This year's Halloween Micro-Fiction winners

This year my Library Committee decided to run a reprise of last year's successful Halloween Micro-Ghost Story (write a creepy tale in 50 words or less! - although we weren't terribly strict about the word limit).

I announced the winners and handed out prizes at Assembly this morning. All well worth a look. But don't read them too close to bedtime.....

Thought for the week

"The aim, if reached or not, makes great the life.

Try to be Shakespeare; leave the rest to fate!"

A welcome break

We have developed a policy at our pioneering little school of de-stressing ourselves at the end of each lengthy stretch of residential schooling with a nice off-campus excursion for the last few days before the vacation. This time, we've just been away for a couple of days to the picturesque river island of Tongzhou, 30 miles or so to the south-west of Hangzhou. We also spent an afternoon at the China National Football Academy in the nearby township of Tonglu, working with our partner NGO, China Grassroots Football, to stage a mass coaching event for local primary schoolchildren.

Here's a slideshow I made of some of my photographs from the trip.

This year's Halloween treat

Halloween was never much of a thing for me during my childhood, but it seems to have become a major highlight of the year for the Hong Kong children that I teach now. Since today was our last English class before the half-term break - and hence before All Hallow's Eve - I just shared with my students this creepy favourite of mine from the 1970s: La Cabina (The Telephone Box), a Spanish made-for-TV short directed by Antonio Mercedo. 

It was made in 1972 and won quite a few awards. And it has a special place in my heart - a love/hate kind of a place - because when I first saw it on British TV in the late 1970s (when I was about the same age as my students are now) I recognised it as a story that I had written myself a couple of years earlier. I was naturally pretty miffed that they'd stolen my idea without giving me a credit or any royalties. But then I discovered that it had been made some years before I wrote my story, and so I didn't have much of a case for an infringement of my intellectual property. I learned the hard lesson that there is no truly original idea in the world - or very, very rarely so, at any rate. (And I must acknowledge that my story was much more limited; it didn't really have the conspiracy/paranoia dimension that emerges in the second half of Snr Mercedo's macabre little masterpiece.)

Thought for the week

"It's not the destination that matters; it's the change of scene."

A world of silence

A year or so ago, upon unpacking all of my possessions after the move to my new home of Hangzhou, I discovered a DVD I had pretty well forgotten about: 11' 9" 01. I'd purchased it impulsively several years earlier and never got around to watching it. It's a conceptual project commemorating the first anniversary of 9/11, with eleven diverse film directors from around the world each presenting a personal response to the tragedy - and, to recall the date of 11th September 2001, each of these shorts is supposed to be exactly 11 minutes, 9 seconds and 1 frame in length.

There are really only a few of them that are any good (the opening piece, by Iranian director, Samirah Makhmalbaf is much the best of them, I think), but this one - by veteran French director Claude Lelouch (his 1971 crime thriller Le Voyou is an underrated masterpiece) - rather got under my skin. And I thought it particularly appropriate to share it with my current Film classes a few weeks ago because we are focusing on the use of sound in film-making, and Lelouch here rather challengingly presents us with the aural point-of-view of a protagonist who is deaf-mute (and hence is able to remain in ignorance of the collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, although it is happening just a few blocks from her apartment).

Unfortunately, this version has been pulled from YouTube at the moment. I think this film's copyright is not very vigorously defended online, so it will probably reappear at some point. For now, all I can find is this Italian version (most of the dialogue is rendered in sign language, and the general meaning is clear enough, even if you can't understand the subtitles.)

Thought for the week

"The most important learning is usually unconscious, unrecognised. You can't tell me today what you learned today; maybe in five or ten years you can."

More fun with Foley

By happy coincidence, a friend of mine in Beijing sent me this link a few weeks ago - quite unaware that I was teaching a course on 'Sound in Film' at the moment.

Evidently this 'musicless video' idea has become quite a fad on Youtube in the last couple of years, but I hadn't come across it before. This is a particularly imaginative one, recreating what might have been the 'live sound' during the shoot for the famous video of Mick Jagger and David Bowie covering Dancing in the Street for LiveAid.

This provides one possibility for the final assessment project for my students on this course unit (although I think most of them will choose a more straightforward piece of dramatic action to re-record the soundtrack for, such as this). [The original video can be seen here.]

