The Pursuit of Happyness

“We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, …”
(The Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson)

Obviously Chris Gardner, the main character in the movie entitled “The Pursuit of Happyness”, a film by Gabriele Muccino was really obsessed by what Jefferson wrote—that all men are endowed the right to pursue happiness. The movie inspired by a true story has Will Smith as Chris Gardner, Thandie Newton as Linda, and Jaden Christopher Syre Smith as Christopher, their son.

When watching the movie, I was touched by the big belief of Gardner that he was really endowed that right. Everybody deserves to be happy and everybody has their own way to pursue their happiness, no matter their color, the gender, the ethnic group, the religion, etc. Therefore, everybody must strive to reach it.

Linda also believes in it. When she thinks that her husband cannot make her happy in their marriage, she has her own way to pursue her own happiness—by leaving her husband whom she thinks impotent to look for money. She is tired of being poor, having to work hard—double shift—to pay the bills while in the beginning of their marriage, she is promised happiness by her husband; happiness that she thinks without financial constraint, without her having to work double shift.

When leaving her husband, she takes Christopher with her. In America, children under 18 years old are to follow the mother when the parents are separated or divorced. However, when the following morning Chris takes Christopher from the day care, Linda doesn’t complain a lot. She does understand that Chris is a good father, only he is not really good in looking for money. That’s why when she leaves for New York to start a new life—her sister’s boyfriend opens a restaurant, Linda expects a better future there—she doesn’t mind leaving Christopher with his dad although she feels very unhappy.

Big determination of Chris to pursue his happiness—always remember what Jefferson writes in the Declaration of Independence—makes Chris do his best to reach his dream, not only for himself of course, but the more important thing is his only son. This is somewhat the reflection of his own life where he met his father for the first time when he was 28 years old. He feels very unhappy for that, and this makes him determined that if he has children, his children would know who their father is.

The story happened during the last two decades of the twentieth century. I am wondering whether Chris would get that position in the brokerage firm of Dean Witter—that miraculously changed his life—if the story had happened when Jim Crow Law still haunted America?

