Advertisement
Published: September 15th 2009
Well, I officially started teaching this Monday. The night before my first class I was a night terror, sweat soaked hot mess! Nightmare scenarios replayed in my head time after time and getting any amount of peaceful sleep was not at all an option.
So 8am approaches and I enter my first classroom which is my only Oral class that I have (all the rest are writing). One of my fears was that there would be an ungodly amount of students, but instead I was only subjected to the prying eyes of only 13 students. That was a relief. Then my other fear was that I would be teaching young adults that were not too much younger than myself. Even though these kids are 18/19 and they in fact are not so much younger, my position as the authoritarian in the classroom made me feel older/ or them feel younger. I commanded respect with very little effort, and I realized that my sleepless night had been much anticipation for virtually nothing.
I began to introduce myself and tell them pretty much everything about myself. They all just stared at me dough-eyed as if they were fascinated by my tales.
However, the scenario that I failed to take into account was that I magically thought that they would be able to understand everything I was saying. WRONG! I suppose this is why they call it ESL. The nodding heads in fact were not a sign of agreement but instead a sign of having no clue what I was saying. So there is no way for me to truely know what, if anything they actually got out of my introduction.
I then proceeded to give them English names, as I quickly realized that there would be very little hope of me being able to pronounce their Chinese names, let alone memorize them.
Then I passed out my syllabus, and when explaining the points to them, I realized that there would be absolutely no way for them to accomplish any of the things that I designed for them in such a fixed time. There were some students who could probably take on the task, but there were others who didn't even know what to say when I asked slowly and repeatedly, what their name is? So the disparity of the levels is immense, and I cannot see a way to make others catch up, while challenging the others. So I'm not sure how I'm going to conquer that issue. I will have to speak with my co-teacher, Sophie, about this issue.
Afterwards, I played an icebreaker game with them, in which they appeared to have fun asking each other questions. I barely had enough time for anything else and despite my initial fear that I would have too little time planned, I had in fact planned it out perfectly.
So, it appears that my night terrors were uncalled for, as there was absolutely nothing to be afraid about. My other 2 writing classes later that day went the exact same way. The only thing that threw me for a loop was that my exact same kids in my oral class came pouring into my writing class later that day! I had done all the activities with them and temporarily freaked out as I realized that I had done everything with them already. But that too went over well, as it appears writing takes up more time than speaking.
By the end of the day, I was exhausted! I can see why they do not have us teaching so many hours. It is painfully exhausting to speak so slowly, and look for words to simplify my meanings with. Also, being in the center of attention can be exhausting too, as is listening really really hard to comprehend what these students are saying in their very thick Chinese accents.
However, I have Tuesdays and Fridays off which is awesome! and the rest of my classes are the first thing in the morning. So Monday is my heavy day where I teach 3 classes, and the rest are a piece of cake.
So far, I think I like teaching but fellow employees have given me every scenario that is bound to happen within this semester, so we shall see if my experiences will coincide.
Other than that, life in Nanchang has been great. I have been bonding with a few more of the Foreign teachers in my building, and I must say everyone is very nice. There was a big dinner for the Foriegn Affairs Department where all the big wigs from the University came and took us to this fancy hotel restaurant. The food was disgusting and I got sick earlier the next morning. It is often strange to note that in China, the nicer the place appears, the more sick the food will make you. I have yet to have any issues with street food or even food from the cafeteria. A few other people told me the same thing. I am guessing that fancier places probably spend so much money on the dressing of their place that they neglect to change the oil, or probably cook bad food, all in the name of saving money. While smaller, tackier places only have products to worry about and will spend more on that, as they cannot afford to make anyone sick off of their food.
My computer crashed and burned the other day as well thanks to my proxy to access facebook. So just so you know guys, I will probably not be on facebook for quite some time, unless I use someone else's firewall cause I don't want that to happen again. It took the repair man like 4 hours to fix it and still I ended losing a mass amount of info that I stored on my C drive. That sucks.
Then there have been issues with the power being off and on. Since I've been here there have been about 4 days every week that the power goes off sometimes for a little while other times for the entire day! That is getting annoying and I don't know who to cuss out about this problem. I suppose this is China, no one seems to know what, how, when or why anything is happening! Seriously.
Well I must sign out, as it is time for me to get ready for my only Wednesday class. So I hope this blog finds everyone is good spirits and health and I'm still thinking about you all and hoping that I have not been forgotten. hehee.
Cheers
Latifa
Advertisement
Tot: 0.13s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 6; qc: 43; dbt: 0.0688s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Kiya
non-member comment
Simple
I see you were freaked out about nothing in anticipation of teaching your first class. I WORTE you twice once during Ramadan and the second time about the twins but I don't think you are receiving my emails so email me at sandra.bashir@yahoo.com. What type of writing class do you teach? Is it English composition or English literature? Alhumdudilha it is a blessing to teach such as small class. I'm sure your class will learn basic communication skills in no time! English is an easy language to learn.