Teaching Again

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I've returned here to HUST, one of the top 12 universities in China, to "teach" in an English Summer Camp for undergraduate students. I'm one about 15 American teachers here for the program, now in its 12th year. I was last here for this Summer Camp in 2010. It is interesting coming back to teach undergraduates again after 4 years to get a sense of how Chinese students have changed and what this might reflect about changes in China itself.

There's little actual teaching in this 3 week program. My approach is to give students a chance to use the English they know and to have fun doing it in order to build their confidence in speaking English. I work with about 40 students everyday, half in the AM; half in the PM. All have just finished their freshmen year. The teaching day starts at 8:30 and runs 3 hours. There's about a 3 hour break for lunch and a rest; then another 3 hour session. While the break is long, it's appreciated. Summers are hot and humid here in Wuhan. I'm pretty drained after 3 hours keeping the action going.

While the students get something out of the program, the reality is that I probably get more. A few nuggets I've picked up so far:


• There are an increasing number of foreign students from Africa studying here and elsewhere in China. I happened to sit with a student from Tanzania who had just completed a Masters in Computer Security and was looking forward to heading back home after being away for two years. He had wanted to study in Australia, but wasn't accepted. China not only accepted him, but offered a healthy scholarship. He told me that he hears that educational benefits like he was offered is part of China's approach to furthering it's political and economic relations with African countries. There's also a daily African News program on the English language CCTV channel here, which seems to underscore how focused China is on Africa.
• There's a sort of algorithm to admit high school graduates to Chinese universities. Test scores are paramount in the process. Students submit a ranked list of universities and majors. Depending on their scores, students may get admitted to their top choice university, but to their third or fourth ranked major. So, for example, some of my students wanted to be business majors, but are Japanese majors instead. Changing majors isn't easy, unless a student wants to shift into a low-demand department. The result: many students feel stuck and are concerned that there lives are ruined. The problem is that the nature of the college admission system has led high school students to game the system. The emphasis is on getting into a quality university, no matter what the price in terms of their academic focus.
• This year I again asked my students to rank their top social concerns. Unemployment or underemployment has consistently made it to the top of the list every year I've been here. More students are being admitted to university and there's a sense that the economy can't keep up its current growth rate, which will lead to fewer opportunities by the time graduation comes around. Also high on the list of concerns is the quality of education. What came up on lists the first time ever in the years I've been doing this is "terrorism". While we haven't heard much about it, it seems there's a separatist group in a large province in the northwest with a relatively small population but significant natural resources. The group has been placing bombs in public places, initially only in the province itself, but recently in other provinces. When I asked whether this was concern from a political or personal perspective, I was surprised that many fear being victims of an act of terrorism.
• There's more control over access to the internet than I remember. I'm amazed at how many sites I've tried to reach unsuccessfully. Of course, government control is only an impediment to students, not a barrier. They somehow find a way around many, though not all, of these restrictions.


More about life on the HUST campus in a future blog...watch for it!

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