[Hilda Dixon]

When I was a special education teacher for students with autism, every year, during March, I got together with other general education teachers to celebrate women's history month. Undoubtedly, Ban Zhao deserves worldwide recognition because I imagine it was not easy to be recognized by the empire as a scholar and to be given the duty to complete her brother's work regarding writing the chronicles of the Han Dynasty .

[Hilda Dixon]

Ancient stories that describe a setting by a river means tranformation, and this poem in one vivid example of it. The fisherman represents the old traditional ways of doing things. The fisherman is not intersiting in caughting fish because he is drinking instead of fishing. This fisherman is not putting attention to his fishing rods, so the tides took him into a journey that is smelly and not pleasant. This journey is a little bit scary, but he cannot go back now. Then, he saw a valley with mulberry groves and white houses. The new scenery represent the new China; more beautiful and picturesque than before. The change is perceived as positive in this poem.

[Hilda Dixon]

What would I do with this short video?  I would teach my students about idiosyncrasy, sovereighty and fulfillment. I think I would ask my students to close their eyes and imagine that aliens more powerful than us have invaded us. Due to the fact that they are keeping us under their control, they are now our governors. As a result, we cannot keep many of our current jobs, customs or social status. These aliens have called people from other universes to help these poweful alliens mange our society. In spite that there are progress, growth and plenty of innovations, we don't expereince fullfillment? Why is that? Additionally, to undestand the counterpart. What would be the reasoning that Mongolians people did not want Chinese people to continue holding civilian servant jobs? could it be that the Mongolian people did not trust the Chinese people? 

[Hilda Dixon]

I think that for the Excerpt from The Book of Ser Marco Polo, we can see a descriptive and picturesque narrative of how the city of Cambaluc hath looked like. I wonder if we can ask our students to act out this passage with some props or many they can create a model made of clay or other materials that reflect this ancient Chinese town.  We can divide the classroom into groups. Each group in in charge of a specific theme. Then, we have a family night out in which we invite parents to see what our students did. Parents are encouraged to interview our students, too.

 

[Hilda Dixon]

I think that humanity is always concerned about the future because sometimes the future may be perceived scary. In the same token, regarding what is to be human, we have not evolved that much as humanity in the last millenniums. For instance, we are concerned about the implications of this pandemic regarding society, economy and job stability. Societies like the Chinese tried to find ways to get answers. For the Chinese people, the ritual of the oracle bones was their means to communicate with their ancestors to find answers to their concerns such as should be moving armies, giving birth, weather(rain), harvest.  As in past Chinese people posed fundamental questions that are still prevalent in our current society such as, “ What is the source of chaos?” Should we more hyper individualistic, favor familyism, or materialism? What are the characteristics of a ruthless leader? It is so interesting that we nowadays we ask ourselves the same questions regarding our leaders of the world. Who should be our rulers be heaven mandated or virtuous leaders? It will be interesting if the students can generalize some of the philosophical fundamental questions to other societies such as ours to determine how in many ways we are the same and apart.

[Hilda Dixon]

LAUSD is facing beatification. Indeed, the city looked at lot nicer, but low-income people are forced to moved because they cannot afford to pay higher rents. In part, as a result, there is less student enrollment which force teachers to be displaced. Of course, the other reasons are the fact that charter schools are competing with LAUSD schools, and the fact that millenniums are having less kids. I think education has been rapidly evolving as never before.  Although as parents we want our kids to do better at school in order to have better chances in life, but I do not believe in emphasizing our dreams on them. All in all, I truly believe that at the end the ones who are going to be successful are not the smarter ones or the stronger ones, but the ones who see the changes and adapt accordingly.

[Hilda Dixon]

Dear Mr. Dube,

I have been reading some articles where China is blaming USA for the Corona virus disease.  Zhao Lijian, the Chinese foreign minister, said that USA soldiers transmitted the disease to the Chinese people on a military parade back in October. This Chinese foreign minister is proving as evidence a speech made by Robert Redfield who is the director of the USA CDC. Mr. Redfiel testified that maybe some USA soldiers that might appeared die from influenza, in reality they could have died from coronavirus. I heard things are heated between China and USA. I don’t know I am a little concerned about all of this.

 

[Hilda Dixon]

For my Lesson plan unit, I was planning to use SymbolStixPrime symbols. I want also use similar lessons like the ones  Unique Leaning Systems implement, too.  Students with disabilities benefit when lessons provide multimodal opportunies such as visual, and hands on experiences.

[Hilda Dixon]

Although China is a large and diverse country, Chinas as we were told has always had a great stability. It is very interesting to know that the Chinese dynasties last for around 500 years. There is so much wisdom in this culture.   Regarding philosophies or religions, for Confucius, education was the way to improve China, Chinese families and oneself. I wholeheartedly believe that there is still a lot of Confucianism in Asia, for education is still nowadays as important as a religion. We see this belief when parents motivate their children to study hard for long hours.  I think the idea to educate smart people through a country is how we see how Korea, Taiwan, Japan and China have miraculously raised through hard work and education despite the hard vicissitudes they have experienced. Interest and respect for learning is still prevalent.

 We see an inheritance of Legalism which emphasizes on efficiency when we witness majestic engineering projects such as in the case of the Three Gorges Dam, The Shanghai Tower or The World's Grandest Bullet Train System.

We witness Daoism when we go to the park and see Asian people engaging in Taoist Tai Chi exercises. I think Chinese culture nowadays is a sum of all these philosophies. 

[Hilda Dixon]

One of the points that was emphasized in our morning session, is the idea that nowadays more than ever, we are intricately connected with each other’s society in more ways that we want to admit it. We need other societies’ trade goods or wellness in order to have stable communities from many perspectives such as cultural, economic or political speaking. For instance, regarding intentional decline in fertility, is a relative recent problem that developing countries are currently facing. China, South Korea and Japan are examples of it, but childbirth decline is a more extensive problem as I said after all we are all intertwined and new worldwide generations face the same dilemma. Child decline is not an isolated challenge. We see this trend in some countries of Europe, even in the United States, too.  The rational might be competitiveness, self-interest, advance in a career before settling down, or perhaps global warming. One of the ideas that strike the most, it was the video about the young male who chose to get married with a cyber hologram. This might be the result, that new generations are more comfortable dealing interacting on the way or through technological products than human face-to-face interactions. Are we forgetting our biology that reminds us that we are social creatures? Are new generations afraid to be vulnerable with others because they might be afraid to be rejected?

A challenge that I observed is the lack of leisure time, young students in South Korea are expected to study for long hours. Where is the balance between work, study and leisure?

Another challenge that I observed in our reading is that raising a child nowadays requires making economical decisions since children are toddlers such as finding the right childcare, after school programs, outstanding public schools and leisure activities among other things.  I remember that before people didn’t use to think that much before having children.

It is clear that many rural Asian communities are painfully vanishing because young generations don’t want to live there anymore. New generations rather migrate to the big urban cities leaving rural areas almost empty. Leaving villages like the village of Nogoro in Japan  where the only thing that are left to do is to create awareness by raising their voices creatively to show the frustration and the powerless feelings from the villager from Nogoro, Japan.

[Hilda Dixon]

Hi everyone!! My name is Hilda Dixon. I am a special education teacher. I work at Murchison Street Elementary. This is my 6^th year teaching. I think that I have an inquisitive mind. This is why I am looking forward to expanding my horizons about the Chinese history.

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