PT56 21.28 220807

From being a student to being a teacher

What is school? Well, when the first time I hear the word ‘school’, I illustrate a building where children as well as teenagers wear uniform when going there, to study about something with older people they call ‘teacher’. It is a place that perhaps can inspire younger people to have good future with the knowledge they gather. It is also a place where younger people learn to socialize with one another. Some people called teachers maybe succeed in enchanting their students in their way of teaching so that they inspire those younger people to be in the same shoes.
Perhaps many people become teachers because they are inspired by their previous teachers. However, I am not in that path: I became a teacher accidentally. Luckily I did not graduate from a Teachers College either. When the first time I worked as a teacher in 1994, I did not try remembering how my previous teachers did when teaching; I just did trial and error. LOL. Therefore when someone asked me which experience as a student of mine that contributed to my teaching, I could not give a satisfying answer, I believe.
In 1996 I got a training to be a teacher in one English course where I have been working since then. I learned five important stages teachers needed to do in their classroom:
1. Motivating Strategies  before teaching the material in that session, Teacher (T) needs to motivate Students (Ss) to be ready with the topic to be discussed. In this first stage, both Teacher and Students participate actively.
2. Presentation  this is the most important part for Teacher because he or she presents the material. T is active while Students listen passively. However, of course Ss can ask when they think they need more explanation.
3. Skills Practice  Students must be very active in this third stage while T watches Ss to perform their understanding from T during Presentation stage. T gives help whenever necessary.
4. Review  this stage is not always important to be included in every session; only when T thinks that Ss need to understand more before they do the last activity.
5. Assessment  in this stage, T lets Ss do the assignment by themselves. This stage can be called as the climax since Ss have to perform their best to show that they really grasp the main idea of the lesson.
When attending this course, I got an idea that T has a very important role to make the class enjoyable or boring (especially in language class) with some requirements: first, it is not really a big class, only consists of not more than fifteen students, second, it is not a children class (under twelve years old); their level is either Basic or Intermediate, not Advanced.
In Indonesia, most people study English because they want to be able to speak English fluently. Therefore it is very understandable if ‘speaking’ class is always more enjoyable than ‘writing’ class. In ‘writing’ the class can be boringly quiet. LOL.
Since I did not graduate from Teachers College, this training helped me a lot. I paid attention to any single thing the trainers did. However, again, I don’t think that what they did contribute to my way of teaching, except the material I got and one thing: the mood of T in front of the class influences the class atmosphere a lot. In other words I can say that to be a teacher, someone must be a good actor too. LOL.
Talking about a favorite teacher, mm … well, I am not sure if I have one. However, I can mention some teachers that perhaps will always be on my mind:
1. An English teacher I had when I was in senior high school. I majored in ‘language’ back then. I liked her perhaps because she was teaching English, my favorite subject at school. One important trait to be possessed by a teacher that I learned from her is to be patient. It does not necessarily mean that my other teachers were not patient. Again, it is because ‘luckily’ she was teaching English, my favorite subject. LOL. She also encouraged the female students she had to be economically independent; not to be (financially) dependent on the husband all the time. FYI, at that time her husband was one rector in one university in my hometown.
2. Two guest lecturers I got when I pursued my study at American Studies Graduate Program at Gadjah Mada University in Indonesia. They performed vast and deep knowledge about the materials they conveyed. Reading a lot to enrich their knowledge about any materials they teach is very important.
From the two aforementioned paragraphs, it can be concluded that for me, three most important features from a teacher are: first, to be patient; second, to be able to encourage Ss to do something positive; third, to be an avid reader.
Nevertheless, I believe that successful learning needs the strongest will from the learner himself/herself. Many people go to school with various reasons. In my own opinion, I have done my best to teach, but still I find some unwilling students in my class. They are all teenagers, mostly boys, around fourteen to seventeen years old. I observe the main reason for them to go to school is because they just do what their parents ask them to do, perhaps to get pocket money and to spend time in one ‘best place out of undesired other places’.
One greatest thing of mine to be a teacher, of course, is when I succeed in making my students understand how important knowledge is for their future. Therefore, I am always happy when knowing my ex students become teachers, like me.
PT56 19.00 011109

P.S. : I wrote this article to answer a best friend's 'homework' :)

Romance Stories

Starting last week in grade 8 my students and I have been talking about “romance”. To start the unit, some questions to be answered are:

1. Have you ever fallen in love?
2. Do you consider yourself as a romantic person?
3. What romantic thing have you ever done so far?

The background: there are five students in grade 8, two boys—around thirteen years old; three girls—around twelve till thirteen years old. Except one girl who has got her period, apparently the others are really too young kids to talk about romance. It is understandable then if they could not give satisfactory answers for those abovementioned questions. Even, they have not undergone to have a crush on any girl/boy yet.

The following reading passage to discuss was an excerpt of a romance story. Romance stories have some ‘guidelines’ that must be followed by writers; these guidelines are exactly like stories depicted by melodramas: the men are very good-looking, macho, masculine, rugged, protective, strong; the girls are beautiful, delicate, vulnerable, feminine, dependent. The reading ends up with the guy proposing the girl who shyly accepted the proposal happily.

One female critical student of mine criticized it, “How could the girl accept the proposal? In the beginning of the story it was illustrated that these two people didn’t know each other. How could she accept a stranger to be her husband?”

(Read it => this girl hasn’t been introduced into patriarchal culture that adores marriage—the so-called imprisonment for articulate women according to radical feminists :-P)

Therefore then I explained the fact that we live in a marriage-oriented society. Women who have reached a certain age bracket will feel uncomfortable if they are still single. It is because society will cruelly besiege her with question, “When will you get married?” Society will speak behind her, or even in front of her as someone unwanted. This is really hurtful to some people so that to stop this, they then grab anybody to marry.

Then the critical student said, “I remember what happened to my housemaid. At that time she was 31 years old, still single. One time she was invited to be back to the village by her uncle. In fact then her uncle asked her to marry a guy, a total stranger. And to my surprise, she just accepted it. I didn’t get it at that time. How could she marry a stranger? Wasn’t she happy to be single? Was it because her uncle forced her to get married?”