This version of OK Go's award-winning treadmill routine for their song Here It Goes Again is perhaps even better (or maybe it's just that I've always loved the original video!).

Both of these soundtracks were created by Youtuber Mario Wienerroither.

Thought for the week

"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops."

Getting creative with sound

Movie sound designers most enjoy the challenge of creating 'design effects' - sound effects for things that don't actually exist in the real world (futuristic technology, etc.), or things that are real but can't readily be recorded (volcanoes, nuclear explosions, etc.).

WatchMojo's 'Top 10 Movie Sound Effects' here are mostly such 'design effects' from sci-fi films, but.... the list culminates with a vocal effect created by an actor (and used in dozens of movies over the years), probably the most famous sound effect in cinema history: The Wilhelm Scream.

Movie sound is not always realistic

Here's another fun roundup of common film sound effects that I've used with my Film classes sometimes. With many of these it's not obvious what the 'unrealistic' aspect is. Not all snakes are rattlesnakes, and rattlesnakes don't rattle all the time - especially not when they're stalking prey. It's a real noise that's often used in an unrealistic way. Similarly, keyboard 'clack' is real, but - other than with a really old keyboard! - it's usually too quiet to hear at any distance; in the movies it is usually greatly amplified, to focus attention on the person at the keyboard... and on wondering about what they are writing. Car tires squeal, but not quite as much or as often as they do in movie car chases (and you can find out how they make that noise here; it's not usually recorded live from the cars). Real-life screams mostly don't quite sound like movie screams. And so on...

The movies have evolved a number of conventions for how they portray various sounds: many are somewhat exaggerated, a few are actually quite unrealistic. But we are so used to this now that the real sound wouldn't sound 'right' to us in a movie - it wouldn't sound real!

Thought for the week

"The critic's job is to educate the public. The artist's job is to educate the critic."

Glad it's all over! (But it went remarkably WELL!!)

Last week's ENORMOUS logistical challenge of inviting the entire Greentown Primary school to visit our school during the course of the morning (only one year group at a time, at least; although that almost made things even more demanding, as we often had columns of hundreds of little kids trudging past each other in opposite directions - in the pouring rain) passed off far better than any of us could have hoped. I think we only had one emotional tantrum, one very minor injury, and - as far as I was aware - NO-ONE got lost at all.... which is little short of a miracle.

My most cherished observation on the day came from one of the accompanying Chinese primary teachers, who I am told commented ruefully to his American colleague, Tom Frost, "Oh, this is very bad - for me. The kids are loving this so much, they'll find my lessons very boring from now on."

That's a major commendation for these first teaching efforts by our students, who were really flung into the deep end with this, given very little time to prepare or practise.

I was very impressed by most of what I saw going on in these lessons: as I said at the farewell debrief last Friday evening, I enjoyed witnessing so much energy, so much creativity, and so much love being put into the teaching. And everybody seemed to be having a ton of FUN.

Some of my colleagues, I know, hope that our students might become a bit more appreciative of their efforts in the classroom now, a bit more aware of what a demanding job teaching can be. But for me, I think the major benefit of this activity has been as a bonding exercise for our new intake early in the year. Well, that and the possibility that this may have been a successful bridge-building exercise with our Chinese partner school, paving the way for more, and easier and closer inter-school collaborations through the rest of this year. We shall see.

Despite the onerous responsibility of being in overall charge of the event, I did somehow find the time to take plenty of photographs.... and I couldn't resist turning them into a slideshow. (It's a bit long, I'm afraid. But it has some very jolly music accompanying - an old favourite of mine, DJ Dain's inspired mash-up of I'm Yours by Jason Mraz, Don't Worry, Be Happy by Bobby McFerrin, and What A Wonderful World by the great Hawaiian singer Israel Kamakawiwo’ole.)

Stepping out in style

During our "I am a country" inter-disciplinary experience last week, students each drew a country by lot and were then asked to spend the whole week imagining the viewpoint of that country and its people in a variety of situations and activities. Both subject teachers and coach mentors initiated a number of learning inquiries inspired by this premise.

In Film class, students were challenged to find the most interesting short film clip that was representative of their allotted country. Sherson Ng had initially been disappointed to draw the small and unregarded Republic of Congo... but then his researches turned up this delightful mini-documentary on the 'Sapeurs' of Brazzaville.

