It's the lull of the summer here in Nanchong. Students are gone, shops are closed, and restaurants are few and far between. If I want to eat I essentially have to go downtown, which isn't too much of a hassle considering how much time I spend down there anyway. But with the heat and the scarcity of transportation it's become difficult to get around. I'm glad I only have a few more days until I leave for Shandong province. There's still some more shopping I have to get done before I leave, namely I need some sandals. From what I hear though the beaches in Shandong are on par with those of a grotty Delaware public beach with seaweed and pebbles everywhere. There's going to be an international beer festival at the same time and Simon and I will be arriving for the 'opening ceremonies' or whatever that means. (Tsingtao - the beer available in the US is the same as Qingdao - the city where we'll be going. Tsingtao is the old Wade-Giles Romanicized version of the Chinese)
I should have made some posts during summer project. In retrospect it was a good two weeks. 15 days total, 14 days of teaching. Three hours a day + two lectures and afternoon tutoring. Rigorous and tiring, yes, but I feel like a better teacher now. I worked with Sarah and we team taught every day except for one when she got sick after some hotpot and I taught all three hours. We were a great team and worked well together sharing the explanations and class time equally. The lesson plans alone that we compiled for the task are priceless. It got shaky the last couple days when the students (and ourselves) got tired and the novelty of having two foreign teachers bouncing around at 8:30 AM everyday started to wear off.
Sarah and I had class 3 students (Class 1 being the best up to class 6) according to an introductory oral exam given by the PC volunteers. Anyone could come to the two week program that wanted to and tuition prices ranged from 300 for students to 800 for full-time teachers. Most of our 19 students in class 3 were students though we had seven teachers as well. Interestingly enough, classes four, five, and six had higher ratios of teachers to students than classes one, two, and three. The levels of class six were as low as you could imagine, sometimes unable to answer simple questions like, "Where will you go this summer?" or "Are you a teacher or a student?"
How do they teach if they can't answer these simple questions? It's actually quite simple. They come in, read a lesson from a book, have the students answer supplementary questions, and that's it. It's a classroom format that would never fly in the US, but works surprisingly well given the nature of the education system in China. Dull and uninteresting, but effective. I think back to the teachers who taught English in Chile who probably had an equal level of proficiency compared to the teachers in class six at summer project. Had my teacher friends tried to come in and read from a book it never would have worked. The Chilean education system is too close to ours where students interact and actively engage the teacher. Questions are asked, answered, and there is very little rote memorization in the form of recitation etc... It's much more difficult to be a low level language teacher in Chile than in China.
I should have made some posts during summer project. In retrospect it was a good two weeks. 15 days total, 14 days of teaching. Three hours a day + two lectures and afternoon tutoring. Rigorous and tiring, yes, but I feel like a better teacher now. I worked with Sarah and we team taught every day except for one when she got sick after some hotpot and I taught all three hours. We were a great team and worked well together sharing the explanations and class time equally. The lesson plans alone that we compiled for the task are priceless. It got shaky the last couple days when the students (and ourselves) got tired and the novelty of having two foreign teachers bouncing around at 8:30 AM everyday started to wear off.
Sarah and I had class 3 students (Class 1 being the best up to class 6) according to an introductory oral exam given by the PC volunteers. Anyone could come to the two week program that wanted to and tuition prices ranged from 300 for students to 800 for full-time teachers. Most of our 19 students in class 3 were students though we had seven teachers as well. Interestingly enough, classes four, five, and six had higher ratios of teachers to students than classes one, two, and three. The levels of class six were as low as you could imagine, sometimes unable to answer simple questions like, "Where will you go this summer?" or "Are you a teacher or a student?"
How do they teach if they can't answer these simple questions? It's actually quite simple. They come in, read a lesson from a book, have the students answer supplementary questions, and that's it. It's a classroom format that would never fly in the US, but works surprisingly well given the nature of the education system in China. Dull and uninteresting, but effective. I think back to the teachers who taught English in Chile who probably had an equal level of proficiency compared to the teachers in class six at summer project. Had my teacher friends tried to come in and read from a book it never would have worked. The Chilean education system is too close to ours where students interact and actively engage the teacher. Questions are asked, answered, and there is very little rote memorization in the form of recitation etc... It's much more difficult to be a low level language teacher in Chile than in China.
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