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.

Breakdown

It finally happened. I snapped in class. A breakdown of sanity and will to go on. Wednesdays are my longest days flush with 8 classes. I couldn't fall asleep last night so I came to work with about four hours of nocturnal slumber. I'm also fighting off a chest cold with Chinese traditional medicine. Advil Cold and Sinus > Flower juice. Trust me.

A strong KFC coffee and a lot of tea propelled me through the first part of the day, but then I had my afternoon nap. It was just a taunt, I needed more. Then third graders. Love the little tykes, but they take everything out of you.

And then one of my one of my favorite playful 4th grade classes. I wanted to play 20 Questions. It's a surprisingly useful game in that when the kids get into it, they're clamoring over each other to speak English and rack their brains for adjectives so they can win.

With sixth graders it takes about three minutes to explain it. Usually a light will go on in one kids head and they'll start stammering "I know, I know!" and I'll have them explain it in Chinese. With this one last fourth grade class that never happened.

My first trial game is me thinking of someone. I make it easy.

"I'm thinking of someone in America...", I begin.

"When is your birthday?"

OK, so they have the question part of 20 Questions down. I ignore it and move on. I whisper into a different kids ear, "ask me if it's a boy or a girl."

"It's a girl! Great question!"

Hands raise. They get it!

"Teacher, what is your favorite color?"

No... no they don't.

I pick another hand. "Who is your wife?"

I played politician and pretended to hear the question I wanted [hey, maybe they're taught to answer Jeopardy-style], and responded, "Nope! Not my wife! I don't have a wife."

"Is it a Panda?!"

I put my head into my hands. I had two choices. Weep or laugh. So I laughed until I weeped. All the fatigue hit me at once, all the frustration of the language barrier. Everything. I wanted to walk away and sleep in some damp corner underneath the stairs.

I picked another hand, hoping.... hoping...

"Do you like Chinese food?"

I walked to the door. I remembered a sign I gave Jordan Schemmell a few years ago. He's the man who got me into education. It was a bulls eye and said, clearly, "BANG HEAD HERE." I picked it up in a gas station on I-95 coming back from a Radiohead concert in West Palm. Actually, it was less a gift than him taking it from me. Several times last year I would draw just such a bullseye on my whiteboard and bang away. American kids understood that it was a perfectly rational response to irrational situations. They would draw it for me sometimes.

So I banged my head on the door unable to stop laughing.

"Teacher, what are you doing?!?" they said. Three kids pulled on my arms to drag me away from the door.

I tried explaining the game again. I had the brightest kid explain in Chinese. I asked in Chinese if they understood.

"Yessss!!!"

I went over what we had so far... a girl... in America... and she's not my wife... why doesn't someone ask me if she's in my family?

"Do you like hamburger?"

I went back to the door for sweet, sweet catharsis.

I remembered I came prepared today. I had backup. The educational equivalent of an air strike, napalm to an inattentive classroom. It was a bright, shiny, fast but long overdue DVD from the school library. It has an airplane drawn on the disc so I assumed it had something to do with aeronautics. I hadn't seen it, but it was in my bag for just such an occasion... either for a really bad class or if I was too tired or sick to really teach. I had never used it. It was more there for comfort, a soft hand to hold and bring me out of bed on tired mornings telling me "it's OK... you have me if things don't work today. Get up, cowboy, take that shower and get to the bus stop!"

Bottom line: teachers, bring backup!

Robot vs. Tweaker Methods

At some point this week I decided that it was easier being robot than a foriegn English teacher. I was getting too serious and too frustrated with a group of third graders who wouldn't stop talking while I was teaching. Honestly, I don't rightfully have the skills to teach kids that young. It's too early for all-English classes. It's hard listening to a teacher who speaks half gibberish no matter how much you want to learn. This biomechanical transformation was one of two methods that worked this week.

The first method was acting like tweaky Jim Carry on meth. As soon as the Chinese teacher left I'd say my standard, "Good morning, class!" They'd respond plenty loud, but then I'd stand on a chair and yell it. I'd yell it again trying to scream louder than they could. I had their undivided attention. I'd then hop off, write a category on the board like "food" or "animals." I'd then run around picking students whose hands were shot a mile high. "Cat," they'd say. "CAT!!!!!!!" I'd yell back while giving an enthusiastic and exaggerated high-five crouched down to their little seats. If I was really into it I'd give a psychedelic meow or two.

"Hot Dog!"

"HOT DOG!!!!!!!!"

High-fiving and fake vomiting follows.

The Tweaker Method works perfectly with the little tykes excerpt for two issues that emerge after class. I lost my voice and energy. Out-screaming and out-crazying 9 year olds saps a 25 year old pretty quickly. I'd go into my next class with all the enthusiasm of Ben Stein.

I was going around the room asking them easy questions and I could barely hear the answers under the dull roar of laughter and talking of other students. I couldn't speak over them because my voice was gone. I couldn't dance about acting out "MONKEY!!!" because I didn't have any energy. Getting angry wasn't working. That's just loud and mean gibberish. So I decided to be a robot.

I walked to the other side of the room. I stared at the class. They shut up and stared back. I extended my arm forward making the high-pitch mechanical grind similar to an electric drill. Every move was slow, deliberate, and accompanied by it's own whirring.

They were transfixed. I pointed my finger and asked, "What. Is. Your. Name." in the best monotone android voice I could muster. "My name is...!!!" followed by a squeal of laughter.

When a kid in some distant corner would start talking I'd gun him down with my robo-pencil machine gun and he'd fall over dead on his desk and shut up for a bit. The other kids would giggle and quietly make their own robo-sounds. I was even able to shut the whole class with one swipe of my robo-pencil gun.

It works. I highly recommend the Robot Method to other TEFL teachers with classes to young to know what's going on.

Tags: Treyopia stories China Shenzhen TEFL teaching EFL ESL TESL methods English Chinese children elementry school

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