Cross-posted from my school's video blog, CIS Hangzhou TV.

Thought for the week

"Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life."

John Williams is the man

Oh dear! As I started discussing the importance of the various elements that go into a movie soundtrack, some of the students in my Film class displayed a shocking lack of familiarity with the name of John Williams - the pre-eminent soundtrack composer of the last 40-odd years.

What better way to introduce them than this, a celebration of his music for the Star Wars series, arranged and performed by Moosebutter, a comedy acappella group from Salt Lake City (although this video was created - with Moosebutter's agreement, evidently - by popular Youtuber/zestful lip-syncher Corey Vidal)?!

Thought for the week

"Ability determines what you are capable of doing. Motivation determines what you choose to do. Attitude determines how well you do it."

A grammar lesson!

Dear, oh dear, my new English class have been through a whole week with me without tasting any 'rigour' yet! So, I felt obliged to round off Saturday's lesson with this lightning quick survey of some of the most common linguistic solecisms plaguing us today - courtesy of the great 'Weird Al' Yankovic.

I have adored Al since my teenage years. In fact, I think he first came to my attention with this brilliant comic riff on Michael Jackson's Beat It (essential viewing/listening!!).

Six Impossible Things... (before the weekend!)

As if the beginning of a new school year isn't hectic enough....

Last year, I made friends with Tom Frost, an American who teaches in the Primary division of our host institution here in Hangzhou, the Greentown Yuhua School (GYS). He offered to let some of our students come over to his classroom on their free afternoons, to observe or participate in his lessons. We could only find a few - all girls - who were interested in taking up the offer, but they all really enjoyed it, and started attending his classes on a regular rota as 'teaching assistants'. One even gained enough confidence to demand the opportunity to take some classes on her own towards the end of the year.

And so... Tom and I had talked about whether this year we might try to extend this scheme, to make more of our CIS students aware of the opportunity and enthusiastic about trying it out. But we had been thinking only of small numbers of our students working with just one or two year groups at GYS, as an occasional co-curricular activity - perhaps part of our 'Community & Service' programme.

Great oaks - great, huge, monstrous, unwieldy oaks! - from little acorns grow. While I was visiting our parent school in Hong Kong for some liaison meetings at the end of last year, the rest of my colleagues held an advance planning meeting for the coming year. And, when challenged to suggest a major event for the early part of the first semester, a possible first item for our 'Inter-Disciplinary Experience' (IDE) schedule, someone put forward this teaching activity - as my suggestion.

Well, how nice! I'm flattered, yes I am. Except that.... the conception of the activity was now that it would involve our entire school (which has a significantly larger intake this year than last) rather than just a handful of volunteers, and the whole of GYS Primary rather than just a few classes or a single year group. And it was to be a major 'event', taking up two or three full days of our timetable, rather than an ongoing activity throughout the year. And it was to be hosted on our own campus, not in the usual GYS Primary classrooms.

And, apparently, the only slot in our crowded timetable in which this could conveniently be fitted was the end of our second week here. Wow - not much lead time there!

Oh yes, and no-one had remembered to tell me about this until a few days ago!!!

So, we have to co-ordinate with our partners in GYS to arrange for 700 or so young kids (and some dozens of their teachers, and other assorted hangers-on, no doubt) to move from their school over to ours for most of a day. And we have to figure out a way of wrangling them smoothly through a number of different locations and 'lessons'. We have to divide our kids up into teaching teams, give them some tips on how to prepare entertaining lessons, and schedule time for them to do some preparation for this. It is a HUGE logistical challenge. And I've got to sort it all out before next week. Oh dear.

The first thing I have to do is get Tom to help arrange a meeting with the GYS Primary teachers, to make sure they're all up for this. That shouldn't be a problem, I don't think. But then - this being China - there will have to be a more formal meeting between one or more of their senior staff and one or more of our senior staff. (Strictly speaking, this should probably come first. But I fear that the GYS leadership might stall or conjure problems and obstacles, unless we present them with a fait accompli: "All the teachers on both sides have already agreed to do this.")

If our partners give us the go-ahead (and I fear they will just laugh in our faces when we tell them we want to do this next week), I'll then have to obtain GYS timetables and class lists. And, oh god, I don't even have class and house lists for our own students yet.....

