Dear students,
How are you? I am Wallace, a teacher from the Department of Social Work. I have worked in CUHK for more than ten years, but have joined LWS College for less than two years only.
Do you like Zoom teaching? Personally, I enjoy conducting my course face-to-face with students. I hope to remember their faces. However, in the past semester, I have to teach via Zoom due to the pandemic. While zoom teaching is not the most enjoyable teaching method for me, I would like to share with you that life always gives us surprise.
I taught a course, “Living with grief: Understanding death, dying and bereavement”. One day after my zoom lecture, I received an email from a student. She told me that she had not enrolled to my course, but her friend shared the course zoom link with her and thus she attended. In fact, she shared with me that she was able to attend my course just because her practicum was cancelled due to the pandemic. More surprising is that she asked if I knew who was listening to my lecture with her—her father. Her father suffered from a life-threatening illness. In the lecture, I talked about sufferings and search for meaning in life. Thankfully, she shared with me that my lecture somehow gave them some support and provided them some inspirations in facing the adversities.
Dear students, I just want to let you know that life is unpredictable but that unpredictability may also bring surprise and blessing to us. If I did not conduct my course in Zoom, I probably cannot reach this student, and not to mention her father. Sometimes, we may wonder what the meaning of doing something is, but life surprises us and tells us that, “be faithful to life—life is meaningful despite all the uncertainties”.
It has been a difficult year for us. Do take care and with my best wishes.
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About Prof. Chan Chi-ho, Wallace:
Assistant Professor of Department of Social Work, joined Lee Woo Sing College in 2019. He is interested in Death, dying and bereavement, gerontology, logotherapy and social work in health care. If you would like to know more about Prof. Chan, please visit https://web.swk.cuhk.edu.hk/en-gb/people/full-time-teaching-staff/131-prof-chan-chi-ho-wallace.