Heart for Lung

 There are so many things I could write about. My mood (which can fluctuate from triumph to despair these days) suggests different topics at different times, but I thought I'd write about something timeless - another teacher tribute.

I've written on my blog about several teachers that I've had the pleasure of working with before - Dean Roberts, Kerri Commisso,  Lisa Daley, Sonia Singh, Ashley Clarke and Rose Tse, Diana Hong, Saadia Isahac and so on. It is proof that I work with so many talented educators that it's easy to decide on someone to highlight.

Our school went topsy-turvy in September and we realized that, not only we were we losing many staff members to the Virtual School, some of us were going to see a significant shift in our teaching assignments. Two of us received positions that extended beyond our comfort zones because we had no prior experience in those areas. One of those teachers was me. The second was another Diana - Diana Lung.

There are so many things I can say about Diana Lung. One of her traits that I admire about her is her willingness to try new situations, strategies, methodologies, and other pedagogical proposals. She was like this even before the pandemic. When inquiry based learning started to make a bigger impact in kindergarten, I remember Diana commenting on how this would be a very different approach than the one she was familiar with at the time. She could have complained and ignored the recommendations, but she didn't. Diana took some workshops, read some resources, and found a way to incorporate aspects of inquiry without compromising some of her previous practices that she saw as successful. 

Speaking of success - Diana helps her students grow so much as learners when she has them in her class. Even this year, with all the added restrictions and no time to adequately prepare, Diana has been so pleased with the progress her Grade 2 and 3 students have already demonstrated so far. Their gains are her gains.

This work doesn't go unnoticed. Our parents and school community love Ms Lung. They request her as a teacher for their children. She has high expectations for her students but she also has high expectations for herself, and pours hours of time into communicating with families and creating interesting learning experiences. When I was in the library, her classroom was across the hall. I'd see her working, long after school had ended, writing individualized, personalized reports to each and every parent in her students' Communication Booklets. 

Did I mention she is multilingual? Diana speaks English, Cantonese and Mandarin. This is so incredibly important in our school community. Representation matters. Here is a teacher that speaks the same language as the families do at home, plus she understands the hopes, fears, traditions, and dynamics at play in the lives of so many students. Diana Lung is our treasured on-site translator, able at a moment's notice to assist in the office with a query, or during Parent-Teacher Interview night (in addition to her own scheduled sessions) to provide translation when we didn't get enough bodies to keep up with demand, or even for drafting letters about school events. Diana Lung even ran a few Lunch and Learn sessions for the staff so that the monolinguals would be able to say a few key phrases properly.

I wanted to post more pictures and write more things, but this weekend was filled with writing IEPs, marking math tests, contacting sources for distance-appropriate gym equipment, planning the upcoming week's lessons, creating study sheets on Google Classroom, and other things related to my new role. Diana Lung, thank you from the bottom of my heart (or my lung, since it's bigger) for everything that you do for our students and our school.