First Week of Classes

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Pete's Version

I have been assigned to the first year students whom don't start for a while. Well I don't actually start my official teaching schedule until October 11th. This is right after our vacation to the Philippines. Until that time I will have one 90 min class on Tuesdays and I will be helping two students, Chain and Crystal, prepare for a English competition. I meet with them daily except Sat, from 6 - 8:30pm.

Tonight I have invited Chain, Crystal, and our student assigned helper Nathan over for dinner. We are going to try and make taco salad. It should be fun. Typically in my evening classes the head of the Business Enghlish department, as this is how its spelled on his business card, hovers over the students and speaks loudly at them in Chinese. I cannot really understand exactly what is being said but I can tell its not good. I've told him on many occasions that this is not helpful in getting them ready for the competition. I am only concerned with making them feel more confident by encouraging the with positive feedback. The contest is in Ningbo and will be held at the end of September. I'm not going to be able to teach them that much in that short a period of time, so I'm focusing on them being confident in what they already know. They are after all amongst the best English speakers at the school.

As for my other class, the second year international trade students, well they are probably about the same level as my freshmen high school students last year in Shenzhen. Which means its going to be a challenge to get them to do anything in class. I've only had one class but I'm thinking that I need to totally rework my course syllabus.

The first day of class (my one only real class) a woman came into the classroom and started talking to me in nothing but Chinese. I had no idea what the hell she said. Something about the computer I think, but I nodded and said zhi dao (I know) so that she would eventually leave. Elyse and I would later get more clear instructions as to how to actually use the computers and equipment in class. Its a pretty good set up where they have all of our text book chapters on the computers already. Last year we would have had to do all of that on our own. This school is definitely several steps above our last school. Its going to be a much more comfortable year than I anticipated.

Elyse's Version

We started off our week by showing up for our weekly Business English teachers meeting on Monday at 1:30pm. We soon found out that this week there was an entire school staff meeting at 2pm in Chinese, that we didn't have to attend and no dept. meeting.

I then taught my classes on Tue/Wed/Thur/Fri. I enjoyed teaching the college students more than high school since they are closer to my age, not making me feel so old, plus I am teaching Business English. Last year's students were 14-16 years old and this year they are 20-22 years old. My Bus Eng classes 1st unit is on Job Hunting and my International Trade students 1st unit is on Getting to Know You. I saw my Bus Eng students twice and Int Trade students once.

I was quickly reminded in all of my 8 classes that Chinese students don't really engage in group discussion but did find when they were working in partners or groups they talked. I walked around the classroom and engaged with each group on a smaller level and got to understand their English level. I also am looking forward to the weather cooling off as the classrooms are very hot since the temps have been in the mid 90s with high humidity levels, making the heat index temps over 100 degrees.

Thursday evening, I went to my first session of working with 3 students for a provincial wide English Speech competition among the 44 Professional Colleges. When we arrived Nathan and Crystal were there but no Phoebe. I watched a video clip of last years final competition in Beijing to get an idea of what the students would be doing in order to help prepare them for the contest held in Ningbo Sept 23rd-24th. Then 2 of my students from Business English showed up. It was strange as I was in the dark about what was going on but Mr. Li had pulled Pete out in the hallway to update him that Phoebe dropped out of the competition and now one of the two 2nd yr students would be chosen to replace her.

I had remembered these 2 girls in my classes as their English was quite well or at least above their other classmates. Chain is in Business English Class 1 and Lynn is in Bus Eng Class 3. We late had them read out of a Debate book to see their English capabilities and then asked them questions to see how they would answer. We decided to chose Chain as she was able to formulate responses much better than Lynn.

Friday morning, on my way to class I was greeted with a red carnation and a card from the college for Teacher's Day. Once I arrived in the classroom I was given a card from my first class and a flower from my second class. Later on Friday evening Pete went to the office and I even had another card and gift from two other classes. In all 4 of my 5 classes had given me a gift or card, so kind of them. They had only met me a few days earlier and were excited I was their teacher(probably would have done the same to any other foreign teacher).

Interesting things from my 1st week: Business English classes have 2 or 4 guys in them and the other 28-30 students are female, International Trade classes have 10-14 guys with 25 females, strange names of my students Only, Stroll, Frost, Sense and Nemo.

I was excited also for the weekend as Marty was coming to stay with us for 2 nights. We met Marty last year as he was a fellow CTLC teacher in Shenzhen and now is teaching English at a college in Taizhou, a city in our province. We hope to travel to his place in October.

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Photos

Pete & his English Competition students
Nathan, Crystal, Chain & Pete
Chain is in my Business English class, while Nathan & Crystal are 3rd year students

MMM Dinner we cooked for students
1st time we ever cooked this in China, it was a favorite

Teacher's Day Gifts
The school gave us each:box of mooncakes, huge bag of dates, 2 movie tickets, VIP card to a grocery store, card and carnation.

View of West Lake from a bench
snapped quickly while there weren't lots of people walking by.