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In as many days that I have been working on this report my introduction has changed. That, I suppose, is the nature of transitions. Perhaps I really should have written this report a month ago, when my every day life was more stable and regular (and, technically, when the report was due). Now, as I find myself four days from saying goodbye to all of my students, six days from saying goodbye to Josh, and almost two months from when I leave China, I seem to vacillate between two opposing emotions: from acceptance and willingness to leave to sadness, nostalgia, and rebellion to any serious closure. My introductions have likewise varied, from the calmly reflective to the panicky. Yesterday I wrote, "My thoughts refuse to move past the first paragraph because they are rebelling against any form of serious reflection." In that sense, this report has been good for me. The forced reflection has provided me with the perspective and focus that transitions and endings often lack. How much my current state of min
d affects my perspective, whether, indeed, my words are unfocused and sentimental, I am not sure. The report must be written. Following are my current reflections on my last three months. I divided my report into three sections. The first reflects on the last semester's classes and on my development as a teacher. The second section provides a picture for how my life outside of school looks like. The last section describes some of last semester's special events: travels, performances, weddings, and visitors.
School: discipline, lesson planning, creativity, and flexibility.
Warning: the following is educational garble. If you find the details of my teaching revelations and practices boring, I encourage you to proceed to the next section.
My theory on discipline in the classroom: originally I thought that students, because of their relative closeness in age, grant their young teachers automatic control in the classroom based on the teacher's status as "cool" older friend. My experience in the classroom leads me to believe that closeness in age actually makes discipline more difficult. Because I am so close to my students in age, they think they can push boundaries forbidden a priori by their older teachers.
My experience with discipline during my first term as a teacher left me with a few agonizing and frustrating memories. Such are the travails of an untrained and inexperienced but learning teacher. First semester, before I entered the classroom, I knew discipline might be a problem, and had resolved to walk in firm. By the end of the first semester I determined that while I sincerely had intended to control my classroom, and at times succeeded, I had not developed practical and consistent ways to do so. My comfort in the classroom was far less than I wanted. Numerous days I walked out of school frustrated and confused. Contributing to my frustrations was the sense of responsibility I felt for my students' improvement in English. I felt terrible that every week 250 kids had to suffer through my inexperienced and misguided lessons.
I realized that, in spite of my and probably most teacher's hesitancy to be a strict disciplinarian, I knew that without boundaries and without my own sense of control none of my lessons would be effective. When I returned from Thailand I scoured Josh's teaching resources for new ideas and methods and came up with a book that is, in part, a classroom management guide entitled "The First Days of School." I adopted several of their suggestions, including having them all working from the moment they entered the classroom, and a clear explanation, repetition, and strong initial enforcement of the rules. At the risk of sounding like a tyrant, in the first few weeks I let them get away with almost nothing, after which I slowly loosened and stretched their and my boundaries.
A more manageable classroom behaviorally led to more flexibility in my lessons. No longer afraid of losing control, I experimented day to day and, if necessary, changed tactics mid-class. Flexibility gave me room for more creativity. Increased control, flexibility, and creativity combined with what I gained first semester, an increase in self-confidence and a clear idea of my students English abilities, and I started to really enjoy my classes. Teaching began to feel natural.
I also arrived back from Thailand with new goals for my classes. I think, in the end, I became more realistic about how much I could teach my students. In terms of hard material, i.e. vocabulary and grammar, I decided I could teach them almost nothing. Seeing each group of students once a week for less than 16 weeks is not enough time to teach them more than a few words and ideas that will carry over from week to week. Furthermore, technically, their daily English teachers teach them grammar and vocabulary. I decided to focus instead on what I determined my students missed in their classes: in their daily English classes practice and confidence speaking English, and in their classes generally stimulation for their creativity. The English curriculum gears their learning towards exams, for which they prepare with formulated textbooks and dialogues. Impromptu conversation is a skill our students do not necessarily need in order to do well on exams and one the teachers rarely emphasize. In their daily cla
sses generally, a focus on textbooks, exams, and teacher centered learning leaves little creative room. Our students seem to forever be completing an endless series of textbooks and taking an endless series of exams, neither of which encourage or give them much creative space.
My goals, therefore, moved from the concrete, i.e. must know this, this, and this before the next class, to the abstract and process orientated. As best I could manage, my students did most of the speaking, thinking, and work. My goals for speaking was that even if I could not give every student, realistically, a chance to speak, at least each student was preparing to speak. The recycled paper that Josh and I accumulated during the year came to use in my classroom as scratch paper for my students. I asked them questions, they (at least most of them) wrote answers, and then after each question a few shared their answers out loud. Having them write their answers gave them a way to formulate their ideas comfortably and kept them all preparing to speak. As the semester progressed and their comfort level increased I took the papers away from them and asked them to think impromptu.
