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Published: February 26th 2006
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These children have no shame. They are always willing to get up in front of the class and sing or dance. One girl, when asked what makes her happy, answered that “Singing ‘Country Road’ makes me happy”, she then proceeded to stand in front of 47 other 9 year olds and sing it from beginning to end, glaring at one boy who had the audacity to turn to another child during one verse. There was no applause afterwards, as there never is, she just sat down, and the class moved on.
I think the biggest thing I am having difficulty with it the difference of the schooling system. I am managing to keep most classes under control, there are two or three little chants that they know, you say ‘one, two three’, and clap your hands, they respond ‘sit up straight’, and things like that. There are also class monitors, whose job it is is to walk around the classroom, looking very important, and slapping the desk of any student who isn’t paying attention, and giving a sticker or a paper flower to those children she (it’s always a girl) thinks is being a model student. It is also the
Hellen
See, they are all munchkins duty of the class monitor to start the songs when it is song-time, keep the beat, and make sure the children mumble the vaguely right words. ‘Jingle Bells’ is great for the first two lines, then it gets a bit slurred. Maybe I should teach them all ‘Country Road’ for a bit of variety.
Today one of the classes had a test. This involved every child closing their book, the teacher saying ‘Unit One, one two…’, and the children reciting verbatim the unit. Including the directions. They start off: “Unit One, colours. One, listen, look and say. Black, black, brown, brown. Two, listen to the tape, write the answers. Three, draw a brown elephant, draw a black bear. Five, lets sing. Colour the bear black, please, black, black, black. Colour the bear black please.” It was quite scary, children getting points for correct parrotisation. Generally, the Chinese have the most amazing turn of phrase, even the children, but this is not encouraged at all, which is a bit of a shame. Though I have got a lot of pictures from the children, and they do write lovely things on them - usually in Chinese, but I am getting good
Nancy
Not joking about being a giant! at looking up words now. I made the mistake of showing one girl that I stuck her picture she drew into my journal, now they all want to be remembered, and check my journal every morning to make sure I stick them in properly!
The teachers are a bit funny. There is a high level of self-acknowledged laziness. I hold conversation classes every morning, the first day there were about 21 teachers, all listening intently, and writing down everything I said - as we had been out till 3am the morning before in House, it was ridiculously unproductive and to a certain extent terrifying for me. The numbers eased off until I am now left with 3 regulars. I was convinced that this was because my hungover state had offended them deeply, until I summoned up the courage to ask one teacher I get on particularly well with. She giggled, and said that she had gone the first day in hope that I could tell her a better way to teach, more specifically, a quicker way to teach the children English. Now I am aware of this, I have noticed it a lot more. Another teacher has an English exam coming up, and asked me an easy way to be able to listen to news items and answer multiple choice questions. ‘Practise’ was seemingly not the answer she wanted to hear! There is this insatiable desire for shortcuts and ease, I think they are quite disappointed that none of the volunteers have provided them with the “one-step method of learning English, with no homework”.
The teachers have also developed a game called’ let’s see what the foreigner will eat’. The rules are quite simple, each teacher takes it in turns to bring something spicy, glutinous, or just plain funny-looking in. Points are awarded for the foreigner’s (me) expression, eyes watering and amounts of water drunk afterwards. Bonus points for a run to the bathroom. They began by bringing noodles and other slippery things, but decided that was no fun when they saw I could pick anything up with chopsticks, and so moved to the trying-to-kill-me phase of the game.
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Laura
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Yo!
Hey Dude! Was speaking to jen and it made me think of you! Your blog is awesome and am mega pleased you are having a good time! Peace L