"."- This is the end.

Friday, December 3rd, 2016

Tonight, our two volunteer teachers, Ms. Amy and Ms. Sunny were able to beat the Friday rush-hour traffic and arrived on time. Thank you for keeping the good faith and coming to teach those children the last lesson!

Ever since we launched the project in March, we went through three Units, and each of them contains four sessions. We also had two warm-up sessions so total number comes to 14. During the entire period, our progress often got delayed due to the unideal weather conditions and the malfunction of the equipment. All the bittersweet feelings brought by those incidents had come to an end with the completion of our two-hour long special session tonight.

A period is the punctuation mark we put at the end of a complete sentence. It can be used regardless the length of a sentence, as long as the idea is delivered fully. And tonight, the period mark indeed meant a lot to us.

Allow me to borrow what I’ve learned from the composition class in my elementary school years to describe our vision and what we’ve achieved in our first project- Project Puyuma:

The introduction (beginning) – December 2015, we made the connection with Changbin Catholic Church in Taitung and discussed the collaboration plan.

The elucidation (elaboration on the theme) – January 2016，we brainstormed with our experienced teaching consultants and started to recruit volunteer teachers.

The transition (the key part of the project) – March 2016, Project Puyuma was launched! We provide the platform to encourage the students from aboriginal groups to discover the fun of learning English.

The summing up (conclusion)- December 2016, our mission is accomplished tonight!

In our original proposal for "Project Puyuma", the trial period was set for one year. How to make the long-distance learning work under such unconventional settings, while at the same time keep the balance between the differences of culture and educational awareness. Not only our teaching consultants had to design and modify each lesson according to the unique situation, our volunteer teachers also had to react quickly to adjust their way of teaching to deal with many unexpected scenarios and made progress.

Please stay tuned for our "Project Puyuma 2.0" and the upcoming new projects in 2017: (in working titles)

Project " BEARry KIDative"

For the children live in rural areas who might never see any real giraffes in life, we team up with Ms. Ya Ya, the founder of "Taitung Bear Project", who will travel from school to school to promote art education for free and guide them to express their endless imagination by creating giraffe-themed artworks. We will select the best ones and post them in our online gallery at MyGiraffe.org together with the name and the brief introduction of each little artist. We look forward to providing the platform for the children to discover their talents and express themselves.

Project “Dandelions in the Wind”

We will invite students in the US to join us and take charge in collecting new or used Children's books in English in different school districts. We hope this project can provide young student volunteers an opportunity to be non-profit project leaders to share the joy of giving. At the same time, we hope all the book donations will be like a dandelion seed, flying far and reaching the other end of the Pacific Ocean, letting more and more children see and explore the world through the power of reading.

2016 年 12 月 3 日星期五

“ 。” 我是句號.

今晚兩位志工老師 Amy 和 Sunny 在面對LA星期五下班車潮挑戰下, 不負初衷趕來替孩子們上 2016 年普悠瑪專案的最後一堂課. 謝謝妳們!

從 3 月份開辦以來走過一個單元四堂課, 三個單元加上兩節暖身試教共十四堂課, 中間更因氣候不佳和設備故障等緣故常耽誤了預期進度. 這一切’讓我歡喜讓我憂’的情節, 都隨著今晚兩個小時加長版的課程畫下一個完美的句號.

Period “ 。” 句號, 通常用在一個意義完整文句的後面, 無論句子長短, 當它意思已經充分表達之後, 就可使用. 今晚的句號, 對我們而言是意義深長的.

借用記憶中國小作文課上介紹的 [起承轉合] 表達方式來成就我們第一個專案 [普悠瑪] 的理念:

起 (開端) - 2015 年 12 月, 與台東長濱天主堂結緣討論合作方案.

承 (鋪陳) - 2016 年 1 月, 向資深教學顧問請益並邀約志工老師.

轉 (精華) - 2016 年 3 月, [普悠瑪] 開動鼓勵原鄉孩子學習英語.

合 (結語) - 2016 年 12 月, 這一年, 這一夜我們做到了! !

[普悠瑪]專案當初規劃設定是一年的試驗期. 如何在遠距教學如此非典型的學習環境下兼顧教育認知和文化背景上的差異性, 除了教學顧問團隊必需一節一章用心打造修改合宜教材外, 志工老師也要能夠順應實際課程進行中不時傳來的正向和反向的變化球.

敬請期待 2017 年全新的 [普悠瑪] 2.0 以及規劃中的新專案(暫定名稱)：

Project “BEARry KIDative” [熊熊遇見長頸鹿]:

從來沒有親眼見過長頸鹿的偏鄉孩子們如何發揮無窮想像力, 在台東[熊計畫]免費到校教學的芽芽老師的帶領下創作出以長頸鹿為題的美術. 優秀的作品將輪流放在 MyGiraffe 官方網站首頁做為主題圖像並附上小藝術家的姓名和中英簡介. 給孩子們一個表現自我, 肯定自我的舞台.

Project “Dandelions In the Wind ” [飛吧! 蒲公英]

邀集美國在學同學發心負責在各學區募集新舊英文兒童讀物. 目的除了希望給予年輕志工學習擔任公益項目負責人Project Leader的機會, 共享付出的喜悅之外, 更期望這些愛心書本如同飛揚的蒲公英種子, 遠播到太平洋彼端, 讓更多孩子們得以藉由閱讀看見與探索外面的世界.

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