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Just to warn you... this is a long one!
Well, I've started teaching! I received my timetable on Tuesday, and will now be teaching 900 students English every week. Good thing we've all had such thorough and extensive teacher training then... cough cough cough. Nicole and I will be teaching Junior 1, Junior 2 and Senior 1 classes, the equivalents of Year 7, 8 and 10. All of the classes are divided equally between us on both age and ability, although I have one extra Senior class per fortnight. Altogether, we'll be teaching five Junior 1 classes, five Junior 2 classes and 4 Senior 1 classes a week. The best bit is that our school have kindly made sure we have no lessons earlier than 2.30pm, so we get the whole morning to ourselves and as many lie-ins as we want. We'll then finish at around 6 each evening, which is when most of the students go home. Some of the Seniors, we've been told, will come back and work until around 10, which is just mental!
We had a small "taster" of what teaching would be like on Monday, which did not exactly reassure us. We were invited to join Mrs Liu's English class, but what we actually stumbled in on was more like a mini-propaganda film for National Teachers Day. After briefly introducing ourselves to massive cheers, we took the seats of the two girls who were leading the lesson. They took it in turns making short speeches, and then called on various others around the room to stand up and make their own speeches. These speeches, it was explained to us, were messages from the students to their teachers. Mrs Liu was stood in the corner, out of shot of the camera being used to film the lesson, presumably because the teacher can't be leading a lesson about how great teachers are. It was all going quite well, just smiling blankly and clapping at the appropriate points, until it was my turn to be called up in front of the class and asked, in perfect English, if there was anything I would like to say to my past teachers. Errrrrrr. I came up with a lame general thankyou and sat back down as quickly as I could, just glad that it was over. But no, that was only the rehearsal! Now we were all going to do it again for the benefit of the cameraman, another student, who didn't seem to understand the zoom and so instead would run right up to your face when it was your turn to speak. At the end everyone leapt into a rousing chant I didn't understand a word of, then clapped and cheered and pulled peace signs - it was quite nice actually. After that, Nicole and I were invited to take over the class for what we thought would be 10 minutes, but turned out to be half an hour. We were reintroduced as Nicola and Allan and left to die on stage (the teacher stands on a raised stage-like platform at the front of the class) for absolutely ages. We tried talking about where we were from, what our school's were like, our families, the ages and occupations of more distant relatives, David Beckham... at one point some jolly polyphonic music started coming through the tannoy and I asked hopefully what that meant. It meant lessons were over. Well, most lessons. Not ours. The class listened very politely to all the rubbish we kept coming out with, and were scrupulously attentive even when we standing in awkward silence, but nobody wanted to ask any questions which was what we were hoping for. I could have hugged Mrs Liu when she suggested we just take photos with the students instead. This at least was a big success, with the whole class crowding around us and queueing to have their photos taken with us. We've been told these photos will be shown to parents at the next parent-teacher meeting, because parents will be pleased to see our school has genuine British English teachers. We've also agreed to show up to parent-teacher meetings if asked, which we may regret later!
We received our timetables on Tuesday, and Winston brought round stacks of student workbooks, paper and lesson-planners for us so we could prepare our lessons. This gave us the whole afternoon to get more and more nervous, although we were a little better knowing that our Senior classes wouldn't start for another week. Turns out, the teaching was nowhere near as bad as I'd expected - it's actually pretty good! I've only had four lessons so far, but I've loved all of them.
Nicole and I do have a huge advantage in that all the students are super-excited to be taught by foreigners and seem to have decided to like us before we even arrive. Walking around the school campus, students turn to stare at us and point us out to their friends and we're constantly replying to all the people shouting out greetings (I keep going a bit Bridget Jones-y on them with my "oh, hello"s but I think that's what they expect from British people anyway, so it's cool). I had an hour's break between lessons on my first day and went to read in a shady area of the school garden; every time I looked up, more and more students had gathered around me to grin and wave and ask me how I was. Walking down corridors is brilliant too. Students stay in the same classroom all day and the teachers move about instead, so between lessons they spill out into the corridors to chat and mess around with their friends. When you walk down a corridor then, they tend to be packed, and the reactions you get - particularly from the youngest students - are brilliant. I walked down a Junior 1 corridor on my first day teaching, and it was like a scene from a film because they parted like the Red Sea in front of me, cheering and pointing. One girl turned to see me and her jaw literally dropped. I ruined it a little bit by walking past the right classroom and having to go back again, but OH WELL, I still felt like a film star.
My first lesson was with a top-set Junior 2 class (the students in the photo), who were absolutely perfect. When they saw me approach the door they all sprinted to their seats, and I walked in to loud applause. I'd decided to go through weekend activities with them, and they clearly knew it all already (a couple of smart-arses - which I mean in the nicest possible sense - added things I'd not taught when they had the opportunity), but they joined in enthusiastically with everything I suggested. They were nervous about being the first to take a turn in any of the games I played but, after I'd demonstrated everything a couple of times, they relaxed. My first game involved throwing an Angry Birds soft toy around the class: you told the class what you liked to do at the weekend, then threw the toy onto the next person and asked them what they liked to to. Throwing and catching skills were, it has to be said, not great, and quite quickly half the class were falling over laughing at all the awful non-catches. Next up was Simon Says, which wasn't quite as popular, but still got a lot of laughs at the expense of the few people who made mistakes. By far the best game was Slap the Board!: it was really easy to explain, easy to get lots of people involved in and had the students applauding, cheering and rolling about laughing. They quickly got very loud and over-excited, but I only had to put my finger to my lips and they would silence in two seconds or less. For the last five minutes, I went back to the soft toy game; they cheered when they saw me pull the toy out of my bag, which was great. When it was time for me to leave, they chorused "goodbye" and "thankyou" to me, then raced to the door after me to wave me down the corridor. Winston had been sitting in on that lesson to see how I did, and he was grinning when he came out. He said it was too easy for a normal lesson, but that it had gone really well and the students had loved it. Success!
