Author Archives: Pei-Hsuan Lin

About Pei-Hsuan Lin

An enthusiastic k-12 educator, a life-long learner, and a team player who loves to walk students through their learning journey.

5C name tags & lunch issue

As we need to prepare name tags for students for their lockers and shoe shelf, we decided to apply my Rabbit as our class logo. I am the designer. I also customized them for boys and girls to help develop their gender orientation. As to Rabbit Grace, it is absolutely not to put that here in IIS! She is my teacher up there at I-Shou University. Well, I am so excited to see my kids’ reactions when they see the name tags. Our classroom will be filled with Rabbits, my masterpieces, haha. By the way, these kids are 11 years old. When I designed the Rabbit, they had not even been born yet. Their Chinese zodiac is Rabbit. What a coincidence! They are 24 years younger than me ><///.

Yesterday, the school announced that we will have lunch back in the cafeteria. As a teaching intern, I am worried that the school will ask me to pay for my lunch. I need some positive vibes for stopping them from asking me to pay. I think that it is a teacher’s basic benefit and welfare to learn and enjoy having lunch with the class.

“JUST DO THIS AND TEN THOUSAND OTHER THINGS”: A TEACHER’S BACK-TO-SCHOOL LAMENT by TOM LESTER

Just take a deep breath and remember to take care of yourself.

Just watch the ten-minute video on blood-borne pathogens and hope you never need to know this.

Just take a photo of your vaccination card and AirDrop it to your Mac.

Just convert the .heic file in your downloads folder to a PNG image.

Just upload it to your School Front account.

Just recover your lost password for School Front and reset it with another one you won’t remember.

Just remember to make a back-to-school video for the six parents who will watch it.

Just mention your agenda slideshow and the district’s new initiative to build communities through culturally-responsive teaching and learning.

Make it personal, but be professional. Just have fun with it!

Just update your online grade book in PowerSchool.

Just open the PDF and follow the seventeen steps.

Just do it again, for all of your classes.

Just create a new Google Classroom for all of your classes too.

Just migrate your rosters from PowerSchool.

Just be ready to stream your classes at a moment’s notice for students who won’t be there.

And remember to generate a fresh Meet link.

And don’t forget to update your agenda slideshow.

Just connect your Chromebook and microphone to the projector.

Just remember, HDMI 1 is broken, but HDMI 2 should be okay.

Just take a deep breath and troubleshoot before you call IT for help.

Just remember to press “8” for a dial tone and hope you never need help in a real emergency.

Just take a deep breath.

Just watch the school safety video before Friday. It’s only thirty-five minutes.

Just don’t stop watching, or you’ll have to start the whole thing over.

Don’t forget to take the quiz at the end, and remember to upload your back-to-school video to YouTube.

Just wake up early.

And drink more water.

Just drop your sons off as soon as daycare opens.

Just remember their lunches and make sure their shoes match.

Just say “I love you,” but don’t think about it too much.

And don’t be weird in front of their friends.

Just get to the high school on time.

Just form relationships with your students.

Just have fun! And play more games!

Just gently remind David to wear his mask properly for the fifth time.

Just smile when you ask him to remove his size-twelve Jordans from his neighbor’s desk.

Just remember to wipe off the desk before the next class.

Just email his mother.

Just balance flexibility with rigor.

Just make sure the rigor isn’t too stressful.

Just cover relevant topics, even when the news is uncomfortable.

Just make sure everyone is always comfortable.

Just prepare for EVERYTHING that could possibly go wrong.

Because it could.

And don’t forget to restock the hand sanitizer.

Just take a deep breath and remember to carve out time to take care of yourself.

Just drink more water.

Just process current events so you can immediately craft a meaningful lesson that helps students make sense of things like school shootings and armed insurrection.

Just process it all faster.

Just cover both sides.

Just photocopy the articles again. This time, both sides. Both sides.

Just go to the bathroom. How much water have you been drinking?

Just get to the bathroom.

Just wait for the bathroom.

Just fix the copy machine that jammed while you were in the bathroom.

Just let Mike from math do some copies. He’ll be quick. He only has a few.

Just smile and “do chatting” as he jams the machine again.

Just fix the copier when he finally gives up.

Just google “full-time photocopier repair, salary” and “how else can I make money?”

Just create a digital copy of the photocopy and post a link to it on your new agenda slideshow.

Just be sure to post the link to the digital copy of the photocopy on the stream in Google Classroom in case everyone ignores your agenda slideshow.

Just explain to your students why you haven’t finished grading their papers.

Just respond to the reply from David’s mom. Make sure your tone doesn’t reveal how angry it makes you when he throws paper balls at the wall and how his attention-seeking outbursts ruin any group activity you’ve designed to foster more interpersonal connections.

