Precious movie..

The movie “Precious,” released in theaters in late 2009 and based on the novel “Push” by Sapphire, is not only a captivating story, but is a commentary on childhood trauma, its long term effects, and the power of resilience. Claireece Precious Jones (played by Gabourey Sidibe) is a 16 year-old illiterate African American teen who lives in Harlem with her dysfunctional mother Mary (played by Mo’Nique). The family is on welfare, and lives in a drug-infested neighborhood. Precious is subjected to verbal and physical abuse by her mother, and sexual abuse by both parents. She has two children that are the result of incest by her father.Throughout the film we see the variety of consequences that Precious’ abuse is having on her emotional well-being.

As a teacher, we need to be connected to the students. For example, in Precious' case, she suffered emotional trauma that she tends to daydream and cannot pay attention in class. Luckily she found a teacher who understands and helps her.

Chalk movie....

An improvisational take on the high school experience, told from the educators' point-of-view. Chalk rides on some well observed lessons in pain by a small group of teachers at Harrison High. The movie offers some modest, amusing and true lessons about teaching, an honorable profession. Chalk's aim is to clue you in why 50% of teachers quit within the first three years. Chalk is a message from the horse’s mouth, and is thereby humorously instructive without ever becoming sarcastic or judgmental. The movie has 'heart' in a way that doesn't feel cloying or dishonest. The movie touches the heart at times, and sometimes the scenes feel so real that you just gasped..

Finding Forrester movie

In Finding Forrester, Jamal Wallace (Rob Brown), a young African American high school student at the Bronx, is invited to join an exclusive private high school because of his high tests scores. One day, Jamal's basketball friends dare him to walk into “The Widow's” house. The Widow is actually William Forrester (Sean Connery), a well known author that is thought to be dead or missing. William Forrester lives as a recluse; when Jamal walks into William's house, William scares Jamal with a knife and Jamal runs off, leaving his backpack behind.

When Jamal returns to retrieve his backpack, he finds that all his pieces of writing were commented on. After Jamal's attempt to retrieve his backpack, Jamal goes and asks William if William could help improve his writing skills. William made a deal that if he helped Jamal with his writing, Jamal would keep William's identity a secret, never to take the writing that he does out of his house, and never ask anything about William's family.

Throughout this movie, Jamal and William get to know each other better and they become friends. At Jamal's new school, the exclusive private school, he is accused of plagiarism by his English teacher. The English teacher highly doubted that Jamal's piece of writing was really his and not plagiarized.

Overall, Finding Forrester is a great movie that interlace with the theme of friendship. The time Jamal spent with William made them trust each other to keep promises, such as Williams'.

Lean on Me movie

An extraordinary situation calls for an extraordinary solution. At strife-torn Eastside High School in Paterson, New Jersey, that solution had a name: Principal "Crazy Joe" Clark. With a bullhorn in one hand and a baseball bat in the other, he slammed the door on losers at Eastside. Brought in as a last resort to stop the state government from taking control of the school, Clark chained the doors shut to keep troublemakers OUT and achievers IN. Parents fought him. Teachers resented him. Even his own boss doubted him. But lots of kids loved him. Clark turned Eastside around, appearing on the cover of "Time Magazine" and becoming a national symbol of tough-love education. "If you don't succeed in life," Clark tells his students, "don't blame your backgrounds. Don't blame the Establishment. Blame YOURSELVES." His message is simple: Don't lean on excuses, drugs, crime, or anger. LEAN ON ME...and learn.

It's quite funny when Principal Clark said:
"They used to call me Crazy Joe. Well now they can call me Batman!"

Principal Clark is eccentric in expressing his way of educating. But he is a man with vision, determined to educate the students. This movie reminds me of the Japanese series "GTO" where the teacher is also an eccentric man, but with a kind heart.

An hour with Mr Vaheed

Dr Jaya always do his lectures in the one hour lecture. But this time, Mr Vaheed came, along with KFC boxes in plastic bags. We were excited truthfully, looking at those KFC boxes (luckily I haven't had my meal yet at that time). Mr Vaheed gave a lecture on Effective Argumentation writing that day, an extra info for us in writing our position paper. I found it useful, because in the position paper, we need to stand our ground, and to use effective sentences in persuading the readers. Not only we got extra tips for the position paper, we also got a free meal thanks to Dr Jaya and the tutors, in celebrating Eid (we have to admit that we were still in celebration mode that day)! =P