We're also bumping up against a number of major practical constraints. We don't have anywhere near enough classrooms to deal with these sorts of numbers, so I'm going to have to work out what other areas around the school might be usable as teaching spaces (we're probably going to have to use a few rather non-ideal ones, like the entrance foyers of our two buildings). And even with the still relatively small numbers of students we have this year, I fear we're going to have to put them in groups of three or four (pairs would probably be better for a teaching activity, I think; but threes should work OK). 

I think this (over)ambitious event will have to be a one-off: it just won't be feasible to run something like this in future years, when our student body is larger.

For now, though, it looks - touch wood - as if the numbers may turn out to be uncannily convenient this year. Preliminary indications I've been given about the size of the GYS year groups suggest that we'll be able to divide each class fairly neatly into three groups of about 10 each (which should be a nice teachable size, and enable us to use a number of smaller spaces around our school), requiring 24 teaching teams in total.

I've got a plan for how to randomise the selection of the teaching teams, so that it mixes genders as much as possible (our boys and girls often live rather too separate lives) and cuts across classes and boarding houses (which very soon become the dominant focus of friendship groups).

And I've successfully pushed back against the notion that this should be a three-day activity (ridiculous, impossible!), restricting it to a day of classroom observations over at Greentown next Thursday, and a half-day of teaching next Friday morning - with a few additional timeslots for preparation and reflection.

Yes, it's all starting to fit quite well. "I love it when a plan comes together."

'Directing traffic' on the day, though - that's probably going to be a nightmare!

And I only have a few days to sort out all the timetabling, etc. Just what I need at the start of the year.....

Thought for the week

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."

A pick-me-up

At the end of the school year, teachers try to solicit feedback from their students.... and some of it is positive. And we have such well brought-up students here that most of them make a point of thanking their teachers - but it often seems a little token, perhaps insincere.

At the weekend, however, one of my students surprised me with a very heartfelt and thoughtfully written e-mail in which he thanked me for being so open to any kind of question or topic of discussion, and said that he'd found his English class this year much more "fun and interesting" than ever before. He capped his reminiscences of our year together with the nicest compliment I've ever received: "I think you are the most adventurous teacher I've ever met." I'd be happy with that on my tombstone.

Of course, my 'teaching style' has not been so well received by everyone. What one student finds 'interesting' may baffle or bore others; what some greet as 'fun', others resent as 'frivolous', 'unfocused', or 'lacking in rigour'.

You can't win. You can only keep on trying.

Thought for the week

"To be an idealist, one must thrive on disappointment."

Interviewing Cindy Pon

I was even more crazily busy than usual last week, hosting the visit of my school's first writer-in-residence, the American Chinese YA author Cindy Pon (who I'd first got to know several years ago - an e-penpal relationship that started in the comments of a mutual friend's publishing blog).

Last Monday, I interviewed her in the school library about her life and work. 

Thanks to my student Hayson Chu for filming this

Wot - no 'Thought for the Week'?

Alas, no - I've been too busy.

But since the end-of-year reports and so on are looming, it seems appropriate to reflect on these wise words from John Holt for another week.

25 years on

The violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in Beijing in June 1989 was a key moment in my life. I had just started my first teaching job, and it was at a school that happened to have quite a large contingent of Chinese students (mostly from Hong Kong) - so, we were especially interested in the events we saw unfolding in China on the news through April and May that year, felt a particularly intimate connection to them. And thus the wave of bloodshed that was unleashed on the night of June 3rd/4th was a devastating shock to our little community; not only to the Chinese students, but to all of us who had been drawn into sharing their emotional investment in the situation. As the patron of the school's Amnesty International group, I spent much of my next three years there co-ordinating letter-writing campaigns in support of various victims of the crackdown - one of whom, I recall, was a local government employee who had had the temerity to lower the flag at his office building to half-mast on the first anniversary.

Picture from the New York Times

I had hoped our students here might do something to mark yesterday's 25th anniversary - but I wasn't going to prompt them into doing so. And, in the mad rush that is the end of a school year, they were, alas, too preoccupied with other things.

I am glad to see that the occasion was marked in Hong Kong - as it is every year - by a massive turnout for the candlelight vigil in Victoria Park. And I liked Tania Branigan's article about the anniversary in The Guardian today.