9/2/2013-First Week Of School

• Our school got renovated
• We got a nice little paint job and new doors with locks that work 100% of the time, every time!

                                     

  

• The first day of school that wasn’t an actual day of school
  

  • So before the actual classes started on Monday, September 2^nd, all of us teachers (including foreigners like me) had to go to the school on Friday, August 30^th to: 
  • Prepare my lesson plan for the week which was giving English names to all of my students 
  • Help supervise the morning session of the first day of school that wasn’t an actual day of school where all of the new first graders would come with their parents and go through orientation (if your arm falls off, this is where you go for treatment).
  • Also, some students from other grades would help clean up the school, help their teachers move around stuff in the classroom, etc.  
  • Help supervise the afternoon session where all of the students would come in and collect their textbooks for the year (and there were a lot of books)
    

• There was only one small problem
• Shenzhen got hit with a typhoon on Friday morning and so the first school day that wasn't actually a school day was cancelled

• But the best part was that no one got the text message that’s supposed to go out to all of the parents telling them that school is cancelled when there’s a red level typhoon warning 
• And I didn’t get that message either. Sure, when I woke up that morning I just thought it was raining pretty hard but not “that” hard. 
• I was already at the school because I’m not made of sugar and so a heavy downpour didn’t deter me from going to work, and parents were driving there kids up to the school and just saying, “Well, best of luck Johnny, hope everything goes well”. 
• I finally received a message through the Shui Wei Elementary School Teacher’s QQ Group (QQ is the Chinese Gchat/AIM/MSN messenger) which meant that those teachers who already were at home weren’t going to leave their house no matter how much you paid them to. 
• But none of the parents got this message so the parents were still coming with their children but there weren’t enough teachers to cope with this. 
• So I saw a bunch of second graders just diddling around, looking like they were bored (and as I’ve found as a teacher, the more bored your students are, the likelier they are to break things), so I decided to just try and herd all of the students I could into a classroom and watch Mr. Bean for as long as they thought it was funny.  
• Luckily, most of the parents got the message about an hour or so after they dropped their children off and now I know that if I see a red level typhoon warning on the TV or on the internet, I don’t have to go to work.  
• 1st grade orientation
•   For 1^st grade orientation, only 1^st grade students, their parents, and teachers were allowed to be in the building as we didn’t want these students who were just coming from kindergarten to be overwhelmed by how many people are taller than them. 
•  It was a really great experience because it’s been awhile since one of my own students pointed at me and called me a foreigner as if I’m an alien from Mars as opposed to being a real person.

• Actual First Day

 

 

•  Home visit
• Starting this year, every week all of us teachers (in groups of 3) go out for a home visit to one of our students and this week we chose a newly arrived 2nd grade students home
• This student just came to Shenzhen with his older sister, younger brother, mother, father, and their father's friend from Chaozhou (one of the poorer regions of Guangdong)
• They all live in a 600 square foot apartment with three rooms so it's a pretty tight squeeze but they are making the most of it
• The father, mother, and family friend all came here for work (like most people who come to Shenzhen) and the little ones are adjusting as best as they can
• The thing is that n Shenzhen, students start studying English from grade 1 but most of the other places in China start studying around 3rd grade so the older sister has a 3 year gap to make up while the oldest brother has about a one year gap on top of the pressure of being the new kid in the class
• Here's pictures of their house (that I asked for permission to take and put on the internet) just so you can see the living conditions of some of our students

• This week's activity-giving English names
• For my first week of classes, I gave my 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th graders English graders while my goal for my 1^st grade classes was to try and amaze them in such a way so that I pique their interest in English and not scare them away with all of my foreign devil words 
• And yes, giving English names takes up an entire class 
• The thing is that I have about 50 students in a class and I have to figure out a way to give them names that they like (like Egbert for some reason) but in a fast way 
• Last year I gave every single student an English name (all 800 of them) but it was a failure because I let the kids keep their name cards…and about 85% of them lost those name cards and the only thing that helped those kids remember their names was those name cards 
• So now, I’m going to make them give me their name cards and I’m going to make them write their names in their English books so that they don’t forget 

 

• My favorite namecards
• Some of them are good because they were drawn well but others serve as a a warning to me as to why I can't just let kids do things by themselves with no supervision







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