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<div>A touch of light and flighty on our pedagogy!</div>
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<div>Jaime</div>
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<div><b>The Old Man and the
Tea</b></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Early on, the faculty liaison officer that welcomed me to Hang
Gong Hang Tian Da Xue (Shenyang Aerospace University) transliterated my name to
"Hemi", which was the sound she heard when I pronounced my name; she
then had me identified as such in the teaching assignment schedule list. Not long after, my students started calling
me "Hemingwei" since most of them read Ernest Hemingway's <i>The Old Man and the Sea </i>in High
School. They remember the Zhongwen
translation rather than the English they were supposed to learn but since
passing tests is what school courses are designed for, actually learning the
language did not matter, as long as they memorized the terms used by the
teacher. </div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">The old man in Hemingway's story is <i>Santiago </i>whose name is St. James in Castilian, "Jaime" in the Basque country that
straddles France and Spain, the name my father received from Spanish name
givers, of which I am a junior. <i>Hemingwei</i> fell smoothly into my personal
nomenclature, so I did not hesitate to appropriate the name. Nor did my students.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">In Hemingway's story, Santiago the fisherman goes for 84
days without catching anything, and his young apprentice Manolin is ordered by
his family to leave the old man to join other fishermen who might be more
productive. Still faithful to the aging
fisherman, Manolin helps haul his net at the end of the day, and keeps him
company in his shack while the young lad talks of his favorite baseball player
Joe DiMaggio. Santiago in turn continually
threatens to sail far out into the Gulf Stream, promising to catch a big one
the next day.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">He does take his skiff far out the following day and by
mid-morning, gets a bite from a big one.
The marlin at the other end of the line puts up a valiant act of
resistance, and ends up pulling the skiff out into the Stream. Santiago uses all his strength and his fragile
body to counter the tug of war. In the
process, Santiago develops a quiet respect over his adversary, and even calls
it his brother. Of the marlin's
integrity, Santiago concludes that no one is worthy enough to eat the fish.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">It takes two nights and three days before the marlin circles
the boat indicating tiredness, at which point, Santiago hauls it in, harpoons
the tenacious fish, straps it against his skiff and sails home. A mako shark attracted by the fresh blood of
the marlin attacks and in the fight, Santiago loses his harpoon. For a makeshift harpoon, he attaches his
knife to his oar to ward another five sharks attracted to his fish. By the time he hits shore, however, other
sharks reduced the marlin into a carcass and a head. The fish measured 16 ft. long!</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">The old man immediately hits the sack in his shack where
Manolin gladly ministers to his needs.
The struggle with the marlin invigorates the old man and he dreams of
his youth and lions in an African safari. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">We have obviously come to be identified with the "old
man" in our class and in our mind.
We disambiguate on the title: our cup of tea is not with the Tea Party. China's tea is our sea - vast, invigorating,
and when fermented, a soulful nectar of the divine! Students, mostly in for a quick ride towards
a diploma, are our marlin surprised when dished out an unexpected journey into
their lives. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">But first, we had not come to China to catch anyone in a <i>qi pao</i>.
We leave the enterprise of the chase to the swift-footed young. Charged by my siblings to be a bit on the effete
side, I stand accused of having been on occasion the one easily caught! We have, in fact, in today's single ladies
elegy, "if you like it, you should have put a ring on it", been
guilty on putting one too many more than what we should have done "on it"! An SF colleague suggests I learn to bow
towards Mecca so I can legally ring four!</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">Our tea is pedagogy - instructive and educative. In our current stage of scholarship, our
method is imaginal. Our assumption: Everyone operates out images. We create images from words and metaphors,
pictures and numbers that we use to describe our sense experiences, express our
feelings, articulate our thoughts, and formulate our deeds. Images we create determine behavior. When images change, behavior changes. In science, that is called a "paradigm
shift." </div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">For the spread of our tea analogy, one might just consider
the varied categories of white, green, yellow, black teas, and names like
oolong, Darjeeling, Nepal, Assam, Nilgiri, Turkish, Ceylon, pu'er, tisanes
(herbal, not technically tea), along with the many methods of preparations and
ways of serving, blends and additives, to realize we are in a whole universe
with its own stellar paths and flavors.
Whether one calls the ingredient <i>te,
cha, tea, chay, </i>does not matter, but if one goes through the delicate moves
of a <i>Gongfu cha </i>ceremony, one readily
senses elegant olfactorial presence of one of the beverage wonders of the world.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">We view our pedagogy in the same vein as we sip our tea, varied
yet integrated, intentional though unconstricting, leaning unapologetically on
the authority of authenticity rather than the whims of fads and the winds of
fashion. Students attend class ready to
be surprised at the awe and wander of their own existence, and taking full
ownership of it. That, for the moment, in
our best and most profound orchestral and facilitative repertoire, is in our
cup!</div>
<br>
<div style="font-size: 13px; clear: both;">Jaime Vergara<br>
<a href="mailto:pinoypanda2031@aol.com">pinoypanda2031@aol.com</a><br>
<div><i>yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!</i></div>
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