Perhaps …

Perhaps also in fact she didn’t feel comfortable due to social pressure to single women.

“Why is society so mean, Miss?” she asked me.

I could not give my students a satisfactory answer for this question.

One question written under the reading passage is “Why do romance stories stop at the proposal or wedding parties?”

Surprisingly, my students answered, “Because they do not want to tell stories about sad things. You know there are many problems happen in a marriage: a husband beats his wife, a husband marries another woman, blah blah blah …” This is supposed to be uttered by feminists, not by a thirteen year old girl, who doesn’t know marriage-oriented patriarchy yet.

“This story is so yucky, Miss. Can we just skip this unit talking about romance? We don’t like it.” a student said.
Oh well, of course I cannot. :)
PT56 12.25 111009

A Room of One's Own

In her book entitled A Room of One’s Own (1929), Virginia Woolf wrote to protest why there was no women playwright or women poet as monumental as William Shakespeare. This rhetorical question led her to read History of England by Professor Trevelyan where she found very bitter facts about women.

“Wife beating was a recognized right of man, and was practiced without shame by high as well as low . ... Similarly, the daughter who refused to marry the gentleman of her parents’ choice was liable to be locked up, beaten, and flung about the room, without any shock being inflicted on public opinion. Marriage was not an affair of personal affection, but of family avarice, particularly in the ‘chivalrous’ upper classes. ... Betrothal often took place while one or both of the parties was in the cradle, and marriage when they were scarely out of the nurses’ charge.”

Similar to Woolf, her contemporary woman intellectual, Anna Wickham, wrote a poem entitled “Dedication of the Cook”

If any ask why there’s no great She-Poet,
Let him come live with me, and he will know it:
If I’d indite an ode or mend a sonnet,
I must go choose a dish or tie a bonnet;
For she who serves in forced virginity
Since I am wedded will not have me free;
And those new flowers my garden is so rich in
Must die for clammy odors of my kitchen.

The two works portray the condition of women very clearly in that era. Women are burdened by family matters and they don’t have any rights to choose what they want to do. Before they get married, they are the properties of their fathers or brothers. After they get married, they are the properties of their husbands (who oftentimes are not their own choice). In “Dedication of the Cook”, Wickham illustrate how women are busy doing household chores so that they do not have time to produce great literary works.

*****

Now, almost a century has passed. The so-called woman movement for equality has come to its third phase. Have all women got what their predecessor struggled?

Sadly I must say not yet. Three years ago I posted a writing I entitled “Mental Depression” (click this site http://afeministblog.blogspot.com/2006/04/mental-depression.html

Just a week ago I met this old friend of mine again. Apparently her life is like in a prison, created by her husband, a husband of her own choice.

I visited her house to tell her about a reunion invitation of our high school. When knowing that the reunion would be held at 7pm, she directly gave me excuses for not being able to come. Moreover when I said, “The invitation is only for one person; we are not allowed to bring along our spouse or kids.” She openly said, “Ah … absolutely I cannot attend it. I cannot go out of the house without my husband or kids. A married woman is not supposed to do that.”

I remember our time in high school. She belonged to the independent type. She enjoyed doing any activities without her parents’ strict control because they believed she could take care of herself. On the contrary, I could not do that.

“Nothing stays the same,” wise people say. “Changes are natural law that will always exist,” I say.

I found the answer why my old high school friend said so when her husband came to join us in the living room.

“What kind of reunion is that? Why are we not allowed to bring along our spouse or kids? When meeting old friends, we are supposed to tell them our status now, right? That we are married? That we have got kids? What is this reunion supposed to mean? What if we meet our past crush? What if that long-lost feeling comes back? This is crazy era where many people have secret affairs. Bla bla bla …”

I got stunned. I had better not respond but laugh exaggeratingly. LOL. but unhappily. :(
I remember one short discussion with a friend about ‘jealousy’.

