The day before my first day as a teacher

Before my first day of teaching at Summer Institute

• I love our Chinese teacher at SI
• His English name is Billy and he puts just the right amount of humor in every lesson he teaches.
• One lesson involved us BLAST fellows (those TFC members who aren’t that good at Chinese yet) trying to correct Billy (who was playing the role of a naughty student) with Chinese commands
• We got to walk up to the front of the blackboard in order to simulate the role of the teacher and one fellow was instantly flabbergasted when Billy misbehaved and while he was flipping through his notebook trying to find the right phrase to use he muttered under his breath just loud enough so everyone could hear “Oh sh**”
• So note to self, get those Chinese correcting children phrases memorized
• Then one of the BLAST fellows who was at better at Chinese was graded a lot harder by Billy so if she pronounced the Chinese phrase just a little bit wrong Billy would laugh and say, “听不懂 HA HA” (I don’t understand HA HA) and continue misbehaving which was absolutely hilarious
• Fun assignments in SI
• So for our 3-hour reflection time on Friday afternoon we actually had a really cool assignment
• Our 12 person reflection group was split up into teams of 6 and we had an hour to train 100 people in Lincang, Yunnan, China the English phrase, “Learning English Is Fun!”
• I was really excited because I was still in my American mind-set that this won’t be so bad because people are friendly and willing to comply with strangers’ wishes
• It took me 20 seconds into the activity when I (willingly and unprovoked) yelled at the top of my voice in a crowded restaurant “请问一下！” (Let me please ask you a question!) that Chinese people are really shy
• We found out that in order to get people to say it we had to basically pry it out of them just to get started and then we had to teach them this phrase
• We found that kids had the easiest time saying it but were the most recalcitrant to talk even though attracting their attention was really easy
• Luckily 4 out of 6 of us spoke pretty good Chinese but I’m still at that level of Chinese where I might be able to say but it’s really slow and mechanical sounding
• It was basically me going up to someone and saying really slowly in Chinese “We…are…playing…a…game” which if a stranger came up to you on the sidewalk and said that, that would be extremely creepy
• Then a Chinese fellow or an American fellow would swoop in just in time to save the situation
• And what made it more creepy was the fact that we were yelling this at a bunch of naked children in a park
• We were able to get one 4^th grade child to say the phrase at this park and then he told one of the Chinese fellows that he could get his friends to say it but we had to run there
• We all thought, “GREAT! Let’s Go”
• So we’re running and running and all of a sudden we come to this fountain that’s pretty big that had about 12 butt-naked children in it
• So here we are at the top of our voices leading a bunch of butt-naked children in a chant of “Learning English is Fun!” which somehow in China doesn’t result in the cops being called on you
• And what sucks is the fact that we were so close to getting 12 people closer to our goal
• Us: “Learning”
• Naked Children: “Learning”
• Us: “English”
• Naked Children: “English”
• Us: “Is”
• Naked Children: “Is”
• Us: “Fun”
• Naked Children: “Fun”
• Us: “Learning English”
• Naked Children “Learning English”
• Us: “Is Fun”
• Naked Children: “Is Fun”
• Us: “Learning English Is Fun!”
• Naked Children: “rabba…rabba”
• Oh, the joy of teaching little children
• In the end we got 83 people to say the phrase
• I’m glad we had it though because toward the end it really did become less about the goal and more about just teaching people English which was rewarding in it of itself
• Plus we beat the other team which also helped
• It was a rewarding experience to go to just random people who would normally never even talk to and just interact with them whether it was a mother of 5 or just a construction worker
• Got assigned my Summer Institute Class
• So each fellow is assigned a class to teach while we’re learning to be a teacher so after one week of training the training wheels aren’t completely off but they’re just about to be torn off
• I will be teaching 42 rising 5^th grade students English and I’m sure each one of them will be a darling angel who will never misbehave
• I’ve spent about 10 hours doing 3 lesson plans so they better not foil my plans but if I do I won’t get mad, it happens
• Hopefully they like our theme
• My co-teacher and I came up with the theme, “Go for the Gold” because it’s the summer Olympics and our 42 students will be split up into 7 countries to get medals based on good behavior, test scores, etc.
• I have a feeling that the gold medal for basketball will be a lot more desired than the gold medal for handball
• I’m going to have them sign a pledge with the Notre Dame slogan, “Play like a champion today!” and I’m going to post it outside so that every time they walk into the classroom they see this sign to remind themselves that they will play like a champion
• Making those posters for class was fun
• Thank goodness my co-teacher could draw too

• I love my Chinese roommate’s idea for showing kids boiling water
• He took a paper cup and tried to put it over a candle in order to show kids how to boil water with results you probably could already expect

• Classroom Decorating
• It may look like Ebay threw up in it, but I’m sure proud of it