Teaching

Photo by Lida Rose

As my juniors last year graduate from Greenwood this week, I've been pondering my own growth as a teacher. It's a strange and wonderful career I've chosen and in my two short years I feel like I've done it all. I've worked with little kids, adults, teenagers, college kids... everyone. I've given hour-long lectures, taught 40-minute classes, have one-lesson weeks now, did twenty lesson weeks last year. I've created my own courses from scratch, worked out of a book, and given one-to-one's in principals offices to explain how an American school board works. What have I learned?

Forgive. The most important thing is to never get angry with a class. It's pointless and you'll lose every time. Chances are if they're misbehaving, you've gone over their heads or your simply boring them. Never hold a grudge. Never expect the bad student (or class) from last week to be a problem this week. Allow them to redeem and redefine themselves. Reward instead of punish. Do this not only for your own sanity, but for the example you - as teacher - are supposed to set as a model behavior. Forgiveness isn't about accepting apologies. It's about moving on.

Entertain. That is, after all, why most students and parents think you're there. Let your personality fill the room and be the sole object of attention. You're competing against a lot of things. Flying paper balls, notes, books, and cute crushes have an advantage. Steal and co-opt them.

Think on their level. I once heard someone say, of teaching kids, that if you ever stop thinking like one, even for a moment, you've lost them. It's absolutely true. If your teaching businessmen, be prompt and efficient in your teaching. If you're teaching little kids, sing songs and be a ninja from time to time. Match the pre-existing vibe of the class and everyone wins.

Review. You'll be floored by how much they forgot. Make it as fun as possible though.

Meaning. Make sure they understand and believe that what they're doing means something and in some way will help them in a tangible way. Make them feel privy to some sort of inside information that others aren't getting. It works as well with history as it does with English.

The American Dream

Things made a bit more since today after having a class with a group of teachers and later with a group of principals with the same topic of conversation. What are the differences between American schools and Chinese schools? I begin by having them participate telling me what they imagine American classrooms looking like. Universally, they sounded like this:

• In American classes, students lounge around on the floor during classes.
• At most, there are 20 students per class.
• American students are more talkative in class, but that's to ask deep and penetrating questions.
• American students and teachers are always great pals.
• American classrooms are "more open," meaning few if any rules.
• American classes are extremely fun, involving lots of games.

More importantly, they all - every one of them - unhesitantly believed American education was better. An example was a principal who told me that 20 years ago educational scholars from China visited America and American scholars visited China. Both teams came to the conclusion that they well disciplined Chinese classrooms were better and the undisciplined American classrooms were worse. In those 20 years, however, no Chinese citizen has won a Nobel prize while Americans have won many.

With that, what we're doing out here makes since. I've often complained about feeling like the foreign teachers are expected to be English-speaking clowns. Come in, play games, make the kids have fun and love English and like magic the language will sink in. Disciplining children is not allowed. What we're doing, it seems, is recreating the Chinese image of the American classroom setting. They want us to come here and do to their students what they think was done to us. They want that magic spark that we were given to rub off on the next generation of Chinese.

Unfortunately, this image of the American classroom is incorrect. While Montessori schools and small private schools do exist, they are rare and most American students endure something very similar to the Chinese classroom.

While most American teachers would love the conditions that Chinese people are describing, the apathy and attitudes of American students prevents it from being a reality. I often corrected their notion of a rules-free zone by outlining each behavior associated with Childhood - horse playing, running, touching - that American teachers spend an extraordinary amount of time preventing for liabilities sake. Thus American teachers daydream of complicit and obedient [and imaginary] Asian classrooms where students want to learn and beg for three hours of homework a night.

In coming days and weeks I want to look at this issue more deeply. I want to more clearly identify, by the numbers, where the strengths of the Chinese classroom are and where the strengths of American education are. I'd also like to explore the idea of why, despite the huge number of science graduates in China, there have been no Nobel Prizes.

First Day

I puffed my chest, swallowed my smile, and looked angry. Ten of the cutest kids you could possibly imagine were swarming my podium on a raised wooden platform in the front of the classroom. Other kids were sweeping, cleaning, and wiping off the chalkboard. All of them, at the same time, we're asking my age, my name, where I was from, if I was married. All of them had ear-to-ear smiles. I beckoned them coldly to sit down. I had to play the role of disciplinarian foreign teacher, as mean and cold as any Chinese teacher.

The bell rang. Well, not really a bell. It's actually some hideously cutesy take on classical piano that plays for maybe ten seconds. It's not nearly as creepy as the eye exercise music and instructions. It is exactly them same kind of brain-washing hypnotic repetition via distant PA that you'd expect to hear at some North Korean school.

