From 'Miss Ryan' to 'Ma Hui Li'.....

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WHAT IS IN A NAME?

The intention of this blog started as a insight into the Chinese classroom but before I launch into that I would just like to announce I have a Chinese name!

It is a very big honor to be given a Chinese name and it must be done by someone of authority. My English Head Teacher, Garry (who is the namesake of my own father and volunteered to rename me. Irony, anyone?), officially crowned me 'Ma Hui Li' this week. All Chinese names have great meaning and mine is a pearler apparently. 'Ma' means 'horse'. Now hold up on the laughter until I explain to you the reason he decided to tag me as this sterling animal. It's not that I look like a horse (although maybe I do?) but it is because he himself was born in the Year of the Horse. Also, I apparently possess the qualities of someone born in this year even though I was officially born in the Year of the Dog.......

......People born in the Year of the Horse are popular. They are cheerful, skillful with money, and perceptive, although they sometimes talk too much. The are wise, talented, good with their hands, and sometimes have a weakness for members of the opposite sex. They are impatient and hot-blooded about everything except their daily work. They like entertainment and large crowds. They are very independent and rarely listen to advice. ......

Sound like anyone you know? I think I am sitting on the fence with this one.

The second part of my name is 'Hui' meaning 'intelligent' and 'Li' means 'pretty'. Put it all together and I am a 'pretty intelligent horse!' He and the students assure me that this is an excellent name full of many upstanding qualities and suits me to a tee.


GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS

Teaching in a Chinese classroom should be easy enough. I mean, I have conquered some pretty feral classes in my time as a teacher. Not every day mind you, but it has been done on the odd occasion. I guess I came here with certain assumptions of what a classroom in China would be like, most of which have been blown completely out of the water. So as my colleagues back at home start their first day of holidays, spare a thought for your favourite ‘Foreign Teacher’ and her Chinese counterparts. Below is a compare and contrast of my experiences in two very different education systems.

Australia: Students move from one classroom to the other for differing subjects and in some cases, teachers will be in the same classroom each lesson. They cart their textbooks and folders in school bags between each room and more recently, A4 sized laptops. Classrooms are usually inviting and student desks arranged in pairs, rows or groups of fours. Group work occurs often and is a normal teaching practice. Students are often asked to answer questions by putting their hand up but yelling an answer out is not uncommon.

China:Students have a home classroom which they never leave. They sit in the same seat each lesson, day in, day out. They have approximately 50 different text and writing books piled next to them in the classroom (and that is no exaggeration) and sit by themselves in rows. Group work happens rarely and it takes about 10 minutes for them to get over the fact that you just asked them to move their tables. Don’t even think about getting them to move away from their seats, form a circle of horseshoe or god forbid, leave the classroom. Every time a student is asked to answer a question, they are required to stand up before they speak and are not allowed to sit down until you have directed them to. I keep forgetting to ask them to sit which results in utter confusion.


Australia: Between classes, students move to the next classroom in a somewhat orderly fashion, often bypassing the quickest route with a stop to the toilets to smoke a cigarette.

China: Between classes students pour of the classroom into the halls to wrestle, run, hang over balconies, annoy the foreign teacher at her desk and play basketball in the classroom. They also go to the toilets to smoke cigarettes but make sure they stand in the doorway in full view of the staffroom.


Australia:Teachers work to a curriculum but are able to deliver the information their classes in whatever fashion they choose. As long at the learning outcomes are reached in an appropriate way everyone is happy. Senior students are assessed at different times throughout the year and twice yearly have major exams spread over a two week period. Teachers have two weeks in which to mark these.

China: Each lesson is structured a particular way. Students are presented with an extract that they read silently and then answer questions to. The teacher then delivers a ‘production’ of the learning aim and delivers information to students through a lecture. Students complete activities and provide answers to the class. End of class. Each and every class. Every subject is tested ON THE SAME DAY once a month. That means students sit up to 8 exams every four weeks. Teachers are expected to deliver the results within one day of the exam being completed.


Australia: If a student wants to speak to a staff member in the staff room, they knock at the door (usually DURING the time that is specifically set aside for no student visitors) and wait for someone to answer. Entry into the staff room is almost forbidden. In special cases, a warning to all other staff members will be given to ensure ‘Secret Teacher Business’ is never revealed.

