Opening Ceremony

An annual event at SIAS is to have a big candle-lighting opening ceremony for the freshmen after they finish their military training. It was pretty cool to see the thousands of candles all lit at the same time...but after that it turned into a looong program filled with lots of speakers and awards being given out. Then there was a performance with a lot of singing and dancing, which was ok. The sound equipment is not all that stable, so there actually wasn't any singing - just lip synching. This was made obvious in a number of ways: 1) When a girl was singing a solo and then a choir of about 50 people who were not there started singing backup. 2) When one of the foreign teachers went up on stage to actually use the microphone that up to that point had just been a prop and the feedback was horrible. It was amazing to me just how cheezy most of the performances were, but the Chinese really seem to love it. Just another one of the endless things that make China so unique!

Yi, Er, San, Si!

That is what we have heard a lot of over the past couple weeks. All freshmen are required by SIAS (and most other universities) to complete 3 weeks of what they call military training. In reality it seems to just be many, many hours of seeing how many different ways you can march. I have in fact had a small taste of what its like, believe it or not. They asked for a few faculty volunteers to march with the freshmen during the opening ceremonies next week, and since they said you would get a free uniform out of the deal, I agreed. This was before I saw the uniform. While its not terrible, I had high hopes of it being this extravagant, professional looking uniform. Turns out, we didn't even get uniforms like the ones the students wear (as pictured), ours look like traditional army clothes, so there is nothing distinctly Chinese about the uniform at all! Even then it would still be ok, if the uniform remotely fit me - the pants are about a size 40 probably and I typically wear a 32...but the hat and coat are still pretty cool. Anyhow, last weekend I and a few other teachers went through 4 hours of learning to march Chinese style, with some real Chinese army leader guys. The marching part was a little hard, but the worst part was on Saturday when he told us we had to stand at attention for 30 minutes...I was wondering what the heck I had gotten myself into, because that was not cool. Somebody talked to them after Saturday and reminded the Army officers that we were just volunteering and we weren't actually joining their military, so the 2 hours on Sunday were much less intense. Of course after doing all that and getting a uniform that doesn't look Chinese or fit correctly they tell us when the march is and its in the middle of one of my classes, so I won't even be able to march anyway! Gotta love the sequence of how they tell you things in China :-) It was a good thing for me to do anyway, because even though I did not enjoy it while I was doing it, it was kind of humbling, so that was good.

The week in teaching was pretty good. As I interact more and more with the students, you would think that I would become more and more compassionate towards them in their inability to understand what I say. In reality its been a struggle to not get really frustrated. Tuesday was probably the worst day and I felt very convicted about my attitude so I've had to just pray for more compassion. If I try to love them in my own strength, I won't love them. It must be HIM. Its been interesting having students come over to my apartment - some of them are really very eager to learn about the Word and/or about religion. If I had one thing you could pray for me about, it would be that HE would work in my heart and my students hearts, especially.

A Typical Lesson

What do you get when you throw a English speaking American into China to teach English to mostly Chinese speaking college students? No, that's not the beginning of a bad joke. I just thought you might be interested in what a typical class looks like:

8:00 - 8:20 - Welcome the students and maybe teach them some cool slang term like, "How's it going?" I like to do that because most of the English they have learned in the past is from a book and is often quite formal. That only takes a minute or two, and then we do creative roll call for 15 to 20 minutes. For creative roll call, I write a sentence on the board like, "If I could only bring one item with me to America, it would be..." and then I call each student to stand up and say the sentence and finish it. I have index cards with every student's info on it, and I just flip through them, which makes it easy to mark if someone is absent - because if I get to their card and I call them out and they don't stand, then I know they aren't there. SIAS has a pretty strict attendance policy - if you have an unexcused absence, it's 2 points off your final grade. Even if you have an excused absence, it's still 1 point off your final grade! The example I used earlier was one I used this week and some students just did not grasp the concept...I mean wanting to bring love or wisdom is great, but its not exactly an item. So in my other classes I would explain what I meant by an item - something you could touch and something you could pack. I said, "love is great and we should all love people, but you can't pack it. You need to say something you can touch." What does the first student I call on say? Love...

