Reunion with Teachers from Shiloh

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Friday, July 29, 2011
We had a public lesson morning for teachers in our program. Several teachers from the 3 different classes prepared a public lesson and presented for the entire group of teachers. The lessons were quite good and instructive for all. Both my teachers who presented did an excellent job and I was delighted.

One of the teachers -- Alice, who teachers at a senior high school -- did a very creative lesson about earthquakes -- a prereading and reading activity that provided scaffolding with vocabulary and ideas in the reading to help students understand and read the text more effectively. First she presented a song or poem that made students feel an emotional response and then she showed them pictures after an earthquake. Using the pictures she elicited a personal response from the students and then she introduced vocabulary from the text -- keywords -- by using sentences with those words as she talked about the pictures.

She had students practice the vocabulary with a cloze exercise -- first sentences in which students filled in the blanks and then a paragraph. After this exercise, the students were divided into groups and assigned different paragraphs to read and identify the topic sentence for that paragraph. After that , students were asked to find keywords for the paragraph and then to paraphrase the paragraph.

All in all this was an outstanding lesson.

The second teacher -- Vera, who teaches at a middle school -- decided to teach a text on Disneyland. This was an excellent choice and she prepared several parts to a lesson -- prereading, while reading, and post reading. She opened with pictures from Disneyland that reviewed some vocabulary already presented in the previous lesson -- space museum, acquarium, amusement park, and water park. Then she introduced new vocabulary that included Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse,and rollercoaster. She elicited responses from students and introduced the new voculary through these sentences that were generated by the students. After this Vera presented 3 questions that she asked students to focus on in a focused eading of the text.

Students were divided into groups to answer these questions -- and the text was projected on the visualizer in the front of the room since the teachers didn't have the text in front of them.

Student/Teachers then found the answers to the questions and Vera elicited the answers from volunteers. As the teachers called out the answers to the questions Vera pointed them out on the screen in the front of the room. The answers were then projected on the .ppt that she prepared and she reviewed the answers once again with the class.

After that she asked her class to do a detailed reading in which they focused on what there is to do on a Disney Cruise. Studentsfound the answers, listed them and then they were listed on the .ppt and then reviewed with pictures.

She followed up the reading with a task for the students to post-reading -- to write about what they would do on their vacation. I was really impressed with both these lessons -- far superior in content and development than what I have seen.

After that morning of presentations we had an afternoon of discussion about the lessons, a couple of jazz chants and finally we figured out the words to "she loves you" by the Beatles. I think that this rock and roll classic is not a song that is familiar to them but it's simple enough that we could figure out the words.

Friday evening we had dinner with Parker Li and his parents and grandmother. They made a wonderful meal for us -- complete with white wine -- and we enjoyed meeting them. Parker speaks excellent English. He appeared at the training centerlast week with his father and one of the teachers at the middle school that I met the first day. That teacher spoke Enlish very well and was very articulate about the challenges that English teachers here face but could not participate in our program becuase he had to go back to his village to take care of his ailing parents. He brouht parker to the school to meet us and perhaps sit in on a class. We found Parker to be delightful so we asked if our students could interview him. He came to my class and answered all their questions. Judy arranged for us to have dinner there and we took that opportunity to video him speaking about his experience learning English.

The next morning Saturday we had to get up very early and left Lin Xian by 6:30 to get to Shiloh for the presentation to the students and some teachers. We arrived a little late after a 3-hour trip...without the full powerpoint -- no time to finish it -- and some rough idea of what we would all speak about.

Introductions by Liu Lei
Judy -- an introduction of Zigen, the program, and her life
Cynthia -- teaching English, her background, communicative approach
Yoyo-- her experience learning English, her career presently and English, her future given herEnglish skills
Sally -- same
Sunny--same
Q&A -- from audience
video of Parker
Closing

We pretty much stayed to this program but showed Parker first, which turned out to work pretty well. However we could not really show the ppt at all and Judy wanted to sing "Do you speak English?" but we didn't and the projection of the video was poor -- no one could see or hear him.

We had an incredible lunch with the officials of the school and education department at the new Shiloh Hotel...it's an incredible 4-star hotel and the dining room where we ate was fully set with gold-leafed china a full set of silverware and an incredible lazy susan in the center that was laquer with gold and decorated with incredible dragons. The chairs were lacquered and gilded in gold. It was an incredible dining room with a very nice toilet aswell...European style...not squat..

Afterwards we went to the high school to meet with some teachers and there were my former teachers -- three of them: Zheng Ye, Jai HuiZhen, and Zeng Ren -- my two Chinese teachers and Zeng Ren was the lovely teacher who wrote the poem for me. I was so moved to see them and talk to them and it was so good that they were there. I hadn't been able to get in touch with them and I was afraid that maybe this would not happen. It turns out that I may have been sending them emails to the wrong email address.

After this brief gathering we visited Liulei's apartment. He has a very nice3-bedroom apartment in Shiloh..complete with kitchen and washing machine! Very impressive. We then struck out for an unexpected visit to a village in the Shanxi Mountains. This is the village featured in No Fifth Grade. It is a village that had noschool after the 4th grade and which was selected by Zigen to receive funding -- the efforts of the Mayor to bring in Zigen and get the funding were outstanding as well.

We droveinto the mountains -- about a 2-hour drive...it was already dark and the road was narrow. Finally about 9 pm we reached the village and arrived at th eMayor's...he kindly made dinner for us and we ate on the porch int he back...we ate a modest meal...and then we drove back up the mountain to another area ... we slept in a cave house ... all 6 of us in the same room...the 5 of them together in a kong and I got to sleep on a bed next to the door. I was afraid that I would keep the rest of them up all night...I toss and turn with this burning itching on my arms and I cannot sleep.... they all slept beautifully.

We arose about 8:30 or 9 am...brushed our teeth and went to the outhouse....then had breakfast at the Mayor's ... we could see the Yellow River from the porch in the morning...a beautiful view. Then we walked to the school...a wonderful school now with 3 new classrooms, a dormitory for the 24 -14 kids and a new teacher's room. It's a wonderful site!

We then walked down to the Yellow River through the mud and took a boat ride down the river to a place where we walked on the Shaanxi side into the rocks. It's a dramatic landscape of sculpted rock...in this particular cove there are cliffside terraces bricked in high above the river...obviously a site of human occupation...it turns out that the people hid inthe mountain cliffs to escape the Japanese.

When we came back it was time to leave and we said our goodbyes...talked with some of the villagers before we left -- one woman had worked in a dumpliing factory in Beijing for about 3 months made 10000 RMB and come back....her house was one of the best!!!!

We stopped on the way back at MaChuong...a village called horse trading town...for lunch.. Very tasty food.

I'm back but tired.

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