CarneySandoe.com

My mom-in-law hooked me up with my brother-in-law’s ex-step-sister Jamie (yeah… a bit too many hyphens here) for my job inquiry. It turned out Jamie doesn’t work on the recruitment side for the private schools in L.A. area; she places the students to their suitable schools. So, it’s on the other side of the system.

Anyway, she told me this website– carneysandoe.com–that most private schools in L.A. will list their openings there, so I tried to apply myself on their website. Gosh… It took me just a little shoter than posting on Monster.com.

Jamie also suggests me that I might consider persuing a teaching credential for my future career, since most schools (even private ones) in L.A. request their teachers have one.

My Lovely Students

Repost old blog entry on September 15, 2006

My Lovely Students

I have to continue our target lesson for this week: Asking and giving directions. So, I let my students listen to the following conversation on the tape:

A woman: Hi, I need some directions. Do you happen to know where the hospital is?

A guy on street: You bet! It’s on …..

OK, I let them listen to it a couple of times without any written handout at hand, and had the lights off. In the dark, they can have better sense to “hear” things. Then, we had a great discussion about what they heard.

• “Sandy” popped out first: “I sink the man say: ‘You back’, be-causi the woman want to hospital, her back is pain, so, it  ‘you back’.”
• “Leon” disagreed: “No, no, I think the guy is not good. He is kinda ‘bu` hao`’ (not good in Chinese), so, it is “You bad”…”
• “Xiao Hong” continued: “I think it’s “bed”, she want to go hospital a bed, tired, you know, sleep on bed…”

Anyway, I put all the possible answers on the whiteboard, along with the correct “You bet” to help them make a decision. It turned out, everyone thought “You back” make more sense in this dialogue… !$%^&*

When I announced the accurate answer and explained this colloquial expression to them, they all said “English is difficult!! Strange!!”.

BTW, Ben gave me a fresh fig grew in his backyard 2 days ago. A-Ling’ gave me some home-made dim-sum yesterday. Jenny brings me vegetarian food almost every day. Mostly fresh fruit salad. And she’s gonna bring me some vegetarian moon cake tomorrow. Don’t you just love them?

Too Fast?

Repost old blog entry #5 

September 23, 2006

Too fast?

Done a personal survey among my students today. The most common feedback from them are– friendly, cheerful and nice personality, dynamic teaching skills, never a dull moment (one student said that, yeah, I’m an entertaining hostess…), patient, bilingually beneficial to them. However, almost all of them put this answer on Q2:

• Q:What do you dislike the most about this class? 
• A: You speak too fast! 

Maybe I’ve been far away from the lower level of English proficiency for a while, so I can’t remember the pain the 2nd language learners have to suffer from the fast speech of the instructor. Oh, yeah, I clearly remember one of my previous grammar professors back in college, Professor Hilbert, she is absolutely the champion of speaking fast on campus. Not only in class, in real life, she speaks even faster. I guess she’s been holding herself back really hard in class already.

That’s the reason why I want to get some feedback from my lovely students–to make myself a better teacher for the next cycle.

Always try to advance my career. Yeah, like the pyscho test Jesse gave to me yesterday,  my imaginary ladder on the movie theater screen is the sturdy, old, solid oak one. The one looks like the monstrous one in the public library, that can be steadily fixed on the floor, with wheels, helps you reaching the top of the bookshelfs and take you to any books you want to get. The underlining meaning of the ladder is– how you see your career. Which seems to be the major comfort and sense of security I can provide myself for the rest of my life.

Being professional; stay professional. It must be easier than stay beautiful. After all, I’m already too sexy and pretty for being a teacher.

Tutored Irina,aka my new TOFEL preparation student from Taiwan, this afternoon. Still feel good step into the familiar, same old campus. Glad that I help her a lot in grammar. She told me afterwards: “I wish I can know you earlier so I can suffer less from my classes… Hong should introduce us as soon as I got here!!” And she handed me the tutoring fee in a cute envelope with a thank you note and personal signature stamp on it… That’s a totally Asian way to show respect to the teacher. No matter what kinda of teachers that might be.

Dynamic

Repost old blog entry #4 

August 31,2006

Dynamic

Gosh, I really LOVE teaching here.

Dynamic, energetic, creative… etc. These are the most common compliments I received from my fellow teachers, coworkers and supervisors. Along with pretty, beautiful, “subtle” sexy from my students.

One of my students– Bo Ning, hugged me yesterday and said “I love you, Miss Young” without a reason. She simply just wanted to do that after each class.

Another student, I don’t have much interactions with, so I don’t even remember her name (yet), asked me the other day: “Why can’t you teach us every class?” That surprised me a little, though I know that’s what she(they) really wants. So, I had to comfort her (and other students) that it must be some reason that my supervisor arranged other teachers to teach them instead of me for other classes… blah blah blah… you can learn from different teachers, cause every teacher has different style… you happened to like mine….

