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The title itself could give a clear picture on how will I describe the whole thing I got from this subject but of course, I could not write it all here as it would be publically publish. So let me just hide and keep some never ending story, drama and also picture of life among all of my course mates.

Other than the thing that happened in class, of course there are some other drama outside the class which I could learn from those things to upgrade my maturity and level of thinking. I do believe that God creates every single thing and let anything happened for a reason. Therefore, I’m looking for wisdom in every single thing I ever experienced in life including the one I got in and outside the class.

Wonderful

Wonderful is the exact word to find the subject I learned with Dr. Jaya with her sweet assistants, Amylea and Alisya. Despite so called, lots of work to be done, I merely found that I love this subject especially the part when we have our movie watching session during the tutorial class with Miss Amelia and Miss Alicia, we have watched so many great and interesting movies and all the movies were related to our future career. The movies are Mona Lisa Smile, Ron Clark Story, Lean On Me, Finding Forrester, Chalk, Akeelah and The Bee and Precious.

All those movies are related with the experienced of the real life teachers and by watching these movies, I can say that I’ve got so many inspirations in order to become a great teacher for my students. I've learnt that as a teacher, we have to deeply know our students and not judging them no matter what happened and we should always be positive.

Time is ticking too fast

Seriously, I do not even realize how fast time could be. Relatively, we never could count on that. However, talking and speaking on fact, time is something fixed according to the 24 hours per day which has been implemented all over the world. Yes, I still arguing this fact on myself whether, I should agree with it.

It already week 10 and I was never completed any of my work. Position paper, research paper or even my blog posts. Hopefully, everything will be going according to what have I planned smoothly. Oh yes, can I stop the time from running at least for a day?

Most Precious Thing

The most precious thing I just realized I got from all the movies I wathched through this subject is everybody is different and unique in their own way. Therefore, nobody is worth to be neglected.

If we have the authority to help, it is our obligation to help. Even if we are just some people with lack of capability, I firmly believe that we still have some space or ability to help.

ROn Clark's story

 

Ron Clark, still relatively early in his career, leaves his stable life teaching at an elementary school in his suburban North Carolina hometown, the school where he is appreciated by both his fellow teachers and his students for his innovative teaching methods which results in raising test scores. Instead, he decides to look for a teaching job at a tough New York inner city school where he feels he can be more useful. He eventually finds a job at Inner Harlem Elementary School, where the students are segregated according to their potential.

As Clark is white and "nice" looking, Principal Turner wants to assign him to the honors class, especially as Turner's job security depends on good test scores. Clark, however, wants to take the most disadvantaged class. He quickly learns that it will be a battle of wills between himself and his disruptive students to see who can outlast the other. But he also learns that he has to understand them, both individually and collectively, on their level to be able to get through to them before he can teach them the standardized materials.

I love the way this movie is plotting but somehow I believe it could be more entertaining if each characters has been put clear distinction and specialty. Besides, this movie could have been better if they could emphasize more on the out school’s life of the main character. Out of five, I give this movie 2.5 stars.

Chalk

Life in the trenches of that most honorable and frustrating profession...teaching. It's the start of a memorable new year at Harrison High. The self-conscious Mr. Stroope is convinced that his time has come - this year he will be furnished with the golden title of "Teacher of the Year," if only his smarter students would stop using words that he can't understand. Peek into Mr. Lowrey's History class and you'll see that he's struggling to even call himself a teacher. Woefully inept due to a complete lack of experience and social skills, he earnestly stutters his way through class. The only interaction his students offer him is when they steal his chalk. Men aren't much interested in the spunky and officious Coach Webb, but "not all P.E. teachers are gay" and she pines for some romantic company.

The film takes the course of an entire school year and describes three teachers and one assistant principal. Mr. Stroope is campaigning for Teacher of the Year but many of his students are a little bit smarter than him. Mr. Lowrey is an introverted history teacher struggling to find passion for his profession. Coach Webb (played by Janelle Schremmer) is a female gym teacher who is struggling to get her students to take her class seriously, and becomes interested in Mr. Lowrey. Mrs. Reddell (Shannon Haragan) is the first year assistant principal who is regretting leaving teaching.

I just love this movie so much as it is not just focusing on one teacher like some other movie always did. Therefore, it brought some different and specialty.

