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