My lessons in all my classes attempted to ask my students to use the English they know in new ways. (In one class I began taking away their electronic dictionaries because they often looked up words far beyond their useable vocabulary range, words they had never seen, did not know how to use properly, and would probably not remember.) I had them defining words in their own way, drawing pictures, working in groups, creating plans, skits, and song lyrics, describing mental images and writing miniature stories. As much as I could I tried to get my students to think about something other than English, something they found interesting, so that they might forget they were using English to express themselves.
Specifically, each class centered around one major project. Taken from a suggestion of Tyler Bradbury's, Josh and I decided for our Junior 1, Classes 1 and 2 to plan a unit together that would center around the market. Only in these classes did I try to do any significant vocabulary building exercises. We began with people in our neighborhood and how we describe them, moving on, then, to things one buys and sells at the market and things one might say at the market. The semester's lessons build up to a simulated market in our classrooms, with half of our students as sellers and half as buyers. They completely took it in. It was hilarious to watch them, the budding business people that some of them are, selling, bargaining, arguing, all in English. My attempts to simulate the market in Junior 1 Class 8 were much less successful, but the attempt was, I think, in the end, beneficial for them.
Drawing it out and adding some of my own ideas, I co-opted a lesson of Josh's that he used first semester (I have become an adept lesson stealer) for his Senior 1 classes for my Junior 2 classes. We started with a brain stretching exercise. I broke them into groups and each group had a color, for which they had to specifically decide what the color looked, felt, smelled, tasted, and sounded like. They also had to tell me what their individual favorite colors were and why. I followed the colors lessons with a lesson on hopes and dreams. The same groups defined either hope or dream and individually each student wrote and drew pictures of four of their hopes and dreams. The next lessons focused on a biographical poem, in which each student wrote what they wanted, needed, gave, feared, etc . . . Their favorite color, hopes and dreams, and biographical poem combined into a final "Me-board project. Each student received a piece of poster board in their favorite color on which they wrote their poem and hopes
and dreams in whichever way they wanted. I completed the unit with presentations of their me-boards.
In my Senior 1 classes I abandoned the textbook after a couple weeks and developed a unit which ended with pairs of students constructing a 10 day trip for a foreigner in China. If in one class I overestimated what I might accomplish it was in Senior 1. In the beginning I envisioned dynamic presentations of competing travel agencies, complete with rehearsed speeches, posters, similar to a high school speech class persuasive group project. I thought their English level high enough to make such a vision possible. I underestimated their lack of experience with such projects and the amount of time I needed to explain what I envisioned. Nevertheless, the project basically worked, although the amount of actual in-class speaking time left me a little unsatisfied. Too often they were either doing group work, in which they usually resorted to Chinese, or presenting their work, in which some students easily spend almost an entire class period not speaking or thinking in English if they choose to tune out the pres
enters.
My semester project for the Senior 2 classes was the only project I thought of completely on my own. Of the four levels the Senior 2's are the most apathetic. They have a lot of homework and exams, and the pressure for their Senior 3 exams, which determine their chances of going to university, is beginning to build. Many of them are on their fourth foreign teacher, so the novelty has worn a bit, and it is my guess that many of them have figured out that their efforts and grades in Oral English will not count for much. I focused, then, more than anything else, on stimulating their interest in English. I asked them about their interests, favorite movies, music, sports, then evaluated my resources and came up with several ideas and asked them their opinion. The idea they chose was to study the song "Imagine" by John Lennon. I told them, based on a Rolling Stone article sent to me by a friend of mine (thank you Sue!), that, although written in 1971, famous artists sang and American radio stations played "I
magine" with great frequency since September 11th, and then asked if they thought studying this song might be interesting. I think music combined with a significant political event hooked them. We first did exercises centered on the word imagine, where I asked them to imagine specific pictures associated with music and words. They defined, drew pictures, and wrote skits based on some vocabulary I chose from the song. We spent the bulk of the semester studying the song itself, looking at the lyrics from different angles, staging an MTV video shooting of the song, and asking questions of Lennon's ideas. Hopefully, assuming we see them during our last week, they will write their own lyrics for the last class. By the end they might have been tired of the subject, but at least I had their interest for part of the semester and I know they will, at the very least, not forget the meaning of imagine any time soon.
