Lesson One — Introduction 7/09/15 to 13/09/15
1) Introduce Self — 5 Minutes
My name is Abi I am 18 years old
My birthday is 14th April 1997
I am from Somerset, England
I have one brother who is 16 years old and one sister who is 20 years old
I like dancing because it is fun I don’t like riding my bike because it is tiring
2) Open questions w/ tennis ball — 10 minutes
3) Closed questions in groups — 5 minutes What’s your name/age/birthday. Where do you live Do you have any siblings You do you/ don’t you like?
4) Write English name cards — 5 minutes
5) Introduction (full) w/ tennis ball — 5 minutes
6) Drill dialogue and practice in pairs — 10 minutes
We woke up early Monday morning to the disappointment of another day with no breakfast. Mary first took us to the English teacher’s office in the old school campus so my Chinese English teacher could take me to my classroom and show me where everything was later. Which I knew would be really helpful so long as I could find the office again… We walked down the road and Mary showed us the bus stop we had to go to in order to catch the 16 bus to the new school campus. Further down the street we had ID photos taken. Now in England your photo is going to be bad whether you like it or not, you can’t wear make-up or do any touch ups. BUT NOT IN CHINA. They whitened (my already pale white) skin, removed blemishes, added more fabric on my top to cover more of my shoulders and readjusted my hair. They did a similar thing with Juliette’s, but hers came out much nicer! Hopping into a taxi we headed back to the medical examination hospital that I adored oh so much. They tested blood pressure, eye sight, BMI, ECG and X-Ray. It was all done pretty quickly because there wasn't another soul in the building apart from us and we were then free to leave the gloomy atmosphere. Next we were taken to the police station to finally register as we nibbled on our new found love — breakfast bread. The form was simple enough and once finished Mary left us again to care for her father.
We ate our lunch anxiously as our first ever lessons were fast approaching. I was the first to leave the flat for my lesson and a waved a nervous goodbye to Juliette while we both wished each other good luck. Walking down the steps out of my flat I tried to hide my nervousness. I had done this before. Mi Yun went so well. My lesson will be easy to follow and fun. The kids are so well behaved here. I can project my voice well. I’m a foreigner, they’ll love me. I walked into the teachers office and waited for the Chinese teacher to arrive while another offered me a chestnut that I nearly mistook for a conker. The teacher turned up and showed me along the corridor and up the stairs to my first ever class — class 205.
This being my first ever lesson in my new school there’s absolutely no way it was going to go smoothly. I slowly but eagerly introduced my self after nearly falling over the platform in front of the chalkboard and had to wait until the students stopped laughing. I started off with the classic ‘My name is’ and ‘I am from’. Thinking that I would be super cool and after introducing my nationality in English I would do it in Chinese. It’s fine, I’ve got this down. I learned it in Mi Yun, Chinese Andrew taught me well. So I confidently said to the class very loudly “Wó jiào Yīngguó rén”. By now you must have realised that that was a mistake. If I was to say “My name is Abi” I would say “Wó Jiào Abi” and if I were to say I am British I would say “Wó shÌ Yīngguó rén”. Instead I mistook ShÌ for Jiào and translated I said to my first ever class “My name is British Person”. To which the students found absolutely hilarious and shouted out “ShÌ!ShÌ!” to correct me. Thankfully we managed to move onto open questions.
