09月26日

Dear parents,

We finalize the place for our parent Dizigui class. We are free to have MCCCC meeting room and center will also provide us TV in same room. Thanks a lot Ms. You, Lili and the family of Mr. Luan and Ms. Yang for registering their Children into MCCCC dancing program so that we secure the place for all the parents.

We will follow the format of parent class from Toronto. At the beginning, all parents read Dizigui together and then watch one episode of《细讲弟子规》by Mr. 蔡礼旭. Each week, there is one parent who leads the class. She/He will review/prepare the specific episode at home in advance. In the class, after watching it together, she/he share her/his learning with all other parents and reflect what can be improved in the future. Ms. You, lili will be the first parent who lead the class in the coming Sunday.

Our children class will match the same content as adult class so that both of us are well synchronized.

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Last week review:

-- Confucius birthday. (We pay our respect to the 2561th birthday of this saint)

-- Class focused on the "comparing".   What/How should we compare? Material stuff or Moral.

-- Sun Laoshi taught the all basic stroke of Chinese Character.

-- Hao Laoshi taught a wonderful song (We suggest next time all parents sing the songs together with the children. We will have more fun together ... )

Information of our program:

唐人街中华文化宫

1088, rue Clark, suite 302

Montreal, Québec, H2Z 1K3

-- Time:

星期日，上午9：00-12：00

--课程安排：

江帆 老师讲弟子规（1.5小时），

郝天晏老师和孙朝晖老师讲中文/音乐（1.5小时）。

Please come on time so that you can easily find park lot in China town.

Thanks  for the generous support from all of you,

fan

09月13日

Dear parents,

Welcome you kids to new Dizigui class. Please chech this link (lesson plan) for more information of this class. We will have following themes:
-- New session of the class, warming up, review.
-- 讲解经文 ：唯德学，唯才艺，不如人，当自砺，若衣服，若饮食，不如人，勿生戚
-- 中秋节

Reference of the power point slide:
-- Lots of idea and slide layout are from  Mr. Zhang Feng who is Toronto Dizigui teacher. Thanks again for your advices Zhang Laoshi!
-- True story and movie are from emails forwarded by Ms. Xu, Wanhua.
-- Moon slides are from one of my ex-Motorola colleague who sent this to my inbox several years ago.

I feel hesitated to release this to you because it's NOT well formatted and prepared. But, at same time I would like to share with you about what will happen in today's class.

Enjoy and see you soon,

江帆

學期小結

Dear parents,

Last week was our last class before summer. At same time we had a parent meeting. A committee was formed to guide how our dizigui class move the next phase. It was determined that there is no class in summer and we will resume in September. For new session, we need to refresh this mailing list due to new registration. Most likely we'll stay at same community center. More details will come soon.

It's also a good time to do the postmortem. Our dizigui class was initiated by Ms. Liu, JinLing and Chen, Hua. During the beginning of the class, they spent HUGE amount of time and effort to set up this course. Without them, our children will miss this opportunity to learn dizigui. Thank you!! We understand this is no easy task. Especially for JinLing Laoshi, she, at that time, had a baby only 4 months. But she fearlessly faced this situation and came to teach every week till February.

Starting from the very end of last year, I gradually involved into the class and took over at the middle of session. You all gave (and continue to give) me a lot of support, feedback and encouragement. By reviewing my teaching during of past several months, I should confess that I have long way to go in this journey, especially on the aspect of the preparation of class. After discussing with Mr. Zhang, Feng who is dizigui teacher in Toronto, I realize the more effort should be put into the preparation and this is key to have steady quality of class (Thanks a lot, Mr.Zhang, I learned a lot from you during our phone conversation).

The other thing bothers me most is the special nature of the dizigui class. This is more or less a moral and Chinese culture class. I do not feel (consistently) I have enough moral standing to conduct teaching since there are lots of dizigui principles that I could not weave into my daily life. How can I tell others what should do if I could not following them by myself. I shared the following story of Gandhi with several of you to illustrate this dilemma:

                A lady brought her son and said he ate too much sugar. She wanted Gandhi to tell him to stop. Gandhi said to bring the child back the next week. The next week she brought the child and Gandhi said “Stop eating sugar child”. And the child did. A month later the lady came back and said “My child has done what you asked, but why could you not have spoken to him the first time I came.” “Lady”, said Gandhi, “a week earlier I was still eating sugar”. (source: http://www.brefigroup.co.uk/acrobat/gandhi_and_sugar.pdf)

The great mind like Gandhi needed to challenge himself and then teach others. So should I. During summer break, I will spend some time on reflecting how to coordinate (I am afraid of using word "teach" now because of Gandhi) class more effectively.

I am running out of time for writing this note. Last words for all of you: Once again, thanks a lot for your continuous help, support and trust.

Enjoy your weekend, summer and happy life,

Fan