Bruce Teaching English In China: 2012

Saturday, December 8, 2012

I made it to 50 blog posts! Mid-November to Early December 2012

What do you do when a student throws a spinning top at your face?

It’s one of those situations where all of the training and learning I’ve done as part of being a teacher and how to deal with a difficult situation just went right out the window and that feeling of just wanting to beat a kid to death just takes over

And it was no accident either, he was probably a good 20 yards away, there were no students or adults around me, so I knew he was aiming for me.

And it was a big top too, it was probably about the size of my fist and had a bunch of plastic ridges

This time I was able to restrain myself (because it didn’t actually hit me), snatched the remaining spinning tops out of his hand, and grabbed his bookbag with all of his books and things in it and told him “You don’t get these back until I see your mother”

Luckily, I had good luck and figured out an appropriate punishment

So we were supposed to have Sports Day right after mid-terms this year, but 1 of the 2 days got cancelled because of rain and we had no plans to make it up, but luckily the day that the kid threw a top at my face it was announced that the next day we would have the make-up sports day

So the next morning, all of the kids came into school, the principal announced that the classes for the day had been cancelled, and all the kids were excited that instead of taking math quizzes they would get to compete in sports the entire day.

I waited until after the announcement was made, went right to the classroom that the student who threw the top at my face was in, and I looked at him straight in the eyes and I said, “Guess who isn’t playing sports today?”

Student: “…I don’t know”
Me: “…Yoooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu”

I then informed him that he would be spending the entire day in my office, sitting in a chair, and looking at the cabinets in the English office

My plan was going to work great, until it didn’t

Apparently Sports Day in China is a really big deal

I think no less than 7 teachers yelled at me, saying things along the lines of “WHAT? YOU CAN’T TAKE AWAY SPORTS DAY!” (to which I probably shouldn’t have snarkily replied, “Well it’s too late now, I just did“)

You would have thought that I was the Grinch who stole Sports Day and I didn’t understand why they were on the side of the child

I think my argument was somewhere along the lines of “HE THREW A TOP AT MY FACE!!!! HE THREW A TOP AT MY FACE!!!! HE…THREW…A…TOP…AT…MY….FACE!!!!!

To me, at the time, it sounded like a good argument

They made it seem like if he didn’t participate in Sports Day, that this was the deciding factor in how the rest of his life was going to take shape

They said that he had to compete for his class or else his class would suffer (to which I probably shouldn’t have replied “good”) and I said just have his score be a zero

Then I gave them two other options (have the average score of the event be the missing student’s score so the overall average wouldn’t be affected or just have another student take his place in the event) to which they all said no and that’s when I was really suspicious about why they wanted him to compete so bad

So finally we went to the principal to sort it out and he sided with me that he shouldn’t participate in Sports Day (maybe because the student THREW A TOP AT MY FACE!) but he just had to accompany me as I refereed the heart-stopping action of 1^st grade shot put

Overall it was a fun day, a lot of students had fun, the kid WHO THREW A TOP AT MY FACE was bored out of his mind from what I saw, I made a lot of students laugh, I accidentally made 2 students cry like I always do, and it was a really good Friday

Why do Chinese elementary students cry so much?

I guess maybe it’s been a long time since I was an elementary school student, but man do Chinese students in Shenzhen cry a lot

Even if I correct their English I see them get really disappointed, and it’s not like I tell them, “NO YOU’RE ENGLISH IS WRONG AND THEREFORE YOUR DESCENDANTS FOR 7 GENERATIONS WILL EAT EGGSHELLS FOR SUBSTINENCE!!!”

But even when we’re outside playing a game for English corner, if a kid falls in China, the automatic thing to do is cry (and this is a 3^rd-grader we’re talking about who did this) whereas in America, at least when I was a kid, if I got to hit a kid or fall down in a game, I would be like, “Let’s do that again!”
I remember one time, I was just flipping 1^st-grade students in between classes because…I could, and I flipped one kid but another kid was too close so that kid who was too close got kicked right underneath her right eye and of course she started crying

But then I remembered, “Oh kids like me flipping them” and so I just flipped the kid who was crying and she stopped crying and said, “again, again!”

