Tales from the Chinese Classroom

Sorry that there have not been many updates this week. It has been a busy week of pretty much nothing, which happens every once and a while, even here in China. Also, this week this blog service has been blocked in China. I am able to add posts but I cannot check the blog myself. Needless to say, the ever changing state of Freedom of Speech in China is somewhat frustrating.

Teaching continues to go very well. I have been getting good reviews from the other teachers though I do take these with a grain of salt at times. They claim that the kids enjoy my lectures which is nice to hear, regardless of the absolute validity of it. Last week I did have my first run-in with one of my students...a lovely young lad named King. He is very talkative in class and I asked him to please sit in his seat quietly while I am lecturing. He proceeded to continue to talk for most of the rest of the class. The next class I had him in he again began to talk and I singled him out in front of the whole class -- sidenote...this is a pretty major deal here in China since "face" is so important. This is the idea that you never allow another person to lose face in public, that you make sure that you do not point out flaws and mistakes in front of peers. This especially applies to business interactions, but it does also extend into personal interactions... which of course I was aware of when I made the conscious decision to point out his behavior. I told him that his behavior was unacceptable and that he was disrespectful to me last week and I do not expect it to happen again this year. This made him quiet down, but it also led him to take out his cell phone and begin to text people with it. I went over to him and asked him for his phone which he refused to give to me until the homeroom teacher came over and yelled at him (in Chinese so I am not sure what was said). This did the trick and the phone was mine for that class. King, however, was not done with his behavior issues. He then began to not sleep, but just snore loudly in class. I tried to ignore this for a minute or two but soon had to kick him out of class which the homeroom teacher supported and even suggested if he would not stop. This put an end to the poor behavior and the remainder of class proceeded well. At the end of the class King came and apologized, claiming that his lack of English was one of the reasons that he does not pay attention. I am happy to report that on Wednesday, when I had him again, he behaved much better...not really paying attention, but not at all disruptive...he even kept eye contact with me some of the time.

This is so far the only incident that I have had with a student. All in all the students have been behaved very well. I was warned time and time again about how disrespectful the kids are, how little they care and how they are just generally bad. This has not been my experience at all. The kids are average middle school students. Some are very interested, some are totally bored, some sleep, some talk but nothing bad, just normal teenage behavior. These kids are in boarding school, most for not the first time. They have been placed in more or less the middle of nowhere and required to go to school from 7:50 in the morning to 9:00 at night. they have 2 hours for lunch and another 2 hours for dinner, but outside of this, they are in the classroom all day. In middle school under these conditions, I would have struggled to pay attention as well. I think that I may still be in a honeymoon phase aided by my height and the fact I am a male, but I also think that some of the other teachers may have unrealistic expectations of what Middle and High School kids are like. Given the repeated warnings, I have been very impressed with the behavior I have experienced.

Other than this I have been doing very well. This weekend I am very excited to start meeting with a tutor for Mandarin Lessons. I have already picked up a lot through necessity and the help of friends and colleagues but working with a tutor will hopefully focus my study on a good progression of knowledge. I feel that my current focus of study is mostly on tourist language, things like directions, place names and how to order food. All useful things, but in terms of overall language ability pretty minor. The other exciting piece of news this week is I have received a new name, a Chinese name. My English Club students named me last night Gao Tian. Gao is the Chinese word for Tall and Tian means sky so together this means either endless sky, tall sky or large ambitions. Other possibilities that they considered using Gao as my surname included (English translations) tall chocolate, Colgate and a few other products, all of which they found to be very humorous possibilities. I am working on remembering how to write it in Chines characters as well.

Signing off from Huijia,

高天