Just accentuate his positive behavior.

Just remember he’s her son when she asks to continue this exchange over the phone.

Just take a deep breath. And drink a gallon of water.

Just eat lunch as quickly as possible.

Just don’t tell your colleagues that you went to Home Depot last night to buy cinder blocks and bricks to store in your classroom so that you’ll have something heavy to throw at a shooter. Don’t tell them you’ve already picked out which kids will be helpful during a real emergency. David, with his size-twelve Jordans, will be one of them.

Just don’t think about how long you’ve been teaching—and the numbers and statistics—and how your luck may be running out.

Just don’t imagine your own sons, framed by the big window of the cafeteria where they eat the lunches you made for them. Definitely don’t think about their little shoes.

Just take a deep breath.

And remember to call David’s mom.

Know that he is her son and that he was little too, not long ago, like your own sons.

Just hope that your sons have teachers who think of all these things.

Reference: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/just-do-this-and-ten-thousand-other-things-a-teachers-back-to-school-lament?fbclid=IwAR3HcJ_XebPfIHacmj-2xEy8VS44E-0hdrfGQrq6T5RT0bR4VWuc8-VCrS4

Many thanks

I finally have access to My IB and PD G-Drive. I spent all day long yesterday reading the documents that John shared. It was also a great chance for me to build up and pick up PYP concepts again.

I still have an opportunity for becoming a CAL/EAL teacher. Although I don’t know if it is a chance, I am still. working on preparation because sooner or later, when I earn my teaching license in December, I am going to face this challenge. Thanks to Claire, Becky and Julia who are willing to spend time teaching me some tips for teaching demo. I have learned a lot and at least I have a firm structure of what I am going to teach the “show”.

Recently, I posted my name tag and my school ID on Facebook. Grace replied “Good” on the post. This meant that she is not as busy as a few weeks ago and she cares about me silently. Although this is just a simple word from her, it means a lot to me because this is encouragement for me and a signal that shows Grace is doing well. We do need some silent communication to show that both of us are doing fine mutually.

Some thoughts for these 3 days

I attended new teacher orientation for three days. It was so intensive with lots of information. Although I already knew it would be like this according to past experience, I was exhausted and a bit excited. I attended John’s section about intro to PYP and have access to lots of IB teaching documents. I love it and will dig into it later and start to prepare teaching demo. I think that sooner or later I will need to face this challenge when I hunt for a new job. Thus, I am going to read the book Claire recommended and search for more examples. Julia will help me with this and I might get more inspiration. I am really eager to learn more about teaching. Best of luck to me!

An unexpected long day

I was told that I need to attend a Child Protection Workshop all day long today. However, for some reasons, they sent me back. They said that it was the decision from the management team…. Also, I checked with Silvia again and again for the teaching demo opportunity for G4 homeroom teacher. She seemed hesitated and kept it secret. I guessed that she will check with Shandi first for her willingness and I am her second choice. However, I wanna learn about teaching demo because sooner or later, I am going to face this challenge for job hunting. I am willing to take this chance to practice and equip me with the capacity. Honestly, I really wanna learn the teaching aspect, but not the admin. I think 5.5 years of suffering is enough! My ultimate goal is to become a licensed teacher and jump to teaching area ASAP.

Since they provide me a seat in the PYP office which is besides my old spot. I am worried that somebody is going to put a lot of chores on my plate. I am really reluctant to do this because I have experienced the struggle and that’s why I made up my mind to become a teacher!

Now I am sitting at my desk typing this partially because I have to pretend that I am “very busy”. Tiffany told me that if I help to organize stuff, someone is going to redo it again because she would like to control her own system. That’s why I said that I am willing to help, but under the circumstance, it seems I can do nothing. I think that all teachers are returning next week. I will spend my time with Sally and Mark, who are my mentors, and reduce my time in the office ASAP because I do feel stressful in here getting along with that key woman. 

Well, my short-term goal is to finish my internship here in I-Shou and hunt a teaching job ASAP. Therefore, I really don’t wanna “waste” my time on doing the chores I have experienced and would like to cast my energy and effort on teaching in the field of education. My focus should be on students and all the tasks are related to teaching. 

When I am sitting here typing my reflection, I saw the picture of Grace and me taken 11 years ago. I miss her. I have spent 9 years on this hill of I-Shou for my study and work. It seems like my life is deem to get related to I-Shou. In addition, I realized that Grace has witness my growth for 15 years since I was a college student and has seen me making my career change from an admin to a classroom teacher. I have a strong and complicated feeling when I think of this. Time is fleeing and it’s been 15 years.