I know why Chinese students misbehave

So I had this concept that Chinese students would be well-behaved angels and then I learned when I got here that you have to teach them how to behave just like every other student on the face of the universe and now I know why
1. No formal punishment

In America, if you misbehave (at least at my school), I remember you would go to detention, if you still misbehaved you had ISS (in-school suspension) where you looked at a wall for 8 hours for a day, and if you really misbehaved you had OSS (Out-of-school suspension) where you just got sent home

There was a nice list of “if a student does this, punish them this way”, it was pretty efficient, and it was kind of easy

In China, it’s definitely not like that

The system is, go to the home room teacher (if he or she is there in his or her office), and she’ll deal with you (I say she because most of the home room teachers at my school are female)

If the home room teacher is nice, then there’s no punishment, the home room teacher just tells the student go back to the classroom and don’t bug me again

So if it’s like that, why should a student fear punishment? Your guess is as good as mine

If the homeroom teacher is mean, she’ll probably chastise the student (A lot) and that’s an effective method because if they’re tiny, it really scares them straight
But if you’re like me, and you don’t yell a lot and you’re Chinese isn’t that good, if you try to chastise them then it doesn’t have as big as an effect so they’re not afraid of you (unless you’re like me and take their bookbags, that scares them)

2. Chinese students go to the next grade no matter what their test scores or grades

There was a kid who last year didn’t get higher than 33% in any one of his 4^th grade classes, went to the 5^th grade with no questions asked
It’s just the view in China is that you only get 9 years of compulsory education (even though there’s 12 years of schooling) so if a kid only gets 9 years of a free education , they don’t want to waste one of those years learning the exact same thing

I believe he should have stayed in the 4^th grade until he could master the subjects (like his own language, because to me that seems like a pretty important thing to learn if you plan on living in China) but I’m actually in the minority view that students should be held back

The thing is, what becomes his motivation to study?
He’s already behind if he’s failing, then you’re going to move him to a grade that has even harder material and he hasn’t even mastered the basics yet. This hardly seems like a formula for graduating a school full of Rhodes Scholars but I’m sure there’s a good reason out there why these kids keep going

Teaching them English songs

So far I’ve taught them two English songs, “Hello, Goodbye” by the Beatles (which you think would be pretty easy because there are like 10 words in the entire song and the chorus for “Na Na Na Na, Hey Hey Hey, Goodbye"

So my taking of bookbags is a pretty effective system dealing with the troublesome student, but then I felt like the other students in my class were at a loss for things to do while I had to deal with the bad student so I taught them a song to sing to the bad student as he or she went to the home room teacher to get punished by them too

Basically, as the bad student is walking out of my classroom to go get punished, the entire classroom behind him or her is singing “Na Na Na Na, Na Na Na Na, Hey Hey Hey, Goodbye!”

I even taught them to wave their arms in the air like their waving goodbye to somebody

I first got the idea because I’m a big Chicago White Sox fan and every time the opposing team’s pitcher head’s back to the bullpen, we sing the chorus of “Na Na Na Na, Hey Hey Hey, Goodbye”

Then one day, when I was thinking of English songs to teach my students, I thought, “What are some really easy English songs…Oh, I know"
Then I thought, “But how can I incorporate this into my classroom…Oh, I know”

My kids (the well-behaving ones at least) love it

First, I sing it twice so they know how to say it, then they say it with me twice, then we sing it with our arms waving in the air, and just about every student is smiling when we sing this song

Then, we practice on the best students in the class by kicking them out of the class (because we all know the best students in the class are the least likely to be kicked out) as we sing the chorus to “Na Na Na Na, Hey Hey Hey, Goodbye”

The first time I did this I forgot to tell the good students that this was just practice and they weren't actually being kicked out, and they had this look on their face like I just killed their puppy

In actual practice, it’s extremely effective

Before, the kid who was getting punished would try to prolong the situation, but now, when he or she sees all of his friends singing him goodbye, he or she gets makes a beeline for the door because they don’t like being ridiculed

Now every time I say goodbye to my students to the day, they sing me this song

I think of all the things I’m going to teach this year, that song is going to be the one that sticks

Then I tried to teach them “Hello, Goodbye” by the Beatles

Like I said, there’s probably 10 different English words in the entire song so it should be pretty easy, right?