Research? *gasps*

When I say 'research' it doesn't mean all those scientific approaches, respondents, hypothesis and interviews. Thankfully. We need to do a mini research, and it's about literature. I get to do an analysis on a book that I really enjoyed reading. It's a relief that I got Dr. Ghazali as my supervisor, because he sure is nice and really lenient. My research's title is "INTERPRETATION OF THE CHARACTER ‘LOUIS DE POINTE DU LAC’ IN THE NOVEL INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE BY ANNE RICE". I enjoy doing this research very much because it's like, at last, doing something that I really enjoy even though it's still an academic paper.. at least I get to do on something which I love. I've been collecting Anne's Rice novels for fun, and now I get to do something academic with them. Vampires = fun! =D

The Ron Clark story

The Ron Clark Story tells the life of a North Carolina grade school teacher with an amazing record of success with students; his unique teaching style brings out the best in even the worst students and he tests his mettle in one of the toughest classrooms in America. Having achieved great success with students in his local school system, Ron believes that he can do much more good outside of his small home town, so he moves to New York City, hoping to teach underprivileged kids in the inner city. But being Caucasian is a drawback in Harlem and none of the New York City public schools will hire him. Here Clark exhibits one of his strongest traits: he never gives up, not on his students and not on getting hired. He knows he can make a difference if given the chance. Destiny intervenes one day when he observes a teacher getting rough with a student who is trying to leave campus. The teacher fights with the school's principal and quits, giving Clark the opportunity to let his availability be known. At first he is ignored but finally the principal decides to give him a chance. He is given a class that includes what everyone considers to be the "losers," the worst students in the school. They have the lowest grades, are the most unruly, and the least achieving. But Ron Clark sees potential in every child and will not give up on them. He gives them more than an education and a desire to keep on learning; he gives each one the knowledge that they do matter, and that when they put their hearts and minds to it, they can achieve anything. It is an exceptionally inspiring movie, which shows the determination of a teacher and how important it is to connect with the students.

Okay, teaching practicuum...

The idea of teaching still gives me the chills. Even during micro teaching, I would be shaking with nervousness. The image of me teaching in a secondary school seems farfetched. But while realizing I'm taking TESL, I literally slapped myself to reality and braced myself for the pain. It is decided that we will go to Malacca for our teaching practicuum next semester. Well, I guess what we have learned all these years will be put to test next semester, huh? Good Luck peeps~~

A Sudden Trip (?)

I didn't know what happened actually, we were just asked to go to the Dewan Besar by Dr Jaya. It was an exhibition on researches conducted by the various researchers of various field in UPM. I was thinking of English exhibition of some sort, considering Dr Jaya was there, but when I saw posters of plants and medical tools, okay, I was wrong. The exhibition was great, excluding the time when the power was off for a couple of minutes. The software for English by Dr Jaya's team was remarkable!

Position Paper... *O*

The topic "Arranged Marriage vs Love Marriage" is the one Dr Jaya came up with during the discussion for the position paper in class. I never really think deeply about this issue, but when we all discussed about it, I slowly think that we MUST have opinions about it. Arranged marriage is still practiced in Asia, particularly in India. When we talk about arranged marriage, one thing that popped into my mind is "How old school". But as we discussed, and given opinions and advantages, arranged marriage does have positive outcomes, still, in this modern age. Rather than finding your own spouse, who could be 'all love, nothing else', maybe it's better to leave the matter to the parents. It's one of the ideas, but I'm still opposed to it. If it comes to me, I want to find my own love to marry. The idea of arranged marriage scares me, really. I want to marry someone I'm familiar with, someone I know I'll love to the end of my life. I'm not criticizing arranged marriages, but IF I'm given the choice, I'll choose love marriages.

Now we're to do another paper based on either "The Great Injustice" or "The Merry Maid", and the idea is to come up with our own position in an issue derived from one of the texts. Frankly, I'm more fond of "The Merry Maid" story, because the story is touching, to me. It does not have to highlight on other serious issues, but the sole relationship of the mother and the child really gives the story it's own impact on the readers.

Akeelah & The Bee

Yup... I've watched the movie before.

Akeelah Anderson is a precocious 11-year-old girl from south Los Angeles with a gift for words. Despite the objections of her mother Tanya, Akeelah enters various spelling contests, for which she is tutored by the forthright Dr. Larabee; her principal Mr. Welch and the proud residents of her neighborhood. Akeelah's aptitude earns her an opportunity to compete for a spot in the Scripps National Spelling Bee and in turn unites her neighbors who witness the courage and inspiration of one amazing little girl.Akeelah is a warm, family-friendly underdog story.