Earlier I found two tennis balls in our flat, and as I couldn't find a beanbag to throw around this would have to do. I pulled out the tennis ball from my handbag, and the students gave a rather puzzled look. I threw the ball up in the air, caught it, said “My name is Abi” and threw it at another student. He caught it and looked slightly freaked out when I asked for his name. He answered then looked at me again. I mimed throwing a ball and said to pass to someone else which he understood and was quite excited to do so. They caught the ball and had to say there name then throw to someone else. I thought it was a pretty good way of getting in a random selection to test their capabilities and make sure everyone is paying attention — if you’re not you’re getting a ball to the face!! There was one student though, who stood up with a cocky grin on his face. Looks me dead in the eyes and proclaims very loudly “My name is Waigò Rén!”. Waigò rén is something we here often walking down the streets in China, it meaning foreigner. So this cocky students had looked me dead in the eyes and said “My name is foreigner” to the rest of the class as a way of mocking me. Great, how wonderful! All in all I really enjoyed my lesson. One surprise to me though, was how loud they were. From my experience in Mi Yun and basically everyone’s impression of Chinese students everywhere I thought they would be well disciplined and quiet. SIT DOWN AND LET ME TELL YOU A STORY SON. They are the exact same as the next class over in England. Apart from there are 60/70 odd of them. Teaching throughout the week this fact became very clear to me, and actually I'm glad. When I did have a smaller, quieter and more disciplined class it was just kind of boring. I like a noisy classroom (obviously in a good way).
Finding my way around the old school is pretty easy now, as I only teach Junior 2. Classes 206–210 are on the fifth floor, 202–205 are found on the fourth floor and 201 on the third. So it’s pretty tiring to get to class 210 when you have to walk up five flights of stairs then along the corridor whilst battling through wave after wave of children on their break! At least it’s simple to navigate though.
Our evenings were spent cleaning and sorting out the apartment, exploring Jiujiang and settling into our new life. Because Matt and James are so close, we normally spend our evenings and weekends together. So of course we ate KFC and pot noodles for the next two nights in a row. Until James offered to cook a redemption meal that resulted in incredibly salty orange rice with chunks of onions as big as half my palm in the bowl. Again… he tried. We also gave the grey ice-cream from McDonald's which I can only describe as a mix of chocolate, coffee and beef. It’s really super duper good! We’re under the impression that it’s poppyseed flavour but either way, this thing needs to be brought back to England!
This week on Thursday 10th Spetember it was Teachers day. Students will give their teachers presents to thank them for all they have done — a nice little idea. However on Thursday It was going to be my first day at the new school campus… and a newspaper wanted an article for it on the day. So imagine my horror as I'm just about to begin my first class of the day when a teacher whispers in my ear that a reporter is coming to interview me and take photos. I tried to ignore it.. and the gert camera in the way of my students. I couldn't see or hear them properly because of this random Chinese bloke in the way! I just wanted to get on with my lesson. Suddenly Mary, my Waiban, pops up from nowhere and tells me that I have to stop teaching. What. She drags me to the front and some kids whip out these MASSIVE bouquets of flowers, 3 to be exact, and start handing them to me with the photographer is all up in my face. They said thank-you for coming to teach us and I thanked them for having me, hoping it would be over… but no. I was taken outside of my classroom to talk to a reporter in which Mary translated (probably badly) for a good five minutes. I then shuffled back in and put the flowers on the table ready to start the lesson again after thanking them once more. BOY WAS I STUPID. The teacher announced that they had another surprise for me and each student rushed up to the front to give me their own individual presents. I was surrounded my flowers, sweets, bits and bobs but more importantly Chinese children — most of whom are taller than me! It took another good ten minutes to accept everything and sort them out before I could get back to my lesson. It was incredibly sweet of them (even if the probably did do it for publicity) but it also ruined my lesson slightly. Some of the other classes during the day gave me one or two gifts too, which felt more sincere and made me feel a little more welcome.
The last class of the day — 210 — had their lesson switched with Tuesdays, they were meant to be the top class. And that they were. The lesson was too easy and they were all doing other work, all 72 of them!! I was slightly annoyed and didn't feel comfortable enough to tell them not to do other work in my lessons. I’d have to make the lessons more advanced in the future.
On Thursday I had my ‘death day’ where I teach six back to back lessons from 9:00 to 16:40, it was also my first day at the new school campus and I’d have to find out where everything was! After getting up 6:30 to catch the 16 bus at 7:15 for 25 minutes we arrived around the start of the first period so Juliette could show me around and help me find my classrooms. Apart from when we arrived Jiang had been frantically looking for her because she wasn't in her lesson… turns out the time table she’s been given was not correct. So she ran off while I waited in our rather spacious office for half an hour so Jiang could show me to my class in the next lesson.
