And the Teaching Begins

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Spring semester day 2, but really Pete's day 1 as he didn't have any teaching duties yesterday. I woke up around 9:45am...yep you read that correctly. We have had horrible sleeping schedules since returning to Hangzhou, we go to bed between midnight and 1am then get up around 10am. The way I look at our schedules is we have no where to be so why not go with how your body feels.

This morning, I needed to be in Ms. Gao's office "anytime after 10am" so I took that as within the 10 o'clock hour would be fine. I quickly got showered, ate some corn flakes and headed out to Ms Gao's office, a quick 5 minute walk away. I LOVE living on campus, no more 45-80 minute bus commutes for us this term.

When I was walking to her office I thought to myself that this was going to be an Oral English lesson for Ms. Gao or she was going to advise me of my teaching duties for the term. I guess I am the lucky winner as it was just 1 hour of talking to Ms. Gao. She informed me she wants to work on her listening skills but doesn't know they best way to do this. I told her my opinion was for her and I to have casual talks multiple times a week, plus if she wanted to learn about certain topics I would be glad to help her.

I will remind you I claim to be NO expert, really I had a 3 week TEFL (Teaching English as Foreign Language) course and have basically been a cultural awareness instructor during my time in China. Yes, I have helped build up students confidence of speaking English. Yes, I have taught them slang that their Chinese teachers would never teach them. Yes, I have helped them have fun in the classroom but how much English they have really learned..not really sure as last term was the 1st whole term we taught where we had to assign grades.

Ms Gao and I discussed how she isn't teaching any classes this term, just like you Elyse was her comment. She is doing admin work and coordinating the curriculim for 3 American groups coming to our college this summer for a cultural exchange. The first group is high school students from Chicago, second group are American high school teachers and lastly is a PhD Fellowship program from Northwestern University. They all will learn about Chinese culture & language, sightsee Hangzhou, Beijing, Xian and Shanghai and have English lectures on Green Energy topics.

She also told me the leader of Wanxiang Group, a Chinese automobile parts manufacturer, this company sponsors our college. For comparision it would be a part supplier of Ford sponsoring a technical college in the US. The leader of Wanxiang China was part of the entourage traveling with China's Vice President Xi, who was in the USA last week for 5 days meeting Pres Obama, visiting Iowa and going to LA. For those of you who don't know he is the next President/Premier who will take over office later this year and the term is 10 years long. I am sure it was all over the media last week in the US as we saw it on CNN.com each day last week.

It isn't a coinsidence that all the groups coming to our college are from the Chicagoland area as Wanxiang USA headquarters are in Elgin, IL.

Pete had his first and only class of the day from 1-2:35pm. He asked if I would join him in the class since it would be more fun, plus I think he is kind of jealous that I could sit home and fill my time on the internet reading travel blogs (been doing a lot of this the past 2.5 weeks). I told him he would need to lead the class but I would follow along and have fun with the first "Introduction" lesson.

Twenty minutes before his class was to start he received a call from Christina, FAO Director's English Speaking Assistant. She told Pete "there was a problem and she needed to talk to him and she was on her way to our apartment." Pete told me this and I thought oh now what. Within 2 minutes she was knocking at our door. She had gone to the municiplaity government office today for our Foreign Expert Certificate and they had a new "rule" that every page our contracts needed to be signed. We flipped through the pages and signed our names. She then asked which day we could go to the Resident Permit Visa office to get a new Visa. Pete told her Friday works best so we will have to attend to this on Friday. Off she went back to the government office. (it is 11:15pm and we haven't heard back from her so everything must have been ok)

Pete and I walked to his classroom and had a enjoyable 90 minute class. There are 39 students in the class and they all sat towards the front of the classroom. They were all shocked to see 2 foreign teachers in there classroom. We had them get into groups to create minimum 5 questions they wanted to ask us. Then each group had to read 1 of their questions out loud which we wrote on the board. This gave us 11 questions to start. The students then got to choose the order of the questions we answered.


• Why are your eyes so beautiful? (girls asked Pete, I think it is his blue eyes)
• What things give you a deep impression?
• How many kids do you have? (assuming we have kids)
• How did Peter ask Elyse to marry him?
• How long have you been married?
• What do you think of China and Chinese students? (every class asks this question)
• What are some famous places in your country?
• Tell us some stories from your country



We spent the majority of the 90 minutes answering questions and gave them homework for tomorrow. Assignment: think about what you want to learn this semester from Peter/Elyse.

Pete thought it would be a good idea if we split the class into 2 groups; he would teach half of the class and I would teach the other half. I am ok with this since it doesn't seem like I am getting classes assigned to me this term. But we needed to get approval from Cherry, Business English Leader and Ms Gao, Associate Director.

Cherry was very hesitant to the proposal and said "This will be impossible." Then we spoke to Ms Gao and she liked the idea but needed approval. By the end of our discussions they both thought our idea was wonderful once we explained that the students would get more practice and are more inclined to speak in a smaller class setting (western way of teaching).

Ms Gao is going to propose it to the college leader and get back to us. They did advise us IF it gets approved it wouldn't start until the week of March 5th. Plus there is another first year Business English class that Mark, another foreign teacher, teaches that would need to be split up. It wouldn't be fair to split one of the two classes that are first year Business English majors, we agreed. They said "The man would need to teach more clases" meaning Pete would teach the other 20 students making his workload four 90 minute classes instead of two 90 minute classes.

Pete's teaching schedule if our proposal of smaller classes is approved is the following: Tuesday and Wednesday 1-2:35pm & 2:45-4:20pm.

My teaching schedule if proposal is approved: Tuesday 1-2:35pm & Wednesday 2:45-4:20pm.

I have a suspicsion that there is an underlying motive to me not teaching classes this term. Ms Gao was the one to get me the contract for this term and she REALLY, REALLY likes me so I think she wants me to help her with the summer program coordinating and teaching staff members better English. But she hasn't come out to ask me just yet, then again that is the Chinese way off being indirect.

Only time will tell how this semester will play out and I am thinking we won't find out until March 5th.

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