One of the tasks I set for my students which is not part of the "syllabus" is writing journal entries. The purpose of it is so I have an avenue to communicate with my students about their thoughts about various things/issues. I do not mark them for grammar and spelling. Just write down comments or thoughts relating to what they write. They have had 3 topics to write about so far. The first was "Thoughts about My New School", second "Things I would like to Change about Myself" and the third and most recent "What I would like to Change about the School Rules". Well, sometimes they write out of point, but i close one eye, cos that's not the point. Anyway, for interest's sake, I thought i'd share with you guys some of the things they have written... (disclaimer: The spelling errors are not from me...)

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What I would like to Change about the School Rules

> School rules that are good is keep fringer-nails short...no keep too long hairs for boys....pin the hairs of the girls and not to have long hairs longer than the waist as when they swing their hair sometimes they might accidently slap other people faces.

> Only that when we went to the toliet or somewhere we have to bring along the 'student leave pass' badge and i don't really like it. At least it must have two badges because i HATE going to the toliet alone because when i'm the only one inside the toliet, i will always feel it very very VERY CREEPY.

> ZH secondary's pupils have been laughing at us as we must stay in school until 3 pm because they dismiss earlier than us. Some of the WS students took "revenge". They called them Pizza Hut, Macdonald, 7 Eleven or whatever...

(How is that an insult??)

> Why need 'student leave pass'? I find that no need. Let says if someone is stomachache and there no teacher in class, and rush out of the class, when coming out of the toliet if see the discipline master or mistress saw you without the pass, I don't know whether they will believe what you say.

(I said I didn't think so...)

> I am not very very happy about...have to have personal grooming check every morning. Why? sometimes I cannot find nail clipper, i want to buy my father don't let....I don't like boys with spiky and uncombed hair and girls with long and smelly hair....

> I think that school rules is very strict, as they do not want us to go bad easily...

(haha...looks like the students think of themselves as bad eggs too huh...)

> Why skip school? I don't understand why they want to skip school. If they want to skip school just for playing, they can go to the place they want after school. As for me, I never think of skipping school.

(I'm so impressed)

> I think having expension is a bad idea as we will do not know what the teacher is teaching and we will have no homework and that is boring.

(she means expulsion, in case you didn't get it. Some of these mad students begged me for homework before a long weekend because they felt bored. Can u believe it??)

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That's all for this issue folks...till the next time...