Turns out it’s also pretty easy. Not for Juliette who left right and centre in the school, but for me I only teach on two floors. The first has classes 201–203, and the second 204–206. During lunch we were approached by many excitable students who wanted to practice English with us. One student, Max, noticed were struggling with the spice a bit and brought us over some strawberry milk from the shop, how lovely! We took a few photos and then said goodbye once we had finished our meals. I found that the resources at the new school were much better and the class sizes were slightly smaller however the English ability is slightly lower.
During my second lesson of the day I walked into my class early to be greeted by a massive film camera at the back of the classroom and then Jiang a few seconds later. He told me they wanted to film my lesson for memories sake and took me out of the classroom, so the could start filming as I walked in and the students faked cheered. The camera stopped halfway through and left though, so the lesson wasn't too badly effected or boring because the students couldn't let loose. My fourth lesson was also mysteriously cancelled which I'm not particularly complaining about because I got a rest!
I started off pretty enthusiastic but by the end of the day I was completely flat and just wanted to sleep — good thing we don’t work on Fridays! I can have a sleep in! Then Jiang told us we had a meeting in the new school Friday morning and burst our bubble. Most of the meeting was in Chinese so we had no clue what in the world was happening, we just sat there and received fruits from Jiang to eat whilst smiling to the rest of the teachers. Later in the day we joined the Thai students in their Chinese writing and paper-cutting classes, where they gave us a really cute elephant key ring each from Thailand!
The weekend was spent well, earlier in the week we noticed some kind of a food market/festival being put up outside out local supermarket so we decided to head towards there for lunch. There were normal things, meat on a stick, whole chickens dangling on a rod, corn dogs, orange eggs with meat in the middle, starfish. We ate so much and the food was so good! The most interesting was definitely the star fish, which was on a stool with other dried insects that even the locals were amazed at! The bloke behind the counter rehydrated it and roasted it, we shared one between all four of us. It was dry, crunchy and salty. A strong 6/10. It was interesting once but never again… it just wasn't that flavoursome. We had a wonder around a local market too, and it’s exactly what you’d imagine a Chinese market to be like. Pretty dark, live animals in cages including pigeon, dog, snake, chickens. Butchered meat left under blood red lights and piles upon piles of vegetables left right and centre. It was a pretty overwhelming atmosphere as I tip toed along the slippery black floor from where the fish tanks filled with ells, tortoise and fish had over flown. On Sunday we tried to find another lake, but after catching the wrong bus we were presented with another lonely part of the Yangtze river and a lot of wondering to do.
Sunday night was spent planning next week’s lesson after watching an episode of two of the goodies. Now I’d finally met all my classes I felt slightly more comfortable in my teaching.
Class Notes:
Old School:
201 — Big class, pretty competent but slightly shy. They know the basics! 202 — Small class with space to do activities in the back. Students are shy to speak and need to be involved more. 203 — Pretty large class and rather serious about learning English 204 — Middle sized class. Followed instructions well. Not sure if they’re boring or shy but find more ways to engage them! 205 — First ever lesson! Up for fun, but loud. Find an effective discipline method. 206 — Loud and boisterous. Very excitable but there are some obvious trouble makers 207 — Enjoyable class to teach, pretty confident and no basics need improving. 208 — Small class but very loud and energetic. Classroom management needed. 209 — Loud! Very fun and games would be very beneficial though there’s little space in the classroom. 210 — Very large class with very cocky students. Make more challenging lessons and stop them from doing other work
New School:
201 — Most draining lesson — end of the day and week. Try to keep up the enthusiasm. 202 — Not that excitable, hard to engage. 203 — Filmed during the lesson. Students are slightly more serious but can be fun (once camera is gone). 204 — Missed 205 — Loud, smaller class. Pretty competent but need to be taught classroom instructions 206 — Good class that works well.
