First off, I'm not quite sure I have much of a career as a blogger. Still not sure whether I should offer a simple travelogue, just the daily facts, or journal and let it all hang out. I fear an earlier post might have been a bit too revealing but was I tired; I figure all my readers are friends and will forgive any whining or complaining!
It is 8:00 PM on Friday, July 13th. Just stepped out of the shower and settling in for the night. A group of our facilitators (must not refer to ourselves as "teachers") left a bit ago for dinner out away from campus. Marjie and I are too tired to do anything more than answer a few emails before we crash.
Today was a killer day. Very long, very tiring, very rewarding. Began the day @ 7:00 AM and ended @ 7:10 PM. Even though my first class begins @ 8:00, I have to get there by 7:00 to turn on the AC and get my day organized. Students are already at the door waiting for me. They like to come in for some quiet time as I play classical music for background music while I'm working. The room is a large auditorium as you can probably see from the pictures and seats 250+. For four+ hours, my teaching partner, Austin, and I team-teach. During this time, we go through the daily announcements, daily diction, then Morning Motivational, aka Mo-Mo. We do break at the half-way point. During this break, the students swarm us for photo ops. They are crazy about pictures; my picture has been snapped probably 1,000 times...and that is not an exaggeration. It is just their culture. Austin and I work to make their large group experience enjoyable and we get very silly.
Now remember, these are all educated, professional teachers giving up three weeks of their summer to come to a former prison to improve their English with native English speakers. Their living conditions are deplorable, the food is nasty (even they say so), they are trapped here and not allowed to leave campus for threat of expulsion. Earning their certificate is a BIG deal. Marjie has a student from Inner Mongolia who shared she is feigning a toothache tomorrow so she can leave for a few hours to get away. The student said, "In Mongolia, we would NEVER allow someone to live under these conditions!"
Austin and I mix it up a LOT. We have a great deal of curriculum to cover but take enough time to keep things hoppin'. During break, we blast some good old American Rock-n-Roll and dance on the tables. They love Adele (okay NOT an American singer!) Today, they were treated to Journey, CCR, What a wonderful world/Over the Rainbow, Sting "Fields of Gold", etc.
We played a trick on them today. When they returned for their afternoon session (Fairy Tales and Famous Speeches) we told them we had a surprise for them...a quiz! We had very serious faces, then broke out the Cha-Cha Slide. We jumped on the teaching tables in the front of the room and started dancing. It was great fun seeing 225+ Chinese teachers acting silly and laughing! Every one of them attempted to follow the steps and begged to do it again. After we finished, I asked them what their students would think if they saw their teachers dancing since they are so proper and dignified. Oh, they just howled. They would never let their students see that side of them before...but maybe now, they might decide to make some changes.
I have had soooo many of them share they are going to make changes in their teaching methods based on what we are teaching them. Imagine that....some little Chinese kid in Inner Mongolia is going to be impacted by something I taught their teacher. Just paying it forward, man!
8:00 - 9:50: Blue Group A
10:10 - 12:20: Yellow Group A, same lesson
12:50 - 1:20: eat lunch with the Muslim students (they do not eat where pork products are served)
2:00 - 3:00 Attribute lesson (teaching strategies)
4:00 - 6:20 - Famous speeches and Fairy Tales
6:40 - 7:10 - dinner with Muslim students
Yesterday, our famous speech was "The Gettysburg Address." We started the lesson with asking what they knew about LIncoln. Oh my, their knowledge is incredible. We will ask for volunteers and run a microphone to them. One lady went into Lincoln's bio for 10 minutes. Amazing! Then, we played an audio file of the speech. There are follow-up discussion questions for them to answer then share with a partner. After this time, again, we run around looking for volunteers. One of the questions was asking about the significance of government "of the people, by the people, and for the people." The discussion was spot on! They were conversing with each other and challenging ideas. Austin and I were running around the room to keep up with the number of people who wanted a chance to share. How incredible their brains are to take these concepts in English, think about their ideas in Chinese, then back to English to talk in front of 225 classmates. It is very humbling to see their eagerness to perfect their English and to help each other.
Tomorrow, we have our day off. Whew...we will need it. The school runs with 25% staff on the weekends. We each have a half day responsibility. Marjie and I have to cover Sunday morning. Get this...our gig is to show "The Incredibles." The students will have a viewing guide and discussion questions to answer. Really? Yep! I will imagine James and Caroline sitting beside me while I'm watching the movie. Man, I miss those Huffman children....their sweet smiles and tender hearts....sniff, sniff.
A couple of funny stories for you: Apparently social lying is totally acceptable. This is difficult for me to understand and I don't have much of a poker face. Why lie? Just state your facts, take your lumps, and move on. Situation: Attendance is a BIG deal. They are not allowed to miss class and attendance is taken every hour. Class monitors were elected in their small groups and these folks are to take attendance in our class, too. So we HAVE to have each class stand up, the monitor takes a head count, and reports their findings to us. Every day, every attendance we are told "all students are here." This is noted on the official attendance document. Then, 20 minutes into the class, 4-8 students trickle in. WTH??? So I use my best dramatic hurt look and say, "I thought EVERYONE was here. Hmmmmm....I do not understand." Cell phone usage in the class is another big no-no. We are to take phones away for the class period if they are out. So, of course, people cannot seem to unplug from their phones and we confiscate them. Oh the stories we are told when they come to retrieve their phones...such fibs.
Last note for tonight...Austin. Not sure what I've told you about him. Austin is a 17-year-old California kid...happens to be Chinese American. He is tall, handsome, smart, funny, darling. When they made the teaching assignments, he requested large group thinking he would be a helper to someone. Nope, they put him in charge of a group. There are four leaders for the large groups. This caused him a bit of consternation. We share the classroom and he asked if he could sit in on my classes for a few days so he could get some confidence to figure out how to teach his classes. That plan lasted about 20 minutes. The first day, I pulled him into my class discussion and we were off and running. Team-teaching both his class responsibilities and mine. This makes for double the amount of time we are in front of students but easier in a weird way. Keeping the high energy required for 225 students is exhausting but with a partner, it is much easier to play off their energy. The second time we do each lesson is a piece of cake. Today during the Fields of Gold song, we did an impromptu waltz for the class and had fun with it. He is a great, great kid with so much potential. I cannot imagine the future for this kid. At 17, he is comfortable teaching in front of all these professional teachers. Can go from delivering curriculum to dancing on tables! We thought we would just team-teach for a few days...now, we don't want to give it up. It does add hours onto our already busy day...but makes those hours enjoyable for ourselves and our Chinese teacher friends.
Enough for one night. Hopefully, Patrick will edit this as necessary as I don't have many active brain cells willing to work tonight. Special thanks to all of you for the sweet emails. It means so very much to run back to the room for a 15-minute break and pull up messages from home. I have some Skype dates already set up for the weekend. Let me know if you are interested and available ... would love to see your beautiful faces!!
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