8:21 - 8:50 We spend this 30 minutes going over one of the 16 pronunciation sounds SIAS wants us to teach them. They are the long and short vowels, the two TH sounds, L, R, F and V. At the suggestion of a returning teacher friend, I bought small mirrors to distribute to the students so that when I explain what your mouth should be doing when you say the long E (or whatever sound), they can check and see if they are imitating what I am doing with my mouth. Getting them to understand what I want them to do with the mirrors has been the biggest challenge this year. Instead of looking into the mirror and practicing the words I give them, they will hold the mirror in front of their face, but stare at the board while they practice...wow, that's frustrating. I did finally think of a good way to help them understand what I wanted them to do, but its too complicated to explain. Anyhow, aside from the frustration at times, pronunciation is my favorite thing to teach. After we go over a few exercises and have practiced the sound, we practice a sentence. Then in the next hour, while they work in groups on something, I go around and grade each student on their pronunciation of the sentence. The most difficult time I've had with this is when I get to some of the students and they can't even understand that I want them to repeat the sentence written on the board and that we practiced together as a class...that's one reason I think taking 4 hours of Chinese a week is good for me - so I can understand the frustration of the students too!

8:50 - 9:00 Break

9:01 - 9:50 Sometimes we may finish up some more pronunciation and after that I will go over the vocabulary for the lesson with them. It definitely helps them, I've found, to act out or draw as much of the vocabulary as I can. Our lesson the first week was International Travel - so I went over words like passport, visa, roundtrip and oneway ticket, booking a ticket, boarding pass, gate number, going through security. Then I would draw a scenario on the board and they had to tell me what to do. For the classes that meet two times a week, I had an activity in the second class where I had a picture of the object or of a scene of the phrase and they had to match the vocab with the pictures. Sounds pretty basic, huh? It is, but some students still struggle. The thing is, almost all of them are probably very smart - they just might stink at English. Towards the end of class I will go over what the homework is and then...they leave!

Oh yeah, the picture is of me at a grocery store about to chomp into that prickly fruit I've never seen before...

First Week Tales...

After two days of teaching, I have come to two conclusions: 1) I really like it. 2) It's really hard. Overall, the first days have been very good. I walked in to my first class with a confidence that I could never have mustered up on my own. Every class is divided into two 50 minute sections with a 10 minute break in between. As you have read, I have been working with the Speech Team - you know the top 20 English speakers at SIAS? - Yeah...that spoiled me. Since it was the first class I spent a lot of the first 30 minutes telling them about myself, my goals for the class, rules and how the grading works. Then I needed them to fill out index cards with some basic info on it about themselves...simple enough, right? Hardly. Using an idea I had heard from another teacher, I wanted them to "interview" their partner and fill out the card with their neighbor's info, you know, just to get them talking and more comfortable. So I handed out the cards, explained exactly how to do it and then told them to do it. As I watched them begin filling out their own cards, that's about the time it hit me, "They probably have not comprehended a word I've said." Rather than trying to salvage that project, I just let them finish, being happy they at least knew to fill it out at all. After collecting the cards I did creative roll call and that actually went fairly well. I had a sentence on the board reading, "If I had to describe myself in one word, it would be..." and as I called on each student they had to stand up and say the sentence, finishing it with an adjective of their choice. After that I gathered that most of them can actually speak fairly well, provided they can read what they have to say...its the listening, comprehending and coming up with an answer part they have a hard time with. During the break a few students told me I was talking too fast also, so I attempted to slow down, but that is so hard to do! I won't go through the events of every class, but I'll just give you the highlights: In my afternoon class, the behavior was worse (though not terrible) but I actually saw results of my teaching - like when we went over vocabulary on international travel words, and then I verbally quizzed them on it, they actually knew what I was talking about! I guess that is what I like about teaching even after two days - when you see progress.

Today I had three classes and probably the most interesting thing happened in my two o'clock class. Apparently when one of the students closed the door, it somehow locked it...completely...so that during our break me and several of the students tried to open it to no avail. After class it still wouldn't open, and at that point there were students from other classes on the outside laughing at us, but also trying to help us get out. I was only worried because I had a class starting at 4, meaning I already was going to be cutting it close had I been able to get out the door. Thankfully one of the teachers came near and I was able to yell to them to please go cover me until I got out and they did. Someone from the outside who had a set of keys finally came, but when they did not work either, they sent a maintenance man and he jumped through the window that was conveniently above the door and he pried the entire lock that you see above the door handle off the door, freeing us. I tried to post some pictures from these first days, but they will not show up for some reason...so I'll add them later if I can! I know I'll have many more stories, so stay tuned!