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Teacher interview: Xander Manshel WRITERS | Sunwoo Nam, Medha Goyal & Cordelia Lam PHOTO | Matthew Chow LAYOUT | Chloe Mok
Two years into his tenure at Chinese International School, it’s safe to say that English teacher Alexander Manshel has made a significant mark on our community. Since his arrival at CIS, Mr. Manshel has quickly become one of the most well-known and respected teachers amongst school faculty. He has been a vital contributor to various exciting new projects, such as the CIS Improv Troupe, Dan Tat Monster, Eurydice, and the new advisory system. Who wouldn’t be interested to have a little insight into his mind? Well today you have the chance! >>
What do you strive to do best in your teaching?
Students often have a “boring” view of how teachers relax and enjoy themselves outside of school. In my teaching what I strive to do is to show kids in my class that not only is liter- Could you say anything to possibly ature beautiful, important and inspiration- change this stereotype? al, but also that it is directly applicable to life. Some people go to religion and family to make important decisions in their lives, but i feel that literature is a kind of religion and a kind of family in that it provides you with such a wealth of experience and empathy to draw. So I strive to inspire my students to see literature not as something archaic or pretentious that is just spoken about in british accent, but that it’s actually something you use and live with everyday. I also strive to show students that language and the way we manipulate, understand and analyze it is all around us all the time whether it’s in a poem, advertisement or email that you’re writing to a friend - that knowing how to use language well is important. 18 XIAO HUA XH8 final.indd 18
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Believe it or not, teachers have exciting, diverse and dynamic lives outside of school. School takes up a lot of time - as a profession we take a lot of work home with us. I’m lucky in that the subject I teach changes constantly and that it’s very exciting, so when I go home to read a new book for fun, it may also be a book that I may one day prepare for a class. Likewise when I go on to prepare for my class, it’s fun and stimulating to read literature. But beyond that, outside of school, I like to play sports, play soccer, tennis and squash. I’m also a member of improv group that performs in Hong Kong and has recently performed in Beijing as part of an international improv group festival. I’m currently working on a writing project, which is a fictional audio
historical walking tour of Sheung Wan, that is a detective noir murder mystery.
Students often lose sight of who they are under the pressures of work and deadlines. What advice do you have for students about school life, and perhaps life outside school? I think the schoolwork slash life balance becomes a kind of treadmill, and I often hear students expressing their anxiety or stress regarding a certain assignment, but at the same time, expressing the fact that they actually think the assignment is meaningless or irrelevant to what they care about. At first, I found this strange that students would stress out so much over assignments they seemingly didn’t care about, but now I think that the treadmill metaphor applies, in that it’s easy to think “I just have to get to this next stage, to this next marker of success 3/6/13 7:35 PM