I wrote my name on the board and had them practice saying it. A million hands went up to ask me questions. I ignored them.

I wrote "rules" on the board underlined and asked if anyone knew what they were. No one knew. I explained and had them write down my four rules and repeat them endlessly. Still no smiles. I drilled them until they had the rules memorized verbatim. I had them practice locations ("I am from Jacksonville. Jacksonville is a city in Florida. Florida is a state in America," and then flipping it to be relevant to them) With much less success I tried to explain my [divorced] family to a few classes. "Your father have two wives?!?"


It worked. The kids were extremely well behaved. I broke down the wall of seriousness mid-way through class and let them ask me questions. I did this seven times my first day. I can still hear the same questions ringing in my ear, over and over, "what's your favorite animal?", "what do you eat?", "do you have a baby?", "do you like China food?", "do you like KFC", ad infinitum.

My only bad class was after lunch where I had a fluent and very talkative student. I assumed all the other kids were on her level and shot over everyone's head. They hated me because I kept turning the jerk up a notch. The fluent girl eventually stopped me mid-sentence to tell me no-one understood a word I said. There were no crowds swarming me at the end of class.

Ahh, lunch. They made me eat out of styrophone containers because they don't have my medical records. Laowai-itus is infectious, perhaps?

I learned that it's a universal trait that kids get rowdier after lunch. Another class played games on me in a cutesy 10-year old kid way. They started by repeating everything I said and then all crowded around me and the chalkboard because 15 of them "couldn't see" my massive writing on the board. It was funnier than it was annoying.

I dig the school. I've had none of the problems the other teachers have had. It's a university-affiliated boarding school where English is taken very seriously and the foreign teachers are respected. I was given an office key, a desk, and keys to another room to take a nap in during the "noon break." I used to get the evil eye from my principal in Jacksonville for dozing during my planning period - this after 7 straight hours of teaching and watching kids while trying to eat lunch at my desk. These guys expected me to string together 4 chairs in a conference room and make a bed. They also gave me a bag of paper, pens, and the kids English books so I could plan around it.

I'll be ready for the weekend though. I have 27 classes this week, as opposed to our normal load of 20 and the Chinese teachers load of 15. We all have to cover for the girls who quit. It's nice though. I've been idle for almost two weeks now. I like how drastically things change day-to-day in China.

First Glimpse Inside a Chinese Classroom

R. is a soft-spoken, educated, vertically impressive, late-20's, former intel officer with the Army national guard. R. has absolutely no control over his 2nd grade classroom beyond a few curious onlookers in the front two rows. It's not that R. doesn't have innate teaching skills, and it's not that he's unorganized. He came in prepared. He has a naturally effusive personality. The kids just don't care.

They speak about 50 words of English and he speaks about 20 words of Mandarin. Parents demand native English speakers, so the school provides "Conversational English" teachers for 6 year olds who can barely write in Chinese. That's where the contracts are, so that's where we go.

I came to observe some classes before mine start next week. I've heard the horror stories and want to see them first hand. After getting lost on the bus system I walk into his classroom right as the bell rings and take a seat in the back. Three kids rush to shake my hand and say, "Hello! How are you?!"

As I take my seat against the wall a kid sitting to my left is staring. I look over. I was being stared down with the most earnest face a six year old can muster. Still staring, he put his finger to his nose and pushed the cartiledge up. No smiles, this kid means business. I know Chinese have some stereotype that Westerners have big noses... was this some statement concerning my own nose? He pushed it back down almost to his lips and broke into maniacal laughter. I popped back into teacher mode and snapped while moving my hand to point at R. who was trying to get the kids to talk about birthdays.

I left after 20 minutes to visit another teacher at the same school. His class was better. A. was fluent in Chinese and had older kids plus the show-stopper: a bag of candy for kids who got right answers. As I walked in he was handing out small scraps of paper. He had to supply it himself. When he asked for paper in the front office, a lady responded by moving her fingers up and down the same way you'd make a hand-puppet talk. In extra slow-motion, she enunciated her meaning: "Talk." It was conversational English, there were no books and no supplies. Get up there and talk.

Impressed with his effectiveness, I bought a big bag of candy on the way home. I've made a visit to my school and hope it's a smoother run than what everyone else is experiencing in the public schools. I'm hoping my own experience will help with little kids, but we'll see. I melt around kids but I'm going to have to play the role of mean non-smiling jerk for at least a few weeks.


Tags: Treyopia teaching public schools education Shenzhen China stories ESL EFL TEFL TESL forieng English Conversation Colloquial