Making a difference
“Can you make a difference?” That is the question that Jane Goodall asked me when I had the opportunity to meet her face to face many years ago when she visited Taiwan.
When I replied: “I don’t know,” she said: “Then how do you expect your students to make a difference?”
Jane Goodall is a primatologist and famous environmentalist whose mission was to travel the world spreading her message of hope, love and peace.
Her three core values — “care for people, animals and the environment” — were the message that she shared with everyone she met.
My name is Mike Honda and I am an environmental science teacher at Wagor International Elementary School in Taichung.
I would like to thank the Taipei Times for allowing me the opportunity to speak on behalf of my students, who have been pouring out their hearts to make our local community a better place.
I have set up a special program at my school called “Wagor Roots and Shoots.”
Roots and Shoots was created by my mentor and past teacher, Jane Goodall.
Throughout the years, she has written letters to me and kept in touch by visiting Taiwan.
Every time she visited, our students would present various projects that helped people, animals and the environment.
As a teacher, Jane Goodall has shown me how to develop into a positive role model for my students and how to connect with them. She became my guiding light and helped to reignite my passion for teaching.
I also realized that being an effective teacher meant passing down my passion for helping people, animals and the environment to my students, because she once said: “One person cannot do it all. That’s why you need an army of followers who will help you. The children are our future. They are the next generation.”
I kept this in my heart and was able to find a school with many parents, teachers and administrators who shared my vision to instill in our youth that just studying for exams would not make for a better generation of students.
If we want to create a better world for our future, we have to instill the ideals of compassion, empathy and problem-solving in the next generation.
Today, our students have created a pond for mosquito fish to help fight local mosquitoes and reduce the danger of dengue fever, make eco-friendly products, and grow organic vegetables and set up a farmers’ market for the local community.
During the pandemic, our students have also made eco-friendly hand sanitizers and soap.
Today, when I ask my students if they can make a difference, they always say: “Of course.”
Thank you, Jane Goodall.
Mike Honda
Wagor International Elementary School,
Taichung
On March 22, 2023, at the close of their meeting in Moscow, media microphones were allowed to record Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dictator Xi Jinping (習近平) telling Russia’s dictator Vladimir Putin, “Right now there are changes — the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years — and we are the ones driving these changes together.” Widely read as Xi’s oath to create a China-Russia-dominated world order, it can be considered a high point for the China-Russia-Iran-North Korea (CRINK) informal alliance, which also included the dictatorships of Venezuela and Cuba. China enables and assists Russia’s war against Ukraine and North Korea’s
After thousands of Taiwanese fans poured into the Tokyo Dome to cheer for Taiwan’s national team in the World Baseball Classic’s (WBC) Pool C games, an image of food and drink waste left at the stadium said to have been left by Taiwanese fans began spreading on social media. The image sparked wide debate, only later to be revealed as an artificially generated image. The image caption claimed that “Taiwanese left trash everywhere after watching the game in Tokyo Dome,” and said that one of the “three bad habits” of Taiwanese is littering. However, a reporter from a Japanese media outlet
Taiwanese pragmatism has long been praised when it comes to addressing Chinese attempts to erase Taiwan from the international stage. “Taipei” and the even more inaccurate and degrading “Chinese Taipei,” imposed titles required to participate in international events, are loathed by Taiwanese. That is why there was huge applause in Taiwan when Japanese public broadcaster NHK referred to the Taiwanese Olympic team as “Taiwan,” instead of “Chinese Taipei” during the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics. What is standard protocol for most nations — calling a national team by the name their country is commonly known by — is impossible for
India is not China, and many of its residents fear it never will be. It is hard to imagine a future in which the subcontinent’s manufacturing dominates the world, its foreign investment shapes nations’ destinies, and the challenge of its economic system forces the West to reshape its own policies and principles. However, that is, apparently, what the US administration fears. Speaking in New Delhi last week, US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau warned that “we will not make the same mistakes with India that we did with China 20 years ago.” Although he claimed the recently agreed framework
RSS