Final Blog

     To start with, I would like to thank you for your interesting, meaningful class, and I am happy to have had the opportunity to take this class for the full three years. I had an experience living in Cambodia, attending the international school for about three years, however, because  I was attending there until I was about nine or ten, I had limited vocabulary (only having vocabularies that nine to ten years old speaks). So, to be honest, I was having difficulty studying English in the high-level class (I still have it though). However, I ended up enjoying Mr. Paterson’s class, I miss you so much, and I am having an overwhelming feeling of sadness, that I will not be able to take your classes after next year. Through many enjoyable classes throughout three years, I strongly remember the book review presentation, classes about the war, and the Map's manipulation which I used this topic for the final website. 

    First, the academic book review project, which I remember that I did in the third-year class. This project was the project that I first suffered, in which this assignment had many things to do, compared to the other project that I had done in the second-grade class. This assignment was very hard for me to handle, but somewhat I ended up enjoying that project after finishing it. Before doing this project, I still had a great dislike for the English classes. However, my sense of dislike had been a little bit less through this assignment. Through writing the long essay, I got to learn the specific point to write the huge essay, and my writing skill had been gained so much. Also, throughout the presentation, I got to study the way to have an effective presentation, which is one of the things that we are not able to learn about it in the normal class. I got to gain my skill to convey messages to others effectively which was also being utilized in daily life too. As Mr. Paterson taught me how to give presentations, write long compositions, make slides, and many other things, I was able to not only improve my English skills but also acquire the skills to present in front of others in a dignified manner.

    Second, the classes about the Ukraine, Palestine issue, I was shocked to have been listening to all the things that Mr. Paterson had told us. I knew almost nothing about this issue, and I felt ashamed of my ignorance. Now, there's a war happening between Ukraine and Russia, and when I first knew about this news, I couldn't believe what is going on, I despise President Putin from the bottom of my heart for his decision to have the war in 2022, and I felt ridiculous seeing the videos and the photos which are reported in the news. However, after having Mr. Paterson's class about this war, my field of vision was very narrow, just being manipulated by the media, just like we studied in Mr, Paterson's class. That time, I had completely limited perspectives, only blaming Russia, just like the media did. I thought it is an ashaming thing to talk about one's own theory while having things with a limited perspective. Of course, the war is ridiculous, and I can not believe why people are doing the"horrible event" which is to kill thousands of people, however, I felt people should have a wide range of perspectives too. 

    Last but not least, the class about maps manipulation had a huge impact on me. I knew each of the features of the maps, but I couldn't realize that it is related to politics. I realized that people could easily be manipulated, so we have to be very careful about each of the information, finding many types of possibilities. Also, I thought we should learn how to manipulate people by using such information. 

    In conclusion, thank you for many meaningful classes, and it is a pleasure for me to have been one of your students. I didn't like English, but I truly loved your class, and I was looking forward to being your student in the next year too. I am very shocked about you leaving this school, and I am strongly frustrated by the reality that I should be back to have the boring English class again. It is definitely true that Mr, Paterson is a person who gave me profound information to me, and is also a person who had widen my perspectives so much. I would never forget things that I had learned in these classes. I am respecting you so much as a teacher and as a human. Good luck, and thank you for being my teacher. 

9th February 2022

    Today, we did the activity, in which we write the circle in a squared place, and draw a line to cover all nine circles. By doing this, I learned that people tend to suppress their own creativity by themselves. I thought this is because mainly in Japan, people make fools of "not normal" ideas. 

    I was the one that I couldn't share my idea, and I realized that placing the circles irregularly on the four sidelines of the square when we are made to think of the four lines, but I could not raise my hands up because I was scared to share my unusual idea.

    I thought, there are many people having creativity, but the environment of the society is completely erasing their chance to share it, which is a very important thing for people to return the creativity to some kind of achievements. 

2th February 2022

    Today, we did the marshmallow challenge with friends. It was very interesting. We are unconsciously making up a new rule, and maybe this is because we are always being tied up by rules. I learned that this tendency in society may vanish people's creativity, and I was a little bit scared about it. 

    Mr. Paterson said that it is very important to make many prototypes in a limited time. I learned that to make many prototypes, we need to keep the pasta in a shape that would be easy to make shapes. For example, our team broke our pasta into a quarter size, which made us difficult to change the form when we realized that our idea do not work properly. 

    To be honest, I even never thought of things such as asking for more pasta or researching it on google. I may think that this is because I am caring about what people would think about me "cheating".  I thought this is very interesting because the teammates should be the people who corporates and get more ideas to win in the game, but as a result, these teammates is being the people who are suppressing one's creativity.