I used the same lesson plan for my second lesson and again, the games went down really well. This group were a little harder to quiet down when they got too loud, but it was fine. We had raucous applause for every volunteer, every win in Slap the board! and every good catch in the soft toy game as well, which was nice. My lessons the next day were both lower-set Junior 1s, so I made sure my lessons were on things they'd have done before. Both classes were a lot rowdier than my first two: I walked in, not just to standing ovations, but to screams and whoops as well; later in the lesson they would fight cheerfully over who was winning points in Slap the Board! and I had to pause the game to get them to stop shouting out a couple of times. I'm just glad they're enjoying the lessons, so I don't really mind. Not sure what the teachers in neighbouring classrooms think, but no complaints so far! These two classes were also maybe my funniest. In the first was the most competitive child you can imagine: with the soft toy game he would dive across the floor and try to leap over desks to intercept it, to the point where he banged heads with another boy and I had to stop the game to prevent further injuries; in Slap the Board! he was going mental at his team's competitor, who was losing every round. I made sure he was the next up for his team, but he didn't do very well either which turned out to be even worse. He banged his fists (not heavily, but still) against the board in frustration, crouched in the foetal position and cried out to the ceiling with frustration - funny at first, but I put him out of his misery and sent him back to his chair quite quickly. When his team continued to do badly, I caught him miming, very graphically, stabbing and slowly disemboweling himself with a ruler. That class also gave me my longest round of applause yet: it started when I sent them all back to their seats and announced the lesson was over, and continued whilst I'd took down all of my pictures, packed up my things and walked to the door - which took nearly 3 minutes. Even then, they ran out in the corridor to stand around me grinning and waving and saying "thankyou", then followed me part-way down the stairs. My last lesson, whilst definately the loudest so far, had so many students who were desperate to answer any of my calls for volunteers. There was one tiny little boy in the corner who would strain his arm in the air as high as he could, pushing it even higher with his other arm, and gazing at me desperately. When I didn't pick him he would look heartbroken. Another boy at the front of the class saw me struggling to keep sticking my pictures back on the board (the blu-tac was taking a beating. I've managed to lose two full packets in two days so have been working from leftovers pulled from the back of my posters) and shyly passed forward his little scissors and sellotape set. This lesson also came with a mic, so I had fun wandering around getting answers from the class like a game show host. Once again, I was cheered from the room and down the stairs, so I ended the day in a great mood.
My last lesson this week wasn't as great as the others - it was fine, but it was the same 5 students volunteering constantly and having forgotten the soft toy, I struggled to fill the extra time (hangman proved hard to explain and way too easy when they knew which words were going to come up) - in the end, I finished a few minutes early because I'd run out of ways to drag it on. We had attended an English faculty meeting in the morning where we got chocolate donuts and hot bacon-and-egg/bacon-substitute-and-egg sandwiches though, so the day wasn't unsuccessful. Even being forced to make short speeches introducing ourselves in front of all 50 plus teachers wasn't that bad, and Mrs Li passed us her laptop so we could play solitaire during the next 50 minutes of speeches we didn't understand. You'd have thought playing solitaire during a meeting would be thought rude, but other teachers were marking books, reading the paper, whispering to each other, sleeping... the headteacher even answered his phone at one point! so apparently not.
Ella xxx
- comments
Jim simpson I like the kid who mimes disembowelment. lol.
Mr gangsta man (aka obi wan kanobi) I agree with jim, that reminds me of the time when chris goultry got a written comment in french one time and he curled up into a ball screaming WHYYYY?!?! haha but yeah thats cool about the whole applaud thing :') i bet you felt very suave!
Sazza M love that you are now a massive celebrity in china! sounds like you're having fun, i'm a bit jealous, my biggest ego boost of late being the security man at amsterdam airport telling me he had 'no reason to hate me'. just had a little stalk of our fave for you, a phenomenal effort on the cover photos, who knew she could add anymore to such a cracking collection xxx
Sazza M also enjoy that you have been named after the headteacher, it is like us calling you Gilly IGS
Ella aw man, this is why I miss faceyb - need to try and hack my way on at some point! I am loving the celebrity treatment at the moment, the signature thing has got even madder. I think this is what it's like being in One Direction!
Sazza M i read some of your blog to claire and pete and now claire is on the phone telling her friend about how you are a chinese celebrity - all a bit weird as her friend does not know who you are (not even sure she knows who i am). to summarise, you reach is growing and at this rate you will soon become a celebrity here also.
Vanessa & Paul Exhausted just reading the blog! So much energy from the students and from you. It sounds a fantastic experience and Newcastle has a huge number of Chinese students so really interesting to read about how they learn English & the education system. Paul teaches some Chinese students on the Newcastle MA/Journalism Course each summer and it is fascinating. PS He says your blog is well-written and it made us both feel we were there with you. (Not just saying that to please your dad! Have fun.