I'm a real teacher now...?

I’m sorry it’s been so long since my last post. I’ve been incredibly busy almost every day since then. Things really geared up on the 11th when we started practicum. We had Chinese class every morning and then taught ESL classes in the afternoon. With five fellow teachers, I taught a class of 28 16 year olds. The students were star students from all of the Changsha schools who came to us for an oral English “camp.” Each day was broken up into three periods and an activity period. Because my teaching team was made up of 6 teachers, we ended up being responsible for three class periods each, which wasn’t bad at all.

I wasn’t nervous about standing in front of the students or teaching them English. I was, however, really nervous about planning a lesson that they would be interested in and would teach them something. It ended up going much better than I could have hoped. I taught a lesson on packing and modes of transportation. I brought the different travel items (clothes, passport, money, phrase book) into class to reinforce the vocabulary, which worked really well. My second lesson (and the one that I liked the most) was on Germany and the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales. I spent most of the lesson talking about Rapunzel. I read the story to the students and then showed them a Sesame Street News Flash where Kermit is “on the scene” when the prince comes to Rapunzel’s tower. The kids did really well and I think they liked it. My last lesson focused American music. As you might be able to guess, this lesson was a huge hit with the students. They were particularly excited when I played Hit Me Baby One More Time as an example of pop-rock. This entire nation is a huge fan of Britney because, as one of my students explained, she is sexy.

The students were really great. They behaved, for the most part. Their names were, by far, my favorite part of meeting them. In my class alone we had Sweet, Adward, Aldous, Black Tea, Spring (male), and God Mohan. Other classes had students named Teacher, Squid, Circle, and Orange. Who knows where they get these names and why they pick them. I’m sure I’ll have a bunch more good ones when I meet my real students in a few days.

On the second day Sweet and another girl asked the teachers if we wanted to go out for dinner with her the next day. In America it would be kind of odd for a group of teachers and students to go out together, but in China it’s normal for the foreign teachers to hang out with the students (probably because they don’t have any friends their own age), so we said we would. The next day the girls took us to a hot pot restaurant. I would describe hot pot as the Chinese equivalent to fondue. Every one sits around a table with a large, divided pot sunk into the center of the table. In the pot there are two types of broth; one spicy, one not. You order what ever you want to put in the pot, anything from meat and mushrooms to tofu and cake. Then you cook for yourself what ever you want by boiling it in the broth. It’s one of my favorite types of Chinese food. (You can get an idea of what it’s like from the picture of the entire group of students and teachers in front of the hot pot table pre-food. Notice that the yellow sign behind us says. “You rhot pots, your taste.” Some of the best English signage I’ve seen in a while.)

To order the food the waitress brings a sheet which lists all the different choices. You write directly on the sheet to order the food. Because the teachers don’t have great command of Chinese characters, we left the ordering up to the students. Bad idea. Never give four 16 year olds free reign at a hot pot restaurant. They ordered so much food that it took three servers to bring the food out. We didn’t have enough room on the table so they had to bring us a three tiered cart to put the food on. This all ended up costing about a total of $20, so the experience didn’t damage our wallets too much and provided a good laugh and good food.

Practicum ended on Sunday and since then we’ve been having meetings all day. Tomorrow all the liaisons and some school officials will be coming to Changsha to us up to take us to our placements. I’m a mixture of excited and nervous, but I’ll be glad to have a little more down time. We’ve been going, going, going since we got to China and it’s been wearing down on the group as a whole. A lot of people are sick and I just got over a cold myself. I’ll let you know how the move goes in the next few days. Until then, have a great week!

欧雅丽