Akeelah and the Bee

Eleven year old African-American Akeelah Anderson comes from a working class family living in South Los Angeles. Akeelah is a bright girl, especially when it comes to words, but finds life at poor Crenshaw Middle School boring and unchallenging, so she doesn't try. But her natural aptitude for words spurs the school administrators, led by Principal Welch, to convince her to try out for the process of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Akeelah, already feeling isolated from many in her school because of being perceived as a "brainiac", feels that participating in such will make her feel even more isolated. But her joy in learning new words at least gets her started in the process. After easily winning the school's spelling bee, she meets and befriends Javier Mendez, a competitor at the Los Angeles district bee where most of the competitors come from primarily white middle class to wealthy families.

There, she learns about the nature of spelling bee life in all its good and bad, the latter which includes the cutthroat world of competitor parents. An example is Javier's classmate and two time national runner-up Dylan Chiu, whose father will not settle for second best as Dylan enters the last year he is eligible for the competition. Akeelah learns she needs a coach, hers to be in the form of former spelling bee competitor and UCLA English Department Chair Dr. Joshua Larabee, who teaches Akeelah not only the rote memorization of typical spelling bee words, but how to use English in all its glorious facets. Akeelah progresses further and further into spelling bee life without telling her widowed mother Tanya, who sees the bees as impinging into time in her other school work. Other challenges that Akeelah faces are trying to balance working on her spelling against time with her friends, and handling the hopes and dreams of all of South Los Angeles on her shoulders. Ultimately there may be more important things in Akeelah's life than winning the national championship.

I must say this movie is a kind of kids movie from my first impression but trough the end I found it is a family movie. The hardship and courage of Akeelah taught me how a kid could sacrifice anything towards what they want as future teacher, I should have that positive attitude and awareness towards my students’ desires. 

It is getting tougher

Dr. Jaya spoke for almost an hour. His main speech was focusing on the practicum we will be going to experience next year February. I was totally frightened with this as I felt that I was not fully prepared to become a temporary teacher for a school in Malacca for 12 weeks. This was tough for me and it getting tougher. Other than that, he also spoke about was about the project paper where we are assigned our own supervisor. He became my supervisor which makes me felt so lucky.

Next, we learned about fables. So what is a fable? A fable is a short, pithy animal tale, most often told or written with a moral tagged on in the form of a proverb. Thus to convey a moral is the aim of most fables, and the tale is the vehicle by which this is done, providing both an illustration of and compelling argument for the moral. It is interesting to read fables because it always gives moral of the story at the end of it.

Dr. Jaya gave us a task to form a group of four and come up with our own fable during tutorial. It is exciting to do because it’s our own fable where we must come up with our own moral of the story. We have two days to think about a fable and do it in a comic strip form in our next tutorial. Here comes our fable!

Mona Lisa Smile

Katherine Watson, an Oakland State University Ph.D. student, is hired as an Art History instructor at Wellesley College for the 1953/54 school year. She is not an obvious choice as Wellesley is an exclusive upper crust institution where its faculty, students and alumni generally look down upon "State" universities. Katherine quickly learns that her paper credentials do affect how her students treat her.

She also learns that the students are book smart, but do not know how to think for themselves. Their parents and the school administration foster a predetermined path in life for the girls, namely to stick to traditional mores and thoughts, with the primary goal of marrying into a good family. There are pockets of free thinking among faculty and the students, but those thoughts and associated actions are generally quashed by the overall tone of the school. Katherine decides to instill into her students her own beliefs of what is important in learning. Will the students and administration allow Katherine to be contrary to the prescribed thought?

The question keep on playing and flying in my mind till I got the answer. Yes, it was something expected but I like the ending so much as it is so inspiring and impart so much lesson for me.

Drow Games semaG worD

Honestly, I was never experienced some joy and unique time of studying in UPM, other than having class with Dr. Jayakaran Mukundan. Yes, this is so true.

Besides, it was never happened in my whole life, having some tutorial class with the opportunity to play internet games. I got this chance with Dr. Jaya different approach of teaching.

Basically, the game is about English. At first, all of my classmates including me need to register and then find a friend that will play with us. It is some sort of competition. If we answer it correctly, we will get points but it will never be deducted even if we at the next question answer wrongly. The winner of the game will be given iPod! My classmates seem so eager to win this Drow game.

Life is so precious for Precious

She was raped by her father and abused by her mother. It just not the only misery and frightened life she had experienced. She currently facing obesity, poor and felt unloved by anybody.

