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We arrived in Qing Zhen on
Sunday afternoon, after a two day stay in Guiyang (the capitol city of Guizhou
Province) for meetings and orientation and group gathering. Qing Zhen is about an hour’s drive from
Guiyang. We passed through Jinan, where
we taught back in 2011. Much growth has
taken place there in the last three years.
Some say that the city has actually been overdeveloped, with many
apartments not rented out as of yet.
Upon our arrival in Qing
Zhen, we met many of the folks we will be working with this summer. My monitor’s name is Yuan Cha, and she is
absolutely wonderful! She and Feng, her
cohort, did a beautiful job setting up our apartment. We have a flat on the 7th floor of
a large apartment building. There is a
living room area, a bedroom, and extra bedroom we use for storage, a kitchen,
and a bathroom that houses a sink, the laundry machine, a squat toilet, and a
shower. The squat toilet is the drain
for the shower, which is a familiar set up, based on the kind of toilet I had
in the old Peace Corps apartment in Beije in 2008.
Yuan Cha and Feng provided
us with a house warming basket of supplies, including small towels, toothpaste,
peaches, bread, tissue paper for the bathroom, laundry soap, and a “couples”
set of toothbrushes. Scott’s has a
dragon engraved on his; mine has a phoenix.
In Chinese mythology, there is the contest between the snake and the
bird. The dragon and the phoenix are the
yin/yang, the balance, between the two.
Yuan Cha was delighted to give us this pair of toothbrushes!
The apartment is without
air-conditioning, which is somewhat uncomfortable on humid days, but we have
had a great deal of rain these past few days.
The rain has cooled things down.
The rains have been torrential, actually. We walked to class on Wednesday morning in
driving rain, with waterfalls of rushing water coming down all the
stairwells. CeCe, one of the other
middle school teachers, faced a flooded classroom. Mine was surrounded by a sea of water. Several students were unable to make it to
class yesterday, as many live out in the countryside and the roads are
completely washed out. It’s actually
quite dangerous to drive in many of the areas they live when the rain is this
pounding. Classes were almost cancelled
today, due to the rain. However, at 6am
when we awoke, the pounding rain had diminished to a drizzle. By 8am, when class started, students were
busy trying to mop water out of the doorways so that we could get in our
classrooms.
My students are really
quite delightful! I am teaching middle
school teachers, and Scott is teaching the high school teachers again. There are 25 students in my class, all of
whom are women. They come from a variety
of backgrounds, but all of them have some experience in middle school
classrooms teaching English to Chinese students. Their challenge is to make the English
relevant and engaging, which is extraordinarily difficult to do based on their
location in the countryside and the workbook they have to deal with on a daily
basis. I finally got a copy of their
text, and it is abundantly clear why their students are “bored with learning
English.” It’s a mind-numbing workbook,
which is loaded with fill in the blank exercises. The pattern is exactly the same in every
chapter. Most of the teachers just plow
through the exercises, one by one, knowing their students will have exams on
the workbook chapters every couple weeks.
The Summer Language
Institute, which we are the teachers for this years (as well as in 2008 and
2011) has two main goals: practice
English with the teachers and teach methods that engage their students in a
more active, responsive way. So,
everything I do in the classroom is modeling active, engaged teaching and
learning. We process every activity,
discussing how the teachers can utilize the strategies with 65-90 in each
class. They are accustomed to the old
Chinese model of education, which is largely lecture followed by exams. Students are in rows, often in desks bolted
to the floor.
Anyone who knows me, knows
I have never taught a class in rows and I have never used a textbook or a
workbook. I share many ways that
teachers can make their classrooms places where students are engaged and
responsive. The first thing I did when I
was taken to my classroom space was to move the antiquated desks into a
circle. I don’t have comfy chairs or
sofas here, nor do I have decorations from around the world to make the
classroom colorful and inviting.
Instead, we hauled some plants into the workspace… and I use colorful
chalk. I am always committed to learning
the names of all my students on day one, building relationships from the very
moment we meet one another. The first
class ended with many hugs as the teachers left the room, and I was moved and
delighted.
We work with the teachers
for three hours each morning and then two hours in the afternoon, in smaller
groups. The three hour block was
absolutely frightening to me back in 2008, in Beije. I am used to approximately 55 minute periods
with classes, and I had no idea how to plan for three hours; however, after the
first day and excessive overplanning, I embraced the three hour block. It is the most active, energetic, exhausting
kind of teaching you can imagine. In
many ways, it is the best kind of teaching.
I must think on my feet, literally from moment to moment, changing and
altering based on what I am learning from my students. I am in the business of selling the concept
of being creative in the classroom, which is generally not a common practice in
China. I live and breathe and model what
I would like them to try in their own classrooms, knowing that much of what I
am modelling is foreign to them. They
desperately want to engage their students, and it is rewarding and moving to me
that they embrace the ideas I am sharing with them and discuss many ways to
apply the creativity to their own classrooms.
This teaching, here in China, is a most joyous and satisfying journey…
Another aspect of teaching
here in China that is satisfying is the collaboration. Scott and I process everything we do in class
at meals and in the evenings. We share
ideas, modifying them for our respective grade levels. Working with Bill Richardson and Ce Ce also
provides a sense of teamwork and camaraderie, as we talk teaching ideas over
mapa tofu, hot pot, and green tea. We
are all veteran teachers, with over 100 years of teaching experience among the
four of us. And, we have many, many
stories to share with one another….
And so we are discussing
idioms, introducing approaching words from a Latin/Greek root base,
establishing conversation circles, reading Maya Angelou and Shel Silverstein,
acting out stories we have read, singing and dancing, expanding vocabulary, and
playing the beloved flyswatter game to reinforce new vocabulary. The room is alive with sharing and learning. And, as always, I continue to learn so very
much from my open-hearted students…
Wishing you a day filled
with creativity and new discoveries…
Namaste,
Marianne/Bailing
This is the mural at the top of the Back Gate entrance to the school...
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