And today, Rui-Qi told me that she fought so hard to stay in my class 2 weeks ago (when this new cycle began), even though she didn’t belong to this class at the first place and had to change all her schedule to accoomdate to mine. “Cause I like you a lot since the day you subsituted us once. I want you to be my teacher, and I’m glad that I’m your student.” Aye… almost all my students are mid aged women from China, but they”re not afraid to show me their affections. They are sooooo cute, and reminds me my mom a lot.

No matter they’re kids, adults or elders, they can always easily find out if you’re paying attentions to them. If you really care about their learnings, so they reward you whatever they have learned from you.

You show them your heart, they return bigger hearts to you.That, my friends, it’s the meaning of life. Also the meaning to be a teacher. A great one. 

Another GREAT thing teaching here is — free food.

Every Thursday on the staff meeting, of course, there will be homemade chocolate cookies (or other kinds), hot coffee or tea, and biritos (sliced into bite sizes already). And from time to time, there’re some complimentary pastry produced by the students in baking classes around. And, not mention every afternnon around 1:10~1:30 pm, I can always “observe” my students in their cooking class, then I HAVE TO eat/share/taste/give feedback on their works, aka my free lunch. I had my special lunch today– which was roasted beef serlions, seasoned rice, aside with Cesar salads. Taco Salad last Thursday. Fruit Salad a day before, and Potato Beef soup 2 days ahead of that.

Nice, huh?

Can’t wait to have my long Labor Day weekend, though. Teaching 4 classes, 5 hours in a roll daily is taking out off a lot of my energy.

Depressed Turtle

Repost my old blog Entry 3 

June 09, 2006

Depressed Turtle

I hate to admit it, but the fortuneteller was right again. I did meet some intelligent people (aka 有識之士) since this summer.

4 of my students now:

• G. is an ABC, speaks Cantonese, and provided me many useful comparisons among Mandarin/Cantonese/Taiwanese. And she has a fixed tutoring schedule for me to make things easier. She also inspires me to get in touch with business world.
• A, also an ABC, went to MIT for Bachelor and Master, received his Ph.D. from Stanford. Always teaches me some hi-tech terms and offers me ride home (though I never let him do so…)
• T. went to Berkeley for bachelor, Stanford for Master, and are going to Wharton for his MBA (Wharton is the top 3 best public university in the U.S.). Always buys me coffee if we met at Starbucks, and is willing to travel to campus to save some troubles for me to get to downtown. And even though we only had one-hour session (when his brain was not working well…), or meet for 20 mins for discussing for materials, he would pay me the full amount of 90-mins hour pay.
• M, the pianist, knows 4 different languages before he contacted with Mandarin. He really helps me to learn more about languages from his cross-linguistic perspectives.

Below is what M’s analysis of 2 Chinese characters from his e-mail:

***********************************************************************************************************

鬱: depressed, gloomy

龜: turtle

When I thought of the turtle character, I was reminded that turtles have four legs, just like the four corners of the earth.

Then I realized that in all over those corners there are people who are miserably unhappy because of the USA, which, for example has a military presence in 120 of the 180 countries of the United Nations.

And before I was born, the USA had already fought 145 wars, most of them undeclared wars, and then I recall that the USA has been at war ever since I was born, and that the USA, where people know only how to make money andhow to kill people, piggishly gobbles resources and shows an environmental policy on of “war on terra” and threatens nuclear destruction of the world and is alreayd polluting the entire world with depleted uranium.

So that the turtle brought to mind the pressing need to dismantle the American empire before the USA destroys all life on earth. Which it probably will– and soon.

 Should not the turtle be depressed?

***********************************************************************************************************

Isn’t he something?

I’m lucky to keep being educated by people who are kind & smart and I’m making money out of them….

Old Blog Entry 2

May 13, 2005

I have 3 students now~

I can’t believe this kind of good thing will happen to me.

After posting my ad for teaching Mandarin on www.craigslist.org for almost 3 weeks, now I’ve got 3 students. Practically, all my Monday through Friday afternoon schedule are booked in June.

Isn’t that wonderful?

At least, I won’t be BORED after graduation and be able to make some U.S. cash in June.(if it goes well, I can make about $1,000 in June, just enough to survive here…). Then I can focus on finding a full-time job b/4 I have to return to Taiwan to finalize my divorce after July 5th.

