3rd Learning cycle review

 

A Walk to remember 
                   -Nicholas Spark

Book Review 

I am going to review  a book "A walk to remember" by Nicholas Spark. It is a book on tragic teenager love and how it changed people.  I will write about the two characters and the lessons that I have learned from their character and the development. 

London Carter: He is the main protagonist in the story. Carter is the only son a rich man and also a friend who is advised not to be friends with by many parents. He is rebellious and plays pranks on people who he thinks are not normal or different from the rest. However after meeting Jamie Sullivan, he changes into a new and better person. The character development of London Carter is amazingly fairytale like. From this change I learned many practical things which I can relate to life.

1. It is never kind to look down on people that you do not know personally. 

2. With right people around, you will become a better version of yourself.

3. Self realization is an important factor that will help you grow out of the situations that you are in. This idea is also practiced in Bhutan Baccalaureate where we write daily reflections and practice Ngondro every morning.   

4. Listening to our heart rather than to our mind can make a huge difference leading to better decisions for life. Sometimes it is good to be a person who feels rather than a person who thinks. 

5. Love does not need logic or valid reasons. Accept as it comes.

6. People can do impossible things happen if they love truly. 

Jamie Sullivan: Jamie is a 17 year old girl and a daughter of local Baptist minister. She isn't popular among her friends and always carries a bible with her. Her hair is always in bun and she wears dull clothes which make her look boring to her peers. However, Jamie is a teenager who is kind to everyone all the time, especially to animals and orphans. Unlike her peers, she spends most of her time either reading the bible or helping in the orphanage. However behind her cheerful self there is something that she is going through. She suffers from leukemia and is on verge of her death. When Carter fell in love with her, she is able to fulfil her dream of having her father walk beside her down the aisle. From her character I learned many things.

1. Kindness always wins no matter the situations

2. Being helpful even to your enemies never goes out of fashion 

3. Everyone is going through something in life which we cannot see externally (she is so cheerful for a person suffering from leukemia.)

4. Being true to yourself can have positive impact on the people surrounding you( like the way carter changed for better after spending time with her)

Some of the excerpts from the book that I like;

My achievements

 

Pretty sky & futsal ground of The Royal Academy

Like somebody said in the session, the biggest achievement is being selected to come here. This by far is  the biggest achievement in my professional journey. The second and very important one is the way I look at things. I realize how narrow my thinking were on every subject. The idea that I thought right were challenged and made to look from different perspective which resulted in realizing how "inside the box" my thinking were. It opened a gateway to different dimension of thinking about my thoughts. 

The striking result of this is the way I look at my own profession. I am glad for this as everything will start from the way I understand my profession. From the very young age I was taught professionally and socially that a teacher is someone who teaches, who is the "holder of knowledge", is right every time, and is done learning and all she/he need to do is teach. Teachers were just transferring their thoughts to the student by teaching what they think. The students were viewed as empty shell with no or very little pre-knowledge. Even though I experienced teaching for only six months, I was very naïve in thinking I was all those characteristics and being proud. If you are a teacher, look back and compared these characteristic to the one you had. If it is similar, then lets go on a discovering adventure together.  

However, this changed by the end of first week here. Teacher's job has been and will be that of a helper rather than teaching. All the information and the knowledge that we know is readily available to our learners. So it is our job to help them in what to do with these information. I stopped calling my self a teacher, as it does not justify with all the kinds of work a teacher does, instead I would like to be called as a helper. A helper who is able to make each one of her student into a ACTIVE lifelong learner.