1 September 2016

Welcome back. I am sure you had a good rest, and learnt a bit on the side, during the holiday.  Of course I took a break, too.  I visited an Atayal tribe community (泰雅族), and雪霸國家公園 in Taiwan.  I learnt some tribal greetings, and herbal knowledge which I instantly forgot. But I do remember that there are 31 types of bats in Taiwan, of which 25 can be found in 雪霸; this is really amazing.  I also remember my liking of superheroes as a child, when I had nowhere to go with Pokémon. Among all superheroes, I like batman best because he is just a human being without superpower; I could become one some day. He has knowledge and resources for him to save the world. Other superheroes all have some form of surreal powers which we mortal will never be able to obtain in our lifetime.

 

Some years ago, our school talked about standing together: united we stand, divided we fall.  With my “superhero” background, I was glad to see the movie Civil War used the saying in their promotion. Indeed, we treasure differences, but when we have decided on doing one thing, we all aim at it and do our best.  Remember we always do our best, not try our best. One example is the decision teachers made on changing the school into an EMI school in 2009.  Since then, we have been biting the bullets for both academic and non-academic issues, to turn the school around for our EMI status.  We have done well.

 

In this new academic year, we must remember to continue connecting the dots among our learning tasks; we need to de-compartmentalize different subjects and learning tasks through our generic skills. With our from-me-to-we spirit, we must learn that talking down others will never mean you are important; it makes you even smaller.  We need to be responsible as well: when we are questioned why the outcome of a certain task is undesirable, we should reply what can be done some more, rather than listing what has already been done.  Obviously what has been done was not good enough because it produced undesirable results. 

 

I hope we continue our from-me-to-we spirit, and vow to run faster and fly higher.

 

 

Anson Yang