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I will start my final report by recounting my two most vivid memories from this past year.
The first memory begins with my Senior 1 Class 2 students or the equivalent of high school sophomores. As I was collecting papers from the pop quiz I had just given in class, I notice a group of students sharing a drink. This is not an uncommon practice; students often share their drinks and snacks with each other in class. But on closer inspection I noticed that the bottle was indeed an open bottle of Korean vodka.
My first reaction was shock, quickly followed by confusion, anger and sadness. Shock that a student was audacious enough to bring alcohol to class, and then to have it open and pass it along to other students. Confusion at what I should do in this situation. I felt anger and sadness towards my students because they didn't respect me enough as a teacher that they thought that sort of behavior was acceptable, or at least passable, in my classroom.
I ended class early so I could privately talk with the students in question. After his best efforts to persuade me that the bottle was anything but alcohol, the student finally relented and confessed that he had bought it during lunch. Still emotionally overwhelmed and not wanting to make a rash decision I told the student that I would find him when I was done with classes and inform him how I decided to handle the situation.
There is something you should know before I proceed. This sort of thing would never happen in regular classes, unless a student was actively seeking an afternoon of verbal abuse followed by expulsion. So I weighed in my mind the pros and cons of going to the higher powers that be in the school and informing them of the situation.
Believing that everyone deserves a second chance I decided that I would handle the problem on my own. I decided that the student would have to read a book in English and meet with me one-on-one every week to discuss the section he had read for that week and at the end write a book report on the subject. I like to think of it as a mini-Independent study. I taught him how to take notes and helped him figure out where he should focus his attention to arrive at an understanding of the whole picture most efficiently.
In the end, I don't know if it was the right move on my part to try to handle the situation by myself, but I hope that at least one student in my Senior 1 Class 2 ended this semester a little wiser than when he started.
Luckily for me my second memory happens the day after my first. It was right around the time of the Olympic Torch protests in Europe, which the Chinese people reacted very personally towards. In their eyes, they didn't understand why the rest of the world was not happy for China to be able to host the Olympics.
When we had orientation for Grinnell Corps we were told repeatedly to not teach sensitive subjects to the students. In fact, it is written in our contracts with the school that we will respect the culture and moral beliefs of the Chinese in our classrooms. So I decided to not devote class time towards possibly contentious world events; my time was better spent in discussing less polarizing points in the differences of Chinese and western culture.
So one day a student comes up to me after class and asks why people were protesting the Olympic torch and China. What followed was a 30 minute discussion about the Olympics, western culture and Chinese history. Some of the points she brought up were sadly ironic, like "Western people don't know how to think for themselves; they just believe what their governments tell them, unlike Chinese people", but to me that was not the point of the discussion. I am proud of her because she made a critical step in her education; she was willing to state her beliefs, backed by the information she had, as she interpreted it. She was not afraid to engage in a discussion that was not in her native language and her ability to overcome the fear of speaking her mind was one of the greatest things I could have hoped to teach this year. While I never explicitly contradicted her, I do hope I was able to expose her to a different point of view that would make her further question her beliefs and help her arrive at a conclusion that
can truly be called her own.
In the end, what I am trying to convey is that the lows are truly low in teaching, but if you can get past that, the highs are truly rewarding. I have had a fantastic time this year. As much as I was a teacher, I was just as equally a student. I have learned so much about China, from its history and language to its people and culture. I look forward to teaching at Nanjing Normal University next term and continuing this great adventure.
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