Physically, yes we should admit that she is poor and having this low class of live but deep inside, she is so rich with her inspiring and brave imagination. Claireece Precious Jones always having imagination of her own world, she lives there with no fears, having such a precious time with the one she imagined, being happy and having not even a single problem. Some may viewed that hallucination, I portrayed that as precious imagination. Imagination that leads her to keep on living and feel alive till the end.

Blu Rain who was her teacher at the special school has been pictured as a savior of her life which taught me to always believe that at least we have someone to be loved by though without blood relationship. The least we should do in a misery life is create and develop some imagination and live with it. I’m wondering and thinking that committed suicide would never solve any problems. Life is too precious to just let it go and never been experienced the variety and its spices. 

Research paper: I just don’t feel the gist.

I already submitted my 7 pages so-called Research Paper to Miss Amylea. I’m glad that my proposal has been approved and I just need to proceed with the topic I already chose. Currently, the author’s biography and his poems I would love to focus in my writing have been put there. However I still work on my further explanation and conclusion on this topic.

Why that Robert Frost has been chosen as the author of my research? The answer is located within his name. Forest literally means jungle or a wide area covered with trees and faunas, generally said as a part of nature. Yes, I chose to make a research on the nature theme Robert Frost used in his poems.

Some of his famous poems will be included in my research. I’m one of nature lover and most of my daily life I tend to spend by fulfilling my eagerness to watch and seek for a new thing in nature I never knew before. Sadly, I don’t really feel like I am doing some sort of research as I’m still looking for the gist. The gist of nature, the gist of my research paper.

Arranged Marriage VERSUS Love Marriage

I do believe that arranged and love marriage are sharing both pro and cont. Love marriage is great as the couple would have known each others’ habits, attitudes and characters before getting married where both party could learn when they suppose to be firm and when they should lose themselves at times conflicts occurred. While in arranged marriage, couples will have used the earlier time of marriage get to know each other deeply and love the couple the way they are. Besides, it could reduce some boredom of knowing too much about our couple and have plenty of time to do nothing.

I viewed marriage as some sort of agreement that we made. Even in business agreement we made with some other party, it should consist of win-win situation and should be clear on each condition we agreed. Same goes to marriage. Whether love or arranged marriage, one could not deny the responsibilities we tight with and all the tasks to be succeeded done. Marriage is all about seeking for happy time for both party, wife and husband. Marriage is about being concerned on every single change of our beloved one so that we could solve if the thing is some sort of problems occurred. Marriage should be defined as preparing ourselves in a battle of conflicts but is not supposed to symbolize as war where one will win and one lose. Contradict with the real war, conflict or fight in marriage should brought sense of love and togetherness at the highest level after.

Lean On Me, Love On You

From the title itself, Lean on Me has brought some sort of positive connotative to the audience. It was by unintentionally bringing the sense of helpful and togetherness. Furthermore, anybody who would love to watch this movie might be attracted to the title without being exposed with the synopsis.

 School has been portrayed as some sort of battle field for some of the students. It will just ironically damaging the real philosophy of school existence. Inspired by a true story, Lean On Me could tell us the potential and hidden power on how a principal could transform a school.  Only the chosen one could have the opportunity yet ability to make this come true.

Obviously, almost the whole scenes we may see that Mr. Clarks has been pictured as the hero for the students. We may view this as cliché as other movies, viewing a journey of someone with full hearted spirit and passion on what he currently doing and yet fighting for a change. Still, some cliché element is needed so that the morale value could brought to the targeted audience. This movie I symbolized as expected while still, inspired.

Finding Forrester?

From the title itself, it may leads us to make some perception or interpretation on how the movie going to be plotting for the whole scenes. However I should be honest and sincere to voice out my thought and opinion on this movie. Yes, on top of others, I admitted that I found it as a very interesting and wonderful movie but still, I don’t really have the ability to go with the flow. Truly said, I’m still thinking what Finding Forrester is all about.  

The bonding between Jamal, the students and his idol, also his characterized as his teacher could not bring me the concrete understanding towards the main theme that the director was trying to picture and portray in this movie.

Nevertheless, I tend to appreciate the type of communication between Jamal and his idol. I found it as unique and stimulating my thought whether it involves psychology element from both sides in order to make it effective. Obviously, it is some kind of rough and unstable communication yet relationship they both build but still, it succeeded the survival.