Sort of, the first couple of times I taught it I thought it would be alright without a piece of paper that the lyrics were printed on, and then I found out that that works if you’re teaching 10 students and trying to extrapolate that to 50 students is alright if you’re Teacher of the Year material (which I’m not)

After I actually gave each students a copy of the lyrics for them to look at, then everything went great

You kind of have to sing it with them at first, but then they get the hang of it

I think they liked watching the music video more than singing the actual song

But in all honesty, I also liked the music video more, the Beatles dressed up as if they were about to perform in front of a lot of elementary school students by wearing colorful neon military uniforms.

Our school has a lot of cool events

They had one event where the students had to recite passages from their social studies textbook in cool and unique ways and it was pretty entertaining

Climbing Wu Tong Shan - Shenzhen's Highest Mountain

I've never been in a cloud before, but me and my girlfriend got a great chance to be in one climbing this mountain

I think my favorite moments came when other people would stare at me and my girlfriend as we climbed the mountain (we were in a part of Shenzhen that no tourists go to) and people would stare at us so obviously that they would turn their head and body around to look at us as we walked past them
One time, a guy was (obviously） staring at us and his friend that was with us asked him, "What? Do you see a beautiful woman or something" and the guy said, "No, I'm looking at the guy" and, in a show of me having a good sense of humor, I turned around and winked at him

The town you leave from before you hike up

Beautiful

You guessed it...still beautiful

When I first saw the railing for these stairs coupled with the fog, I thought, "Did Peter Jackson supervise the construction of this mountaintop so it looks like something out of the Lord of the Rings?"

Yep that's my girlfriend in the white

She's still my girlfriend in that picture too

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Second Month of Teaching

Second Month of Teaching

Trying to actually teach things is hard

After a month of training I thought I could teach really well, then I sat and waited at my previous employer for a while (about a month) waiting to be placed and so I didn’t practice a whole lot, and now that I’m back in the swing of things I have to remember how to teach again

I think kids for the most part get it, I’m still doing the whole 3 step approach of TFA lore (Introduction to New Material, Guided Practice, Independent Practice) but the thing is that introducing new English terms to these children is like trying to teach a 3-year old how to swim

You teach the 3-year old exactly where to put his arms and legs, how to move his arms and legs, but every time you put him in the pool he just drops like a rock

Not all of my students are like that

I would say 80-85% of my kids get it, then I have about 15-20% of kids who just want to read bad Chinese anime through my class

At least I make those students cry

The taking of book bags is extremely effective

I have got to say, I’m so proud of myself for thinking of this

I can’t speak Chinese that well, so if I criticize a child he or she is just going to laugh or not understand and if I send them to the home teacher, they’re not going to respect me as a disciplinarian

So if I take their book bag as a punishment for getting 3 strikes (not sitting properly, talking out of turn, and so forth) their parents must come to my office to retrieve their book bag

Oh man so many kids cry but I tell them every day, if you misbehave 3 times in my class your parents have to come to see me if you want your book bag, and they don’t believe me until I actually walk out of the room with their book bag, and that’s when reality rears its ugly head

I feel kind of bad because I make students cry sometimes, but then I remember that one of my students gave me a decapitated teddy bear eraser, so I know they’re empathy isn’t quite as deep as the ocean

The lies these kids tell to try and get their book bags back are priceless

One student, who misbehaves in a lot of teachers’ classes, first told me that his parents’ were dead, then when I asked if he had any other head of household told me his entire family was dead (which at that point I knew he was lying), then when I asked him if his entire family is dead, how come his brother came to school today, he literally said, “Oh, he’s only kind of dead”

Then I asked for his parents’ phone number, he got his lies mixed up because he said, “I don’t remember it, they just bought it today” to which I replied, “So you’re dead parents bought a cell phone today?” to which he replied, “They’re going to beat me”

That’s when another teacher chimed in, “They should!”

That child stayed in my office until 6:30 pm (school got out at 4:05 pm) so when his father finally came to school wondering what had happened to his child, you can imagine how mad he was

Then there was another child who enlisted the help of his buddies to try and get his book bag back

The thing is that it would have worked if one kid wasn’t trying to top another kid’s lies (because they're 3rd graders)

First they said he was from very far away (think of a place 30 miles away from a school) which didn’t sound right seeing that I taught at a public school, then they said he did live nearby but his mom and dad work 20 hours a day so they can’t come in to get his bag, then about 10 minutes after they said that his mom walks into my office and scolds that little child

Then we had mid-terms which went extremely awesome

Because I’m an oral English teacher, I have no grades, homework, or tests (imagine the work involved in trying to individually grade 750 students’ oral English ability) so that meant no pressure and I just played jeopardy with every single class to help them review

I don’t know how effective it was but the first graders got a 92% on their English mid-term and I’d like to think the game of Simon Says I played with them helped them at least remember their face from their ear

On a whole I’m not sure how the school did

We’re not the best school in Shenzhen but we’re not the worst, we’re good but we can be better and I see our staff trying hard every day trying to make their school the best school and it’s really inspiring

I do have some responsibilities though

Every day at the start of morning exercises (where every single in the school lines up on the basketball courts) I teach them every day oral English

For example, this last Tuesday I taught them

A: What happened?

