

oh happy day!

CRIKEY!

(I'm using this saying especially in memory of Steve Irwin...)
CRIKEY! There's too much paper on my desk! So, i set off to the local homeware store to buy myself a $60 HKD 3 tier bookshelf that's on sale at the moment. Do you realise that $60 HKD is around $11 AUD? How cheap's that!?
We're going to camp with my, well counting my co-form teacher it should be "our", class of form 1s very soon... hopefully we'll have a great time, cos i think my form class is the best :) go 1D!!!

!!!!

My kids are cool, my colleagues are very cool, and i'm so far coping with the steep learning curve. because i'm coming into this job with very little teaching experience, what's happening is that i'm actually literally learning on the job. i'm lucky that i like kids and kids (in secondary school, at least) seem to like me... that's the first hurdle, i guess. i can just see this year being a good year.
good luck to soloman and your teaching career!

and then, he's gone...

RIP the crocodile hunter
RIP Steve Irwin

It's a reminder of how our lives can be taken away from us this quickly.

學KIKI話齋

..... 4/9/06 ... 一齊努力.

pics from the youngfriends program

in the name of education...

i have ditched my 129 song collection on my mp3 player and replaced it with 8 tracks of listening tasks.
i have ditched my first national representative opportunity in cricket
i have left the HKAPA, a place of fun and friends.

in return?
My Fair Lady... singing, dancing and being generally merry for three months.
42 lovely kids in my form class
some really cool colleagues
a school musical program to take charge of.

everything in life happens for a reason and should be win-win, if you let it be that way.