F: Do you agree with me that jealousy has nothing to do with love?
N: I am of opinion that jealousy shows someone’s inferiority. He or she is not confident that his or her spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend loves him/her.
F: I could not agree more. Jealousy deals with someone’s own feeling, he or she is worried if the one he or she loves will leave him or her. Jealousy is insecure feeling.

A bit similar to what Woolf and Wickham illustrate in their works, I interpret ‘a room of one’s own’ as time for anyone—especially women—to be on their own, to be themselves. It is not necessarily related to be able to produce a great piece of work, but to do what they need to do. Women need their own private time for a change from their routine. To a certain extent, it even can lead them to healthier mental condition.
PT56 07.37 270909

My teaching experience

There are three elements strongly interrelated to one another to achieve successful teaching learning process. These three elements are teacher, students, and the material used.
In my teaching experience so far, I have three kinds of students, depending on their needs. The first kind are those who want to focus on studying mostly English grammar (somewhat similar to TOEFL material) to help them prepare to be accepted at state universities. The second kind are those who want to study English to help them able to speak English fluently as well as write in English. The third kind are those who study in formal school so that they do not have any special purpose except to follow the curricula they get from school.
Different kinds of students with different purposes make different material. The sense of having successful teaching learning process of course will be different too.
I will elaborate the three kinds of students in this writing.
The first kind of students are all twelfth grade students. The students are divided into two types: the first half is those whose knowledge of English is good enough so that what they need is just to enrich their practice to be fluent in doing the entrance test. Unfortunately the other half is those who really need to learn from scratch. As the teacher, honestly I prefer the first type, I do not need to work hard to explain any piece of grammar (such as ‘causative verbs’, ‘subjunctive’ etc). However, I cannot avoid the second type. Since mostly the students do the preparation in a short time, (approximately four months before the test, with only one hour a week for the session), I have to find the most effective way to explain. Using Bahasa Indonesia is okay in this occasion.
I will have sense of successful in such classes when I can see from the students’ facial expression that they understand the material I explain. It is proven by making very few mistakes when doing the exercise and they can explain why the answer is a, b, c, or d.
The second kind of students come from various background; primary and high school as well as college students. Similar to the first kind of students with the two types of learners, this second kind of students can be divided into two types too. The first is those who go to the institution because their parents force them to do that so that they themselves do not have self awareness that they need to study English. The second is of course the contradictory. They realize the importance of learning English for their life so that it will not be difficult to encourage them. The more mature a student is, usually the easier for him/herself to motivate him/herself. The most difficult is high school students—teenagers—who are in their rebellious period.
Nevertheless, the sense of successful in such classes with two contradictory types of students is the same. After I succeed motivating the first type of students to learn the material on one day, they will show eagerness to listen to my explanation—let’s say expressions to ask for and give direction. They will look excited to practice the new expressions they learn on one occasion. By the end of the session, I can see the satisfied expression on their faces that they learn something new.
In my experience so far, the number of students in class also influences their attention as well as eagerness to follow the class. For elementary and intermediate levels, the ideal number is around ten until fifteen. If less than ten, the students sometimes feel unexcited because seem uncomfortable that they will easily be noticed by the teacher. If more than fifteen, sometimes some students are busy with themselves, thinking that the teacher is busy with the other students. However, for advanced level, with assumption that the students’ capabilities are bigger than those who are still in elementary and intermediate levels, the ideal number in one class is around eight until twelve. They need more time to practice—speaking, listening, as well as writing.
The last kind of students are those who study in formal junior high school. My experience so far is teaching grade seven, eight, and nine. Since I have small classes (three students in grade seven, five students in grade eight, and thirteen in grade nine), it is not difficult at all to get their attention. Besides, they always show eagerness and excitement when learning the material. The daily language used at school is English (since it is an international school), so that the students have high self awareness to study English.
Different from the first and second kind of students where their capability in speaking English is not really good, the third kind of students have good speaking English capability. The challenge is to teach them grammar points. Therefore, I will get sense of successful when I can make them write sentences or paragraphs with only a few grammatical mistakes, or no mistake at all.
Talking about the material used in classes, the first and second kinds of students, books written by a group of Indonesian English teachers are used. It is understandable if the ‘culture’ of the books is Indonesian. While for the third kind of students, imported books (from Australia and America) are used. Western cultures decorating the material are sometimes obstacles to understand (for example when the topic is about ‘humor’), as the teacher I really feel challenged to explain to the students why a piece of writing is considered humorous.
In conclusion, in Indonesia, the role of a teacher in making perfect classes is very important; either to be role models (for example in pronunciation, chunking when reading, acting in role-playing) or to explain the materials thoroughly.
PT56 10.21 240909

