Internet at School!

Internet at the school! Hallelujah! The geography teacher--a very nice woman who is in her mid twenties--brought me a copy of the Chinese software I needed to install on my computer in order to connect to the internet from the office at school. It was kind of hard to set up, but we navigated through it together and now I should be able to get on much more often.

This is a bit random, but a few days ago Helen, Rob, and I went shopping in the pedestrian area (see other photos) of Anyang. Rob needed shorts, so went in this store. I was kind of memorized by the shirt that the model is wearing in the picture. It says "China Vintage Culture New Style." Is that how China is marketing their country and their style to young people? Like yes, we have tons of dynasties and our history is old and moves through repetitive motions, but we'll call that "vintage" to make it cool and to give you the opportunity to create a new current way of living for yourselves? Do people feel trapped by the long, cyclical periods of time that China is made up of? The shirt here was interesting. I don't know. Maybe I'm reading too much into it. Ha, what an anthropologist.






I'll go through an average day of teaching. I start the class every morning with some stretching to an American song. Then we review the things that we learned the day before. Sometimes I go around the room (I put the desks into a big U shape) and randomly ask people questions from previous days (How are you?; How old are you?; Where are you from?) and if they get the question right, I give them a sticker or a stamp or something. Then we play some games for review. Today we played Train Wreck for the first time and it went over really well. Everyone sits in a circle, but one person stands in the middle. They call out something, like "I am from Anyang," and anyone else who is from Anyang has to get up and switch seats. The person left in the middle has to call out the next thing. They had a ball with it, and to my delight they started making the sentences more and more complex. We started with just what colors people were wearing, then moved on to birthdays, age, and finally what they like and do not like (drawing, ping pong, dancing, etc).

I give them one 10 minute break every hour. I think it's what they're used to, but I also don't mind the break! I always get some water and try to sit for a few minutes. Then I'll teach them new vocabulary. Today we did body parts (head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes) and some basic clothing words. We went over the words by me pointing to various parts of my body and having them tell me the word. I also write all the words on the board and point to different words and have them call out to me. We do some recitation, but I try not to do too much. It's what they're programmed to do, and I want to switch that up a little bit. (Oh--I am also trying to get them to stop standing up when they give an answer.) Then we'll run through some games to get them to learn the words... Hangman is a favorite, but we also play Telephone and Flyswatter. Flyswatter is when I write all the words up on the board, divide the class into 2 teams, and then have one person from each team race up to the board to touch whatever word I call out. I also made up a harder version of that game, where the kids have to run up to the board and write out the word correctly.

Then I have them write the new vocabulary on a note card I give them, with English on one side and Chinese on the other. At the end of the class, I am going to tie the cards together to make a little booklet for them of everything they have learned in the class. It's a bit difficult, because I only brought materials for 20 students, but the school made it so we are teaching two, 8-day sessions to two completely different classes (of the same age). Hopefully I'll have enough note cards! Paper here is really, really thin in an effort to make as much paper from every bit of tree as possible.

That normally takes the morning (of course there are variations on this, but that's the rough idea). If not, Heads-up 7-up has become really handy.

In the afternoon, I try to do some kind of drawing something. Yesterday we made biopoems, an idea I got from Angie. I changed theirs a little bit to make them easier, but they went like this:
My name is_____.
I am from_____.
I am_____years old.
I like_______.
I do not like_______.
My name is_____.
I told them to decorate it however they wanted, which took a decent amount of time. I was surprised to see how meticulous the students are with anything artistic. We have done BINGO a few times (like write a number in each box, then go around and ask how old people are to fill in the ages, etc) and every single one of them used some kind of straight edge to draw the lines. So whenever I plan something that involves drawing, it takes up a decent bit of time. Anyway, once they finished the biopoems, I had them come up one by one and read it to the class and show their drawing. About 80% of them drew something about the Olympics... I think I will make the Olympics the topic for the last day of class.

Today I think I am going to ask them to draw themselves and label at least 10 body parts or pieces of clothing that we learned this morning. Then maybe after that we'll play hangman or something. I'm running out of ideas for games. Their English is so poor it's hard to come up with basic games they'll understand without too much explaining.

Oh, the translators. The school provides us each with one translator. Fanny is excellent, but the others are really awful. Some of the 13-year-olds in my class understand what I am saying better than they can. And the translators are English teachers! It's really just like having one more student in the class, so I have to pick things that are easy to explain with body language or by example. Eventually they get the hang of it, though, and when they do they remember it for the future.

I can't tell if they're bored of the games or not. I don't think so. The fact that almost all of them smile through the games and appear to be concentrating is probably a good sign.