B: I don’t know

I taught them this because they always want to say “I don’t know” when I ask them an English question so at least now they can say “I don’t know” in English

Then I’m also in charge of fostering a cross-cultural partnership with an elementary school in an English speaking country

Basically, we’re looking for a school to start a partnership with and it’s really cool so if you know any elementary school that wants to start a partnership with a Chinese elementary school, let me know because I have some good ideas

Food can drives where the loser has to send the winner something that represents their country (like if we lost we would send you a giant 中国结)

Sending teachers or administrators over to your country to learn how you teach students and you can send teachers to our school to learn more about the Chinese education system and Chinese pedagogy

(this is a joke) Share recipes (I’ve learned how to make really good braised eggplant since I’ve been here)， postcards, etc. (teachers or students)

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

About a month after my first day of teaching in Shenzhen

Teaching keeps you busy

That and making friends doesn't leave you a lot of time to maintain a blog, so I'll try my best with this
I teach 18 classes a week of oral English where, as my principal put it, "you're main job is to make students happy"

That means no tests, no homework, no grades, just have fun and try to improve their oral English

It's really a fun job

I teach about 6-7 more classes a week than my co-teachers but the thing is that because I don't have grades or tests it evens out so they don't feel jealous of me and how I have to basically teach 800 students a week

Classroom management is a fun game to play

So I've tried about two management systems in my first two weeks and they both didn't work because I basically was left with my ultimate consequence being sending kids to their homeroom teacher and having them deal with you (which they were afraid of but that means they're not afraid of you)
So now I've got a really good system

Basically it's 3 strikes and you're out, I give them three warnings (on each warning I write their name on the blackboard and give them an X), if they get three X's they have to go to the banzhuren and I take their bookbag, I empty out their bookbag on my desk, and I tell them they owe me 20 bucks or they'll never see their bookbag again

After the first day I added that if their parents come to see me they get their bookbag back for free because I got in a little bit of trouble, but now it's all cool and the kids are very well behaved

Pictures of my school

My office (complete with a decapitated teddy bear eraser some kid gave to me as a present and he said something to me in Chinese when he gave it to me and I hope he wasn't trying to say "you're next")

Every classroom has a flat screen TV which means this school has more resources than my elementary school had in America

Little rascals plotting my untimely demise

Mr. T

You will be part of my blog whether you like it or not

I'm glad we're teaching our kids valuable lessons in school, like how if a stranger offers us a prize for our address, we should take them up on the offer

I show my kids these advertisements of help wanted in factories that if they don't pay attention in my class, I'm going to send them to the factory (not exactly in those words, but kind of) and not make a lot of money. So stay in school!

Today we had a field trip

Which means the students went to go work on a farm and the teachers went to a really nice lunch, walk on the beach, nap, and get paid to do it while the students were about 30 km away

Have I mentioned I loved this job yet?

Alright kids, while your teachers are out having fun, here's some pesticide to play with, knock yourself out (and yes, two kids actually got in a pesticide fight)

Peppers!

Hey kids! You need a little bit more pesticide over here.

DA BEACH!

Alright, no "swinning", I'll try my best

My feet haven't seen the sun in a long time, I'm white, sorry

Shenzhen is awesome

It's basically the perfect place for you if you don't like too much China with your China


YOU CAN SEE BLUE SKIES IN SHENZHEN! There's not a lot of places in China you can say that

They have a lot of cool stuff to do and parks to visit

Deng Xiaoping, the man responsible for helping Shenzhen go from a little small village to a big modern metropolis

Here's where the matchmakers work. It's basically at the bottom of Lian Hua Shan Park and a bunch of old women and men set up their son or daughter (when I walked through that part of the park I was extremely extremely popular) and I'm not even good looking