Anne Frank

I just finished watching ANNE FRANK the movie. (Better late than never, do you agree?)
Some sentences and scenes of the movie were adapted from Anne Frank’s Diary. Some others, I think, were based on what happened in the reality of the second world war as well as the crazy troops of Nazi’s way to treat the Jewish. Some others, perhaps, were based on the imagination of the scriptwriter. You know, even though there is writing ‘based on the true story’ at the beginning of a movie, it cannot be avoided to include some imaginary parts.
People all know that Anne Frank died in one concentration camp due to typhus. This diseases attacked many ‘prisoners’ in the camp due to very limited food and drink as well as unhygienic condition and clothing.
Still my heart was broken when watching the parts when Margot, Anne’s sister, looked so terribly ill; when Anne’s food was stolen by another prisoner; when Anne was unhappy thinking that she would live all alone if Margot died. Before that, she heard that her dad died in the ‘gas room’, and her mom died too because of something else.
I even still expected that in the movie, Anne would survive.
Or at least, the movie would not have scenes where Anne died. I did not want to come to that part.
And the movie really did not show the part when Anne died. I felt a bit relieved. I did not need to be mourning uselessly.


However, I still felt blue after that. When reading Anne Frank’s diary I knew that her dad survived. He himself had his daughter’s diary published, to tell the world the cruelty as well as the inhumanity of Nazi. When I watched the scene of Otto Frank collapsed due to very deep sadness knowing his daughters died in the camp, I almost could feel the similar sadness.
If only Anne had known that her beloved Pim still survived, perhaps she would have tried hard to struggle to survive too.

PT56 22.52 290809

In one class

Last Thursday, my Intermediate 1 class discussed “Reaching for the Stars”. To lead the students to the main topic, the book provided a picture: a quite fat female teenager who has short straight hair is imagining to have a tall slim body and long wavy hair (typical ‘beautiful girl’ according to many advertisements on printed as well as electronic media.)

Here is the way I lead the discussion:
Teacher (T): “What do you see in this picture?”
Students (Ss): “A girl…”
T: “Can you describe what this girl looks like?”
Ss: “She is fat, plain, and she has short straight hair.”
T: “What is she doing in this picture?”
Ss: “She is dreaming of having a perfect body, just like the girl in the bubble…”
T: “Describe the girl in the bubble, please…”
Ss: “She is tall, slim, pretty, and she has long wavy hair.”
T: “Why is she dreaming like that?”
Ss: “Because she thinks that she is ugly.”
T: “Why do you think that way?”
Ss: “Because she doesn’t have a boyfriend, perhaps?”
T: “Why do you think perhaps she doesn’t have a boyfriend?”
Ss: “Because no boy is attracted to her.”
T: ”So, what kind of girl is attractive?”
Ss: “Just like the girl in the bubble…”
T: “Why do you think this girl is pretty?”
Ss: “Because she is pretty…”
T: “You don’t answer my question well. What made you think she is pretty?”
Ss: “?!@#$%^&*???~!@#$%^??…….”

And this made me ‘preach’ about the ugly impacts of watching television.
 Advertisements on television with their so-called beautiful women (‘beautiful’ according to the producers) have magically shaped people—mostly teenagers about what ‘beautiful’ is.
 Advertisements have created mass culture about many aspects in our life (including to be “true women” so that they will be wanted and needed by men or parents-in-laws to be)

Due to this, many people—mostly women and teenagers lose their being critical.
My suggestion to my students, “Don’t watch television!”
LOL.
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