Bruce Teaching English In China: Second Week of Limbo in Shantou

- Visited Jinshao Park

Plus I love how in China people just put up illegal advertisements for fake tax receipts and no one really seems to care

I know my knee is fine

Me and my compatriots at work played a pick-up game of football in an American-style park in Shantou

Now it was backed to being stared at instead of the starer but it was alright because I got to make fun of my boss for sweating so much
My boss could fill a reservoir with the amount of sweat he produces which makes him a really good defensive lineman when he takes his shirt off because he’s as slippery as an eel

I’m glad I chose the day after as Chinese language study day because the word for “to block” 碍is pronounced the same as the Chinese word for “to love” 爱 so if I tried to tell the Chinese fellows who were playing with us to block my boss it would have sounded like I was trying to tell them “Hey! Can you please love my boss! He’s penetrating right through the offensive line!”

Life in limbo

So we're still waiting for approval for teaching so we had to move ourselves into Shantou University and I can't complain as we got nicer housing and we got to decide each other's spirt animals (I was a terrier that said, "I♥女“)

My view out the back door

After we decorated our living room

Our drawing of our spirit animals-I was a terrier that said, "I♥女"

Keeping up the Chinese studying

A friend of mine gave me a Chinese children’s book before I left for China and I read it today just to practice and I learned the value of having a good English-Chinese Dictionary

So there was this story about a little mouse who wanted to get his tooth pulled out and he went to the dentist’s office but the line was just too long so he tried to cut in line.

Of course the little monkey, little duck, and little fox all shouted at him “不要插队呀！”which means from the context of the story, “Don’t cut in line”
But then I go to Pleco (an iPad app I use for my English-Chinese dictionary) and I learned that 插队 which is supposed to mean “to cut in line” instead means “(of school graduates in cities) be sent to live and work in the countryside as a member of a production team for a number of years (a practice during the 1960’s and 1970’s)” so with that information it sounds like the little monkey, duck, and fox are yelling at the mouse who cut in line, “Do you want to be sent to a work camp!”

I think when/if I go back to America and I see someone cut in line I’ll yell, “HEY! SEND THAT GUY TO A WORK CAMP!”

Plus I had a funny encounter with autocorrect on my iPad flashcard app,

So I wanted to say 司means "company, control" and this is what it turned into

Got to observe a class on Tuesday afternoon

So TFC set it up that on Tuesday afternoon we got to see a local Chinese teacher teach English and the one thought I had in my head now is, “OH MY GOODNESS I WANT MY OWN STUDENTS!”

I won’t get them until 2-4 weeks into the semester (which started on September 3^rd) do to snafus in the process of placing us but I want to be able to teach English now more than ever

We did it in order to learn how to observe a class which I didn’t fully understand until the teacher called on a student to answer and I said under my breath a lot louder than I should of, “Come on…come on… you can do it”

My boss then gave me a nudge to the rib cage and that’s when I remembered, “Oh yeah, I’m in an imaginary glass box”

There were some really good highlights in that class

The kids were learning about how to say good morning and they saw this little music video with virtual characters that we’re convinced had subliminal messages

The verse goes, “Good morning to you, good morning to you, we’re all in our places with sun shining faces” and they show the sun’s rays rotating in a way that’s reminiscent of those Cartoon Network series where the main villain is trying to hypnotize the hero
Then there’s this part where one of the virtual characters is doing the “Stanky Leg” dance but luckily these kids have probably never seen or heard of Urban Dictionary

Then I guess Tony the Tiger must have taught them how to say the English name “Grace” because when that word came up on the vocabulary list, 31 students said, “Grrrrace”

Then we actually got to teach the kids which was the best part

So the teacher on a whim decides to have the 11 of us foreign fellows come up and talk to the students and I just happened to pick the group that had a boy who lived in Boston, Massachusetts for 2 years so he already had me covered

We went through the day’s lesson in like 20 seconds and then I just said, “Alright, I’m going to teach you some basketball words” and we spent probably 7 minutes on “Man-to-man defense”, “Zone defense”, “Set a pick”, etc.
Then I said, “Alright, I’m going to teach you some angry English words” and as soon as I wrote down “Psycho” with the Chinese definition of it, 3 more kids came running to my group

I was proud of them that they were able to pronounce “Psycho” because when you think about it, if you’ve never seen the prefix “psy-“ before and try to read it, it’s really hard

Session on increasing Culture of Achievement

Info Cards

So on the first day they suggest us having all of the children fill out information cards about likes and dislikes, favorite subject, opinions on elephants, etc. and I think I’m going to use that because that’s a really nice way to get to know 50-80 students in my future class
That and on the back I’m going to have them draw a picture of their Chinese name because some of them have names like “Gold Mountain”, “Multi-colored clouds”, “Silver head”, etc.

Name Poems

If I happen to get 6^th or 7^th grade students, I’m going to have them do this where they use the letters of their English name and fill in the letters with adjectives describing themselves
Mine (that I wrote up on the board to applause and laughter during the meeting)

B-Burlesque (which upon further review I should have went with Bootylicious)
R-Rude
U-Ugly

This was sarcasm that a lot of people didn’t get. I mean I don’t turn heads (or entire bodies) walking down the street but people were offering me self-confidence boosting exercises after I got back to my seat (If only I started with bootylicious then they would have understood my sarcasm)

C-Coarse
E-Erudite (my personal favorite)

Then I had a friend who, for the sake of anonymity, is called Camille (who, just for disclosure, I had called Catherine and Kirsten before this) and she wouldn’t tell me her name poem so I just started making one up for her