All in all, I am happy with my classes. I think I learned, progressed, and matured as a teacher, and my classes benefited as result. Effectively managing my classes helped me relax both in the classroom and in planning my lessons, which gave me room for more creativity and flexibility. I have no idea what I will do with this experience, but I am okay with leaving my time as an oral English teacher in China as it is for now. What will come of it remains to be seen.
Life
Not that school is not life, but, more so than I could ever do at Grinnell, I work at school and have a separate life outside of school, and the two rarely intermix. In a way my time in Nanjing has been an experiment in figuring out how to develop a life with time that is (gasp!) completely my own. Future fellows take note: if you choose, time for yourself is there to be had!
As noted in both my previous reports, my first real hurdle was gaining a degree of comfort living in China. By the beginning of second semester I began to live in Nanjing almost like a normal person. My level of Chinese is pitiful, but I can communicate basic needs, which changes and improves my entire relationship with this country. Completing every day tasks is no longer taxing, and every day I feel less like a visitor and more like a resident of this city. Greater comfort with all things school related and greater comfort in general with all things China gave me considerable more time to enjoy and discover Nanjing, China, and myself. I started readings books on Buddhism, tea, Chinese history, medicine, fiction, and, as conventional wisdom dictates, the more I read the more China interested me. I also gave myself time to write letters and reflect on my time here.
Other than school, the single most influential and insightful experience I have had is studying tai chi. (And here I ought to thank Josh who patiently listens to my daily anecdotes.) Six o'clock in the morning in Nanjing, and I suspect in many other places in China, is not like anywhere I have lived in the U.S. At 6 a.m. the streets in Naperville and Grinnell sleep. In Nanjing 6 a.m. is already late. People are eating breakfast outside my dormitory, walking and cycling to work. By the time I arrive at Nanjing University, where I study tai chi, already hundreds of people are stretching, practicing tai chi, fan dancing, walking and running on the track, and chatting. Even Sunday morning is like this. This semester I studied Chen style tai chi, a more aggressive, kung fu like style, and I go almost every day. My classmates range in age and social position, retired and young, business men and students. The university students, mostly graduate students at Nanjing University, speak English, and have becom
e my and the three other foreigners' good friends. They explain to us what we do not understand, and all of us provide windows into our respective cultures. Most of the rest of my classmates do not speak English, but a community we have formed, nonetheless, exchanging morning greetings, learning from each other's mistakes, and laughing when our 75 year old teacher shows us how a move we are learning is used to punch or throw someone. More than anything else, school and tai chi make me feel like someone who lives here and makes me think that I could live here much longer.
Special Events
March and April were basically uneventful. Do a Deer resurfaced for the nomination of our school to become a Jiangsu Provincial Key School. I traveled to Zhenjiang, a one hour train ride from Nanjing, to try and find a house in which Pearl S. Buck lived. In true China fashion, I spent an entire day in this town, in the rain, to find a house under construction with a plaque that read "Pearl S. Buck lived here." I also traveled to Yangzhou, across the river from Zhenjiang, with a friend from tai chi and her family. We talked Chinese culture, history, and politics as we walked around "Slender West Lake," where the emperors once vacationed, and ate famous Yangzhou dumplings and friend rice.
Josh's and my funny and somewhat miserable five day trip to Huangshan, Yellow Mountain, and Jingdezhen, home to China's china, formed the crowning event of March and April. At Huangshan, famous for its sunrises and cloud sea, we saw only as far as the clouds we walked in, both up and down the mountain, missed the sunrise, and spent a rainy afternoon at the top in our hotel playing cards in our long underwear while our clothes dried. Jingdezhen faired not much better. The mostly outside porcelain museum and factory, we concluded, might make for a pleasant trip if one's experience was not accompanied by rain. We spent another rainy afternoon playing cards, not in our hotel this time, but in a tea house. April showers indeed.
May greeted us with a series of exciting events. On May 5th Josh and I attended a Chinese wedding. The groom, an English teacher at the school and a good friend of ours, invited us to accompany him for the entire day's festivities. The day can be divided into four parts: picking up the bride and bringing her to the groom's parents' house, going to a park for pictures, the reception, and games in the lover's chambers. The entire morning was spent mimicking the Chinese tradition of the groom taking the bride from the parent's house followed by the groom presenting his new wife to his parents. Following the groom we arrived at the bride's "parents" house (her brother's home), singing, yelling, and pounding on the door, offering her friend's and cousins "hong bao," small red envelops filled with (small amounts of) money. The bride was not behind the first door, so the groom offered her parents rice wine and continued to serenade her and bribe her "protectors" from behind another door. After one more series
of serenading and bribing (she was behind a curtain in the second room), she came out, dressed not in a traditional red qi pao, but in an exaggerated western style white wedding dress. On his knees he serenaded her personally and solidified the union. He served her parents tea, she fed him the traditional eight treasure soup, and together they went back to his "parents" (the bride and groom's apartment) house, where she served his parents tea and he served her eight treasure soup.
