Giving the real-life experiences of allowing her students to get into contact with various sorts of people in the field of performance art, off of the Front Page Sections, translated…
The performance arts instructor, Liu in Houjia Middle School in Tainan loved traveled, and enjoyed making new friends, she’d introduced foreigners into her classroom, to have them share with the class on the various cultures, and broaden the horizons of the students’ international knowledge. At first the students who couldn’t understand a word, they’d worked hard, learning English, and now, some are engineers in Silicon Valley; those who are still in the universities, are brave to trek around the island, to go for the foreign exchange programs. She’d introduced the world into the classroom, encouraged her students, and enriched herself as well.
Liu wore a hat to class every day, the students called her, “the Queen of Hats”, “the Chameleon”, even called her Feng Fei-fei like the performing artist. Twenty-one years ago, Liu was the Chinese instructor of Chien-Jing Middle School in Kaohsiung, and was sent to the performance arts seminars, and loved performing since, and, she’d, gotten involved in a ton of seminars relating to the subject to enrich herself, and started working as a performance arts instructor then.
Inviting the Foreign Guest-Speakers to Share Their Views to Inspire Her Students
Liu loved going on adventures abroad, to see the different worlds, and invited the foreigners who’d come to Taiwan to travel, to work into her class, to share with the students, a different view of the world. After she married, she was transferred to Hou-Ja Middle School, and continued bringing the world into her classroom, other than meeting the “couch-surfers” from online, she’d also gone to the hostels to find the young backpackers.
“My methods of asking people over, had made other mistake me as streetwalker, but that’s okay, because I have thick skin, I’d made friends with the owner of the hostel, and helped matched the backpackers, visitors from foreign places to come to my school to offer the guest lectures.” And, just like that, through the introductions, the students who’d graduated from the school went abroad, came back, and entered into the guest-speakers’ forum.
Once she’d encountered a French mime, Liu invited the person to school, and, introduced to her class the history of miming, and French culture. Many years later, a student who was in the lecture, Sun called Liu, told her that back then, his English listening skills weren’t good enough, and being in the lecture made him motivated to learn English, and now, he works as an engineer in Silicon Valley, and took up art in his spare time. A lot of other students were inspired, gone to the foreign exchange programs in their college years, or went abroad to further their studies, and there were the students who trekked the island with their legs, faced the challenges, head on.
A Recipient of the Teacher-of-the-Year Award, Used Her Classroom as a Dojo to Train
Liu, who was the recipient of the teacher’s award of the city of Tainan, and Contribution to Education Awards, for the years she’d been teaching, she’d invited over hundreds of foreigners, from more than sixty countries to her classroom, to share with her class what they encountered, what they’d, learned from the encounters. “From before, the classrooms were, a warzone, and now, it’d become, a dojo for the meditation of the self, a place where I can, make my own dreams come true, and I’d, helped motivated the students, to walk out into the world, to find their own places to shine.”
Liu stated, most importantly, is that the students come to class happy, an everybody became the main character in her/his own life, “I’d become, a ‘waiter’ who’d, assisted them” this is what made her persist, “life should be lived, colorfully.”
And so, this teacher put her own former years of life experiences, into the classroom settings, and introduced her classes to a bigger world, other than just books, exams, and making the grades, and, gotten her students motivated, in their own, process of learning new things, and this is a school teacher who, inspires her students.