So I said “C is for caring…A is for arduous…” and for some reason I blanked and I thought her name was Care Bear and so I said “R is for…” and she just looked at me and said, “What the f***? Did you get my name wrong again”
And then I learned my second lesson, if you honestly thought someone’s name was Care Bear, you should not tell them you thought their name was Care Bear or else they will get even angrier

Plus I learned a cool activity to introduce vocabulary

One of the Shantou University English teachers told us about how she fills balloons up with air and writes the vocab words on them so that when a student catches it in class they have to say it
I know another alteration is to get a beach ball and write on the surface the vocab words with permanent markers so that when a student catches it they have to say the vocabulary word that their hand touches

Finally got to teach a little bit

So as part of the supplementary training they have us doing right now, TFC volunteered us (and we would have all volunteered ourselves anyway because we really miss teaching-no sarcasm) for an English Corner where we taught English to 7^th and 8^th grade students

Me and my partner taught 7^th grade English and we did the basic stuff like, “Say your name”, “Say your dream of what you want to be when you grow up”, etc.

My favorite response was when we asked kids if there was one place that you want to go when you grow up, where is it, and one kid said, “the moon”

Then we played a high-stakes game of Simon Says (and by high stakes I mean my English abilities were on the line)

So we played two rounds and in the first round I got knocked out early on what I still hold was a bad call by the Simon but I was willing to let it pass because I knew we’d play another round (because I was the co-teacher and we weren’t going to stop until I won a round)
So in the second round it was me and this little girl wonder whose English was really good and although I was excited to see an English student with really good English, I was determined to crush her

In this duel between me and her we alternated the Simon role and she tried to get me with a really low voice “Simon says touch your stomach” I parried it with a game-winning “Simon says touch the back of your head” and when I saw her touch her eye I let out a resounding “YES!”

Second day of English Corner

My original plan called for teaching the children Angry English, “You look like a tomato, you look like a fish, etc.” but someone claimed the chalkboard before I could (and then the person who claimed it ended up taking their group outside anyways)

So then I had to think of games to play on the fly so I invented this game of “throw the bouncy ball at the water bottle”

I split my team up into one team of boys and one team of girls and the way it worked was I put a water bottle near a wall and arranged the two teams like firing squads facing the wall
I would ask an English question and if they got it right I would give them the ball and if they threw the ball at the water bottle then that team got a point

My favorite game that we played was Big Wind Blows

Basically it’s like musical chairs where everyone lines up in a circle and a person, “the big wind” is in the middle. The Big Wind then spins around in a circle giving the jazz hands and says, “The big wind blows on somebody wearing (insert clothing item here)” and a person wearing that item will have to change places with somebody wearing that item but if you’re the last one not in a seat, then you’re now the big wind

I think the kids (especially the boys) got a big kick out of it because they got to make fun of their friends when their friend was “The Big Wind” spinning around in a circle looking like a fairy

Then I was really scraping the bottom of the barrel (because I never planned to go outside) so we played “red light, green light” and “ninja” but they had to use English

My favorite story from that second day came from the group that reneged on using the blackboard

They decided to play 20 questions with their students where the students got to ask their teacher any question but they had to use English. So the brightest student goes, “Do you like….uh….moon people?”

Teacher: “Alright, they’re called aliens, now repeat after me…”

Climbed mountain behind Shantou University

There’s this really cool mountain that I get to see every day out of my apartment’s window and the thing is that I had no idea how to get up there

My first attempt I accidentally walked into an area run by Hong Kong Triads (think Chinese version of the Mafia) which I only knew after I had walked around there for an hour and seeing a guy in a really nice car washing out a luggage case with a hose
The second time I figured it out and to get up there I had to go up a big Buddhist complex where people also live (it’s kind of like if St. Peter’s cathedral in Vatican City had an apartment complex on top of it)

So you’d be sitting there looking at the beautiful architecture thinking, “Wow, this is really nice” then you’d hear a toilet flush and some guy without a shirt walking out scratching his stomach

This tower reminded a lot of folks of the evil tower in The Lord of the Rings with the burning eye

Hung out with some students

So my boss on Friday said, “Hey, I need two volunteers to have an informal English conversation with students on Saturday” and I just threw my hand up in the air thinking, “Why not?”

I looked around and I was the only person that raised his hand which made me feel really awkward that I was the only one who wanted to talk to children

My boss just said meet at the front gate of the middle school on Shantou University’s campus at 3 pm and I did, I was there 15 minutes early expecting some kind of format or guidelines

Nope, 4 high school age students showed up 10 minutes late and looked at me with that, “Well…what now?” kind of look
I called their teacher and she told me that I was just supposed to do something with them, and that’s all she told me

Great

Luckily those kids were really smart and had really good English

We went to the Shantou University Lake Pavillion and talked for 3 hours about life in China, manboys, etc.

These students are just about to start 10^th grade, and they are already training for China’s version of the ACT (高考) which they take at the end of their senior year
They have to live on their high school’s campus in order to cut down on time wasted going to and from school (they get to go home on the weekends but, as I learned whenever I said, “You can go home whenever you want if I’m talking too much”, they really don’t do much on the weekends except surf the internet)
I tried to get them to talk a lot in English but they just weren’t having it

I once asked where they wanted to go in the US if they could go to any city and one girl said she wanted to go to New York because that’s where Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch is

Once I told her that Neverland is actually in LA, you could have seen the “OH” look on her face from a mile away

The last hour I just gave them the names of some English songs

They said they wanted rock music, so I gave them Metallica, I think they’ll be good for a while with that
I also gave them two Tim McGraw songs (If you’re reading this and Live Like You Were Dying) because they liked the background music

Bruce Teaching English In China

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Second Week of Limbo in Shantou

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