In the afternoon we followed the couple to Nanjing's "Lover's Garden" in step with dozens of other newly married couples and couples there to take their wedding photos. Exhausted by now, we followed them from pristine photo opportunity to pristine photo opportunity. The reception followed the park/photo shoot, complete with speeches, food, alcohol, and karaoke. At the end of the evening, some of the guests followed the couple up to their "wedding chamber," a room in the hotel in which the couple held the reception, where friends of the couple organized games for the couple to play. For the pg-13 version of the story you will have to ask me personally.
A few days after the wedding our fellow Grinnell fellow, Molly Davis, visited us on her way home from Nepal. Josh and I played tour guide to the wide-eyed Molly as she re-discovered tall buildings, ice cream, and fluorescent lights. Usually I compare China to the Western world, i.e., the U.S. and England. Molly's perspective gave me a refreshing look on China's, or at least Nanjing's, development. The next weekend Professor Hsieh and Tyler visited, and I ate possibly the best shark fin's soup I may have the chance of eating in my life. That week we ate dinner with President Osgood and Jonathan Brand and caught up on all of Grinnell's recent happenings.
The beginning of June brought its own excitement with the Grinnell professor tour in Nanjing. On the first of June twenty-one professors arrived and I think I speak for both Josh and I when I say we loved having them visit. It is nice to be reminded of how great a community Grinnell can be. Most of the professors there never had either of us in class, but they seemed to welcome us as fellow Grinnellians and friends. I reconnected with my advisor Bob Grey, who treated me to sandwiches, beer, and conversation (thank you, thank you), got the chance to show all of the professors our classrooms, offices, and some of our students, and had several wonderful dinners paid for by our various parent organizations.
Conclusion
The professor's visit basically marks the conclusion of this year. They left and the next week (which is now), I am packing my room, writing this report, and slowly beginning to say good-bye to my students, my friends, and Nanjing. Looking back it is hard for me to say how far I have come. I am certainly more comfortable here, but how that came to be I am not exactly sure. I am either more confident or easy going, more adapted or more patient and tolerant, I have either learned or found a different way to live. My only real test has been Thailand, but my trip there did not illuminate much, and I am several months past and firmly re-entrenched in Nanjing. Perhaps my foundations will be shaken again when I begin my 8 week travels through north and south western China, traversing China's pre-Himalayan wilderness, but I suspect the only real next change will be the return home. I can foresee the first few weeks of re-entry shock a I rediscover my car, American supermarkets, cultural diversity, cereal and c
old skim milk (although I had a nice preview when Professors Grey and Hunter treated us to breakfast), forks and knives, English signs and bookstores, English on the radio and t.v., and western toilets. Beyond those small cultural details it is impossible for me to tell what my life will be like, or rather, how my attitude, perceptions, whatever you want to call it, will have changed. That, I suppose, is for the next, albeit unwritten, report.
This year has been a year of adventure, frustration, laughter, learning, and joy. I hope the people reading this and my other reports find something worthwhile here. I want to conclude with my gratitude. I want to thank the committee who chose me, for some unknown reason, to let me come here. Specifically I would like to thank Professor Cavanagh for his initial support and advice, Doug Cutchins for being our watchdog, and Professor Hsieh, for without whom this program would not exist, I would not be living in 1703, my computer would not have been fixed, many wonderful dinners would have been missed, and I would not have had the security that if no one else can fix our problems, he probably can. I would like to thank my family and friends, my mom and Donovan for actually letting me come here, and for everyone who sent me letters, stuff, and emails. Josh, thank you, you deserve a lifetime supply of Skyway's pretzels, coffee, and Dr. Pepper for encouraging and comforting me, for all the laughter, without w
hich I would have had to #$!& in my bed many times over, and for generally being my best friend this year. Finally, I ought to thank China. Through all the spitting, squatting, men in their underwear, bicycle, bus and train rides, beautiful children, delicious food, smelly tofu, duck's blood, early mornings, schedule changes, gam beis, mei yous, lao
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