Teaching life

Since I’m now working for exactly two months in Wuhu, it’s about time to tell something about the teaching experience. To start with my students, I teach children (some just out of the baby stage) from 3 years old to adults from about 28 years. However most students I have are middle school students, I teach about 650 of those students between the age 14 to 16, divided over 11 classes.

So let’s start with this middle school. This one is definitely the most difficult and after 2 months I’m still not completely sure how to deal with this school. The difficult thing is one, that the classes consist of 50 to 60 students and two, most students don’t understand what I mean if I’m speaking English to them. This makes the students lose interest before the lesson has started and makes the classroom a bit difficult to control. Apart from this there is a third problem in this school and that’s a different perspective on teaching and learning. In these classrooms I have encountered several cultural clashes. I’ll not get into much detail in this post, but let’s just say that I expect different things of the students than the Chinese teachers do. The students on the other hand expect a similar teacher to their Chinese teacher, with only a different background. One small example; one student beats another students with an plastic bottle on the head, I call her to explain herself, she stands up and looks down outside the window. I want her to look at me cause I think it’s very rude not to look at the teacher if he asks a question, so I ask her again to explain herself to me. My assistant explains it to her in Chinese, but her behavior doesn’t change. So I send her out of my classroom. The rest of the class thinks this is unfair, but doesn’t protest. One of the students explains to me that looking down for Chinese students towards the teacher, is supposed to show respect for the teacher. It sounds strange but I think it’s true cause I noticed it more often now, actually it happens about every time I ask a question to which the student doesn’t know the answer. This is just one small example of the cultural problems I encounter at this middle school.

Ok, let’s go the small ones. The kindergarten’s are the places where probably the most money is involved, parents send their precious only child to these places to make sure the 3 year old will be ahead when he starts his real education. In China this is almost always an only child and that makes the parents willing to spend/waste/invest a huge amount of money in this child. These kids are learning English from when they are 3 years old! In a city were basically no one speaks any English at all. It’s crazy if you ask me.

So what do I do in these classes? Well I wasn’t looking forward to these classes at first, but these classes actually turn out to be to most easy of the teaching. Well teaching might not be the right word for it. Usually I review some easy words they have learned before and after that we’ll do a game and then class is over. These classes are only 20 minutes and there are always a few girls who accompany the children, and who are quite helpful, which sometimes makes me feel like I only have to be present and think of what to do.

Finally the adult class. This is the only class I am completely on my own, without any assistance. This class is quite easy as well and a bit more serious than the other ones, this is about the only class where, I feel that I’m teaching and where the students can understand most of what I’m saying as long as I speak slowly. My class is spoken English so I don’t need to explain any difficult grammar issues. This class is also a lot smaller and is the only class where I know all the English names of my students. This makes it possible for me to get to know the students and because their English is a bit better than that of those at the middle school, it’s nice to get a little more interesting conversations than the usual “Do you like China?” and “Do you like Chinese food?”

All in all the teaching has been worth to try. I learned a lot here and although it can be difficult sometimes it can be enjoyable on other times. It’s just sad to think in numbers; about 650 or more students at the middle school and only about 10 which I can have a nice conversation with. I’m not sure how long I will stay here, it’s not completely up to me I’m afraid cause they can fire me when there’s no work anymore. However if it’s up to me I’ll stay here until the start of the summer. At least that’s the plan for now.