It's hard not to fall in love with the movie. And the most memorable quote from this movie is:
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same."

It shows we are powerful, if we think we are. We all have talent in various fields, we only have to discover them...

Funny, but meaningful (?)...

Truthfully I was excited when Dr Jaya asked us to come up with our own fable... Because? It was not about the traditional ones, but we ourselves have to come up with our own story, characters, etc.

A fable is a succinct story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized (given human qualities), and that illustrates a moral lesson (a "moral"), which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim. But in this case, Dr Jaya wants us to create a story which focuses on the moral values.

Funny when I think back about how we actually came up with the story. Mira, Ad and I were having lunch at KFC, and Mira ordered 'Twister' that had a slice of chicken ham in it. She put it aside, not eating it, thinking that it resembled real ham. I came up with the idea of what if we were stranded on some kind of island, or lost in a jungle, and the only thing we found to eat is a pig? Then we came up with more bizarre ideas of keeping ourselves alive by not eating the pig just yet, including eating the leaves and skin of trees. Then we also came up with the ideas of forcing the pig to eat the leaves to test whether the leaves are poisonous or not. All those ideas left us giggling ourselves to tears in KFC. Alas, we came up with the moral value of "Do not make easy things any harder".

Mona Lisa Smile....

In 1953, a time when women's roles were rigidly defined, free-spirited, novice art history professor Katherine Watson begins teaching at the... In 1953, a time when women's roles were rigidly defined, free-spirited, novice art history professor Katherine Watson begins teaching at the prestigious all-female Wellesley College--which despite its academic reputation, is an environment where success is measured by 'how well' the students marry. Encouraging these women to strive for a more enlightened future, Watson challenges the administration and inspires her students to look beyond the image of what is, and consider the possibilities of what could be--contrary to popular belief...

The most remembered scene in the story is when the teacher asks her students rhetorical questions: What makes art good or bad? Who decides? It shows how important it is to discover things for yourself, to have your own imagination and thinking, not abide by rules and syllabus. It's an inspiring movie, and Julia Roberts plays a good teacher indeed..

Music anyone?

Hm.. Questions: Why do we create music? And why do we listen to music? I believe music is some sort of medium, like poems and stories, a medium for self expression. The many personalities of people, give birth to genres in music. Music is in fact a melodious way to share your feelings and thoughts to others. And we listen to music to enjoy them. If you ask me, what sort of music do I listen to, I find it kind of hard to choose a particular genre. I listen to all sorts of music. From baroque to downright heavy metal. I never really stick to just one genre at particular times, because I just go with what I want to listen. My playlist is a mix of Bach's, Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer, Nobuo Uematsu, Within Temptation, Slipknot, Metallica, and some others. Some believe that we can analyze the person's personality through the genre of music he listens to. Well, what that makes of me then? Sometimes I got too absorbed into 'Toccata & Fugue in D Minor' and sometimes I got all happy with Sum 41's 'In too Deep'. But sometimes, it's not the lyrics that important, but the melodies. Ever get the chills of listening to tunes or the 'bridge' in a song? I have. Even listening to instrumentals can give me chills. Good music is when the music can touch the listener's very soul. It differs to every people. Like me, when I listen to 'Toomba' by Saaien Zahoor, I didn't get the vibe. I tried listening to it a couple of times more, but failed to grasp the feel like it did to Dr Jaya. It made me wonder whether I was a deaf tone or something. But I realized the acceptance is different to every people. (and I'm still listening to Saaein Zahoor, because I realize 'Toomba' is seriously a great song. It does have a soothing effect..)

New semester, JK again..

NO, I'm not regretting the fact JK's teaching us for this sem, again. Frankly, I'm glad, really glad. JK means fun. I mean, where else can you find anyone like him? Coz he's the one and only. Truthfully, I NEVER get anyone like him to teach me in class. I was a sad kid. Same old teachers, treating the students like they own the world, work our butts off to finish the syllabus, no fun at all. I learned things, yes, but never enjoy the lessons as much as during JK's classes. Well I could pick up a few things from him as well, like how to be a fun teacher, without neglecting the lesson, of course. I don't know if you'll read this or not Dr Jaya, but I want to say thank you, for really making our lives easier. It's because of your generosity that we're able to 'breathe' throughout the semester. Sometimes knowledge is not only achieved through books... At least learning from you means not staring at bunch of notes which we'll forget right after the exams..