Saved by the Bell: The Chinese Years

We have told you about the few wonderful and exciting trips we have taken but we have told you little about the thing we do most: be teachers. Since Thanksgiving, where we spent the evening having a feast of various Chinese dishes with our mexican and norweigian neighbors, we are only getting busier with the preparation for exams, new classes, and time spent with our students.

Chinese classes only have 1 exam at the end of each semester and this is averaged with the class attendance and participation score for a final score. So we have to create our own exams to give the students! You would think that as the semester was ending, the job of the teacher might get easier because you get into a routine. Not here! Kendall just started a new class last week as a part-time job at a community college in a neighboring town. He teaches a class of 70 students English once a week. His outline for the class: just get them to talk. So that has been an interesting new addition to the schedule. Also, 2 weeks ago we were both given a new class to teach of 4 men that work for an engineering company and are going to Nigeria in a month and want to learn english. They have never had english before so you can imagine what this class is like. In other words, we are being forced out of our comfort zone of well-spoken college students into the world of a foreign teacher. It has definitely filled our days more and more.

In addition to classes, we have been busy being the spokespeople for the foreign language school. We have attended english corners, english salons, we tried to attend a basketball game, and have had students drop in for conversations.

The english salons I think are one of the more interesting and embarrassingly entertaining spectacles of the foreign language school. The students are all broken down into classes. There are 3 classes of freshmen with about 30 students each in them. Each class takes responsibility to plan one of these English salons where they put on skits, sing solos and duets, and play games. My class hosted the first english salon so we were invited as honored guests as we were treated to these spectacles.

First to the right, we have Slinda who gave us a rousing rendition of Never Had a Dream Come True. Slinda is one of my better students. All the other girls are always remarking about how good her pronunciation is with an envious tone. You will notice the pink balloon in her hand. This is the students way of telling the singer they like their song. Similar to how we would give flowers to someone who has just performed. Boys give balloons to girls and girls give balloons to the boys. The more balloons you receive the better your performance.

To the left, we have Cathy and Lavender singing a duet. They really got into it with the swaying and snapping action. You have to realize that the whole time we, the teachers, are sitting in the front row of a classroom so we are about 2 feet from all the action and we have to be smiley and encouraging the whole time. They do give us water, sunflower seeds, and tangarines to snack on while we are watching. These are pretty common snacks in China, no milk duds or popcorn here.

After the songs, there are short plays. To the left, you can see Cathy as Cinderella with her fairy godmother and on the right several of my boys, including Brad and Metter, as the soldiers in Mulan. In the center, is an unidentified chinese play that appeared to have a pimp and his two gangsta women.

Of course during the break between each of these plays, there was more singing so that the actors could do a costume change and recycle each of the outfits for the next play. One of the most entertaining was Kendall's student Bloggs singing Imagination to extremely enthusiastic applause. Below, you can see that he has 3 balloons so he was extremely popular with the ladies.

All in all, this is one of the most amazing things I think I've seen my students do. They orchestrate a 2 hour long ensemble entirely in English. They sing all the songs, do all the games, and all the plays in English. This is the one time that you can really see their personalities too. They really have no embarrassment at all. Try to imagine 18 or 19 year old college freshmen in the US getting up in front of their whole class and singing in another language while everyone applauds or boos!

I'm going to leave you with my contribution to English Salon. They also play games throughout the evening such as putting an english word on the screen and and have one person describe it in english to a partner while they try to guess the word. But I had to participate in a sort of chain charades. One student sees the word and then acts is out to the other student and so on down the line until the final student guesses. So teacher Darbie had to participate. Good times.

Enjoy!

DB&KM