As I mentioned before, even though I live on Er Zhong’s campus, I actually teach at Jing Yan Middle School, which is about a 30 minute bus ride from the apartment. Jing Yan really is a nice school, located near downtown Zhuzhou. It is made up of four separate buildings surrounding a track and a number of basketball courts. 
On the fourth floor of one of the buildings I share an office with Kelly and my liaison, Amy. I’m really surprised and pleased with the office. I imagined that I would have a little student desk in a broom closet somewhere, but where they placed us is far from that. We each have out own desks with internet access. Additionally, we have really nice cabinets in which to store student work or whatever. 
I teach 12 classes of Junior 1s, who are equivalent to American 7th graders. Each class has about 65 students in it, which means I teach over 780 students each week.
(My students are the ones without school uniforms in the picture.)
Before I came to China I shared my nervousness about teaching upwards of 65 students at a time with my friends and family and many people told me not to worry. They said that Chinese students are very well behaved and wouldn’t give me any problems. I would now like to set the record straight. I don’t care in what culture or country you are, if you put sixty-five 11-13 year olds in very tight quarters they will talk… a lot. I’ve been having some problems keeping the classes quiet. The "irritated look" coupled with "hands on hips" seems to be doing far better than “Silent Fox” and “Clap once if you can hear me.” Part of that is surely the fact that an annoyed look can really cross language barriers.
On that note, the students are having a very difficult time understanding what I’m saying. I speak incredibly slowly and act out almost every word possible, but we are still having problems. It’s understandable though. There’s no way that a 7th grade language class in America would be able to get anything done with a foreign teacher who doesn’t speak the native tongue of the students either. I think it would probably be rather funny for an English speaker to watch my class. I’m sure I look like a fool. For example, during the first class period we played a “game” in which each student was supposed to think of something they liked that started with the same letter as their English name. Easy enough, you would think. I broke this simple activity down into three steps: 1. Think of your English name. 2. Think of the first letter of your English name. 3. Think of something you like that starts with the same letter as your name. I then rephrased those steps about 6 times, saying the same thing in a different way each time. After giving the students a few minutes to think of their name and word, I had a few stand up and speak before the class. I wrote, “My name is _____. I like _____.” on the board to help them think of what to say. I hoped that at this point they would get it. Unfortunately, I was mistaken. About 90% of the kids said something like this: “My name is Cooper Victor and I like play computer game” or “My name is Eat and I like play basketball.” Clearly I have my work cut out for me. Even though their English skills are lacking, the students are all really cute and I’m happy to be working with them this year. Hopefully, I will be able to help them improve their oral English skills during my time here.
Well, that’s all for now folks. Until next time...
On that note, the students are having a very difficult time understanding what I’m saying. I speak incredibly slowly and act out almost every word possible, but we are still having problems. It’s understandable though. There’s no way that a 7th grade language class in America would be able to get anything done with a foreign teacher who doesn’t speak the native tongue of the students either. I think it would probably be rather funny for an English speaker to watch my class. I’m sure I look like a fool. For example, during the first class period we played a “game” in which each student was supposed to think of something they liked that started with the same letter as their English name. Easy enough, you would think. I broke this simple activity down into three steps: 1. Think of your English name. 2. Think of the first letter of your English name. 3. Think of something you like that starts with the same letter as your name. I then rephrased those steps about 6 times, saying the same thing in a different way each time. After giving the students a few minutes to think of their name and word, I had a few stand up and speak before the class. I wrote, “My name is _____. I like _____.” on the board to help them think of what to say. I hoped that at this point they would get it. Unfortunately, I was mistaken. About 90% of the kids said something like this: “My name is Cooper Victor and I like play computer game” or “My name is Eat and I like play basketball.” Clearly I have my work cut out for me. Even though their English skills are lacking, the students are all really cute and I’m happy to be working with them this year. Hopefully, I will be able to help them improve their oral English skills during my time here.
Well, that’s all for now folks. Until next time...
雅丽
Ashley,
ReplyDeleteAre the students doing their exercises in the one picture? How many people lead this group in exercise and how long does it take to get them in this order? Can you imagine HHS doing this on a regular basis?
Mom