About two months ago I started writing this report in the few days between the end of the semester and me leaving on a five-week long trip to southern China, Sri Lanka and Malaysia. As is now clear, I didn’t finish it in time, but it makes for a good opportunity to compare what I was feeling at the end of the semester and what I felt on returning back to school.
Then: January 14th
The end of the term is a kind of a strange experience here. As far as I’m concerned, the semester is over and I will never teach these students again, so a bit of wistfulness is already starting to kick in. I had been hoping to have a nice conclusion lesson, sing a couple songs together and have a fond farewell, leaving on good terms with all the kids. The problem is, as far as the students are concerned, there are still two weeks of school left, during which they take all their important tests, so I can’t really say that they have the same feelings. I’ve had some students asking me for my MSN or QQ address, and others coming up to me for a handshake after class, but several of my classes simply never appeared for their final lesson, and another ended on a rough note with me having to stop a fight between two students. It wasn’t quite the conclusion I was hoping for, but I am now looking forward to starting a new semester with everything I’ve learned this semester already under my belt. I think it’s great that I can start fresh next semester with new students, having a much better understanding of how to effectively structure class time, discipline the class and fit activities to the students’ English level.
Successes
This semester definitely had its highlights, probably the biggest being when I brought out my guitar to teach the kids some Christmas songs to get ready for the Christmas party hosted every year. I taught my class the Bruce Springsteen version of “Santa Clause is Coming to Town” including the corny “Do you know what time it is?” “It’s Christmas Time!” call and response intro. The best part was that the guitar got a lot of the guys who normally aren’t very interested in class really involved in the class. In fact, we were told to teach our kids more songs, so Katie and I did a joint lesson teaching our favorite Christmas songs to both classes. We were also very busy for the month before Christmas, as several classes started coming to our office every day to prepare for their English Christmas plays. It was great that they were so excited about practicing, but it was overwhelming at times having to keep an eye on about 70 students spread throughout 4 classrooms. In the end their plays turned out great though.
Another success has been the small group of students, some of which don’t have us as teachers, that started coming to our office regularly. It’s nice to get to know a few students on a more individual level, and they are the students who are extremely excited about learning English, so their English is quite good. We taught them the game Mafia, and they wanted to play it every day for a few weeks straight. More recently they discovered scrabble, and I’m often surprised to find they think of better words than I do.
Frustrations
It’s hard to keep 30+ sophomore boys interested in a conversational English class. If I talk too much, it’s not a conversation and they don’t practice their English. If I try to make every student talk in class, it can sometimes mean 30 close-to-identical responses to the same question. I understand completely why a student wouldn’t want to listen attentively as every one of his classmates answers the same question over and over again, so I find it hard to tell my students they must pay attention to everyone, but when they stop paying attention it means noise and disruptions. I think I could have been more consistent with my expectations from the classes, and I look forward to being a bit better at this from the start next semester.
It’s also hard teaching a class without a textbook or curriculum. Many a game was played this semester, and I think the students enjoyed most of them, but even though I could justify it with the, “it makes them think learning English is fun” mindset, I didn’t always find myself feeling like a real teacher. In some ways, I might just need to accept that having some fun that involves at least a little English might be one of the most effective things I can do this year.
Now: March 17th
First of all, the single biggest perk of getting to teach in China is the five-week long Spring Festival break (for foreign teachers at least) combined with the ease and affordability of getting around China and much of Asia once you’re already here. I think I might be spoiled indefinitely by the fact that my first job out of college let me take off for that long. My trip was great, but I also found myself missing Nanjing a bit throughout the time. That said, after that long of a break, I was also pretty nervous about coming back to teaching. My last day of classes hadn’t gone so well, and the thought of having to start all over again was a little daunting.
Luckily, my optimistic self from before the break was in the right, and starting fresh has so far been really easy and fun. A main contributor to this fact is that Katie and I share one class, with most of the boys going to my class last semester and most of the girls going to Katie’s class. This semester, though, I teach mostly girls, and the discipline problems I had been struggling with last semester have all but disappeared. The students who don’t pay attention cause little disruption, making it much easier to conduct a class involving some lecture and some contributions from the students.
Katie and I have also decided to give ourselves a bit more sense of purpose by coming up with a long-term project of sorts that has several different steps, with the ultimate goal being for each of our classes to write a play and perform for each other. This makes it a little easier to lesson plan from week to week, and also hopefully makes the class seem more important to the students.
With my extra time I’ve started teaching an AP Chemistry course, which is a big contrast to my classes at NDFZ. I have only two students, both of whom speak near-fluent English and are going to attend college in the US next year. It’s nice having a curriculum and it’s fun teaching things that I can remember learning. I’ve also started as a volunteer at the Amity Foundation, a Nanjing-based NGO that does development work throughout all of China. So far I’ve only been able to help with some English editing, but I’m hoping to have a chance to go on some volunteer excursions in the next few months.
Even with those additions to my schedule, I still find myself with plenty of free time and although I feel pretty settled in Nanjing, living here I’m still exposed to new experiences all the time. The university gave us a free pass to all the scenic spots in Nanjing, so now that the weather is getting nicer I’ve begun trying to check off as many of the parks and historical spots as I can. I’ve also made a point of challenging myself to keep eating at new restaurants, as it’s gotten all too easy to just eat the same things all the time. Things have also been kept interesting by the many guests we’ve had in Nanjing, including four other Grinnellians, Mari Guttman (a current Macau fellow), Margaret Block (last year’s Nanjing fellow), Dodge Greenley, and Amanda Baker.
As cliché as it sounds, time has been going really fast. I’m having trouble thinking of super-exciting-interesting things because life here seems pretty normal to me at this point. In conclusion, I think of a conversation that a student and I had about how Nanjing is really a nice place to live. It’s true.