The fotuneteller was right. Forget about public schools. I’ll be better off serving in private business. My goal right now is to find a full-time job teaching either ESL or Mandarin anywhere in CA. (if I can find one). Or as my career counselor advised me before, I should try to find a teaching position in some big companies (such as Google, Microsoft, GM– whatever Co. who has the close business relationship with China now…). They must have the education center which provide some Mandarin classes for the employee working in China.

Repost my old blog entry on March 09, 2005

Chinese curriculum & landlord

2 things interesting today.

1. I followed my classmate Jen to her CHINESE 101 class to see how horrible this class is presented. The instrutor is an American male today, speaks pretty good Mandarin, very knowledgable in Chinese (I poped out 2 tricky questions to test him… Ha Ha), got his Chinese education done in Taiwan, taught in an OK way in class, sometimes quite entertaining. But, some problems observed:

• Too much new vocabulary and new sentence patterns in 50-mins class time. 
• Too less drills/practices/activities among students.
• Students are lack of enthusiasm to learn.

When I heard my classmates complained about how much they have been suffering from the Chinese class they’re currently taking, I had somehow suspicion on what they’ve described. Not until had I had the close obervation today, I was not suprised at all. (They told me another teacher, Miss Wong, is the total bi-o-tch for teaching them on Tue. and Thurs, who is also from Taiwan…)

Why can’t those teachers I met at the university and city college use a more fun,diverse and inspiring way to teach students in class? Why do they have to murder all the fun and joy learning a new foreign language? Especially Chinese, it supposed to be fun learning the culture and interesting sotries behind those ”tricky” characters… I wonder how many of my poor fellow classmates will continue taking advanced Chinese class next semester, or just hate it forever~

I began to have the idea of revolting the boring way of teaching Chinese outside of China.

Secondly, I know I’ve never liked anyone I knew from Mainland China. After being seperated for 56 years, Mainland Chinese and Taiwanese have lived in totally different political & economical backgrounds, we’d never be the same people anymore ( I think the same analogy applies to English/Americans/Canadians).

My Chinese landlord (immigated from north-eastern China, 山東 Shan-Dong Province 13 years ago) threw away my housemate’s heater without even thinking about inform him first. He blamed him as the “evil young man” living in the house, who uses the old-fashioned heater to not only try to burn down his house and cause the blackout in the house all the time. He also accused him as the sole reason for the increasing electricity bill for the past 3 months.

Is there any RESPECT in his dictionary or crazy mind?

I’ve tried my best to talk him into not doing so. No use. I could only translate what he meant to my Japanese housemate after he returned from school. Of course, you know how VERY angry he turned to be now …

Anyway, my poor housemate was calling his another Chinese friend over to translate for him so that those 2 people can have a huge fight later and settle part of the problem down.

I don’t think I’ll have a peaceful night. The on-line fortuneteller was right. This will be a very chotic year for me. What’s wrong with all those stars in the sky? Couldn’t they just orbit in the right tracks?

The heavy woman upstairs…

The follow-up letters did work a bit. I got a reply right away from Beverly Hill Language Center. Nothing promising yet. But, it’s a start. 

Anyway, the woman lives upstairs of us gets up around 6:30 every morning (and she didn’t take a shower this morning… I started to sound like a stalker or pervert listening to the noise she makes every day… sigh). There’s nothing you can really do for this kinda condo co-living situation, so I decided to sync our schedule. If I get a regular full-time job, that will be the same time I have to get up as well. Besides, being a morning person is good to your health also.

What I’m gonna do today job-wise are:

1. Send out more job-inquiry e-mails to at least 5 language schools within my zip code found on CitySearch website. 
2. Contact a tutor agency Mom told me.
3. Re-organize my previous ESL teaching folders.

Or course life is not just about job searching, I’m also gonna do:

1. Continue cooking 3 healthy meals a day for my husband and I
2. Taking a walk in the neighborhood
3. Watch a Netflix moive or a show on my DVR

Follow Up Letters

Both my husband and mom-in-law suggested me to do as much as possible follow ups after I send out my 1st job inquiry to the potential future employer. It is kinda hard for me to do that. Maybe it’s the buhdist thing in me, I’d rather have some dignity to NOT beg people giving me a job than constantly bombarding them with e-mails…

Some family members even advise me to “drop in”, and introduce myself to the right contact… Gee… I’m not sure about this either… It feels like a Avon Lady, or a door-to-door vacumm sales. Sigh… I can’t belive finding a job this time will be difficult. And the magic Craig’s List has not do any wonder on me yet.

Yom Kippur

Tomorrow is Yom Kippur. Got to drive down to O.C. to meet my hubby’s family for the dinner tonight. Stay there for one night, and back to the city tomorrow. Hence, maybe 24 hours without keeping job searching going…

However, I updated my tutoring service ad and resume on Craigslist this morning. It’s always more effective and usually get more responses if you post or update it on Friday.