China: The door to the staff room is always open and students can freely enter and leave at their leisure. Crowds of students enveloping teachers desks, touching their things, leaning over computers to see what they are doing occurs every 45 minutes for approx 10 minutes. As I write this a senior student leaning over my laptop having a squiz…... Hello Michael, (named after Michael Jackson, no surprise there), yes I am doing work. No, you may not have any chocolate. Students also walk into the staff room to use the phone on a regular basis. I asked one girl who she was calling the other day and she replied ‘I am ordering clothes from a shop’. Of course. As you were.


Australia: Consequences for minor misbehaviour ranges from some type of detention, parents being contacted, ‘scab duty’ and written apologies.

China: Students are subject to all of the above AND to performing up to 15 minutes of non stop push – ups, squats and star jumps in the staff room no less. They are also required to learn pages of information of by heart and recite this back to the teacher in question. If they get it wrong, they have to start again.


Australia: Teachers are forbidden to touch students in any way, shape or form be it for punishment or during a time that a student needs consoling.

China: Students drape themselves over teachers, playfully punching and wrestling. This is reciprocated. Although very harmless you can imagine my horror. Teachers delivering a quick thwack to the side of the head to pull someone into line is not a uncommon sight.


Australia: School starts at 8.50am and finishes at 3.15pm from Monday to Friday. Students have a small recess break for 20 minutes and a lunch break for 40. There are four terms in the year which are broken up by three sets of two week holidays and one 5 week one over Christmas.

China: School starts at 7.15am and finishes at 9.30pm. There is one 2 hour break in the middle of the day and another at around 5pm. Classes run for 12 days straight before students get a weekend off. The semester is 22 weeks long and students are subject to one or two long weekends during this time as ‘holidays’. After a 2 week break, students return for another long 22 weeks before enjoying a longer break over December and January. Keep in mind that the teachers also do these hours and are just as exhausted as the students. They are asked to stay at the school from 8 – 5pm regardless of whether they are teaching and have night classes each week.


Australia: At the end of the day, teachers pack up there belongings, jump into their cars and go home. Students tend not to exist after that last bell has gone (or we try bloody hard to forget them). Seeing students down the street, out at bars and restaurants or when you are all sweaty and red after running on a treadmill bring groans of horror. You know that the very next day said student is going to yell out in class at an inappropriate time (when you have just settled an unruly lot or asked for answers to questions they were just meant to complete) “Miss, I saw you at (insert totally normal place here) and you were (insert totally normal activity here)” and it will take a good 5 minutes to divert the conversation back to the aim of the lesson.

China: Students live about 100m from teachers and their families. We eat in the same dining room, drink from the same tea room and exercise on the same oval. Students roam the school grounds from 5.30am until 10pm every day which makes it very hard to disguise your movements. However, the difference is the students do not comment on anything, well, not in English anyway. I am sure they do talk as by the end of the week students are aware of what I am going to teach them. Once, when teaching them about travel, I packed a bag full of clothes and other items to practice vocabulary and dragged it into the classroom. Among the items were sunscreen, a hat, a coat and a pair of swimmers. I only had to whip out my bikini top once before all the other classes premeditated what was about to come out of the bag and I didn’t need to do it again.


Australia: Classes are capped at 30 at a high school level. Once I had 31 and hoped to high heaven that every lesson one student would be away so that one student didn’t have to sit on the floor. Thank goodness for high absenteeism. More unruly classes were always kept as small as possible.

China: The bigger the class, the more unruly the students. My largest class is 55 – 54 boys and one poor girl (although a fellow Australian teacher further north has a class of 200 he has to perform in front of once a week). They are the lowest ability class out of the 10 classes I teach and entertaining them is draining. My top ability class has 35 students, a good mixture of male to female ratio and to be honest, if I stood at the front of the class and picked my nose for 45 minutes straight, they would still be impressed.

Teenagers are teenagers anywhere in the world. They flirt with each other, enjoy a joke, are lazy and moody and speak back. They are fashion conscious and attend school not to learn but to socialise. Everything is 'boring'. Everything is 'tiring'. They would much rather sleep than listen to a teacher / laoshi and can swear like troopers when they want to.

Those of you that are reading this that don't know me very well (or at all - surely there are more strangers reading this than I really want to know!) may question my love for teaching and wonder why I do it at all. This is not in any way a rant about teaching but more of an insightful comment into my past and present life. All teachers question their choice of career on any given day and I am not exempt from this. But I can honestly say that I love my career with all it's ups and downs. Who else would be crazy enough to take a year off work to travel the world only to find herself back in a classroom?

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