The Brighter Side

As Nicki indicated in her last post, we have been very busy since school started last week. So, since I have 40 minutes before I need to go supervise the students’ evening study hall, I’ll write a quick update.

The challenging things I mentioned in my last post haven’t been a nearly as much of an issue. A cab driver assured Nicki that the spitting lady was probably not expressing disapproval of my existence. I’ve also seen the apparently angry guy from the elevator a few times, and he has been cordial. (He even said “good morning” in English to us recently.) I feel much more comfortable around our neighborhood now. It helps that I’ve been walking to and from the school almost every day; I think people are starting to recognize me, at least as “that foreigner with the neckties.”

The language challenges are still there, of course. Despite having no functioning Chinese, however, I have started to get familiar with Shanghai. It feels good to be able to find my way to things on my own, even if that involves relying heavily on map tools in English. I’m also developing a list of places in the city that I want to visit. Topping the list is Inferno, a bar and concert venue that seems to be the center of Shanghai’s metal scene. As soon as I see a promising show on a weekend, I’m going to check it out.

I’m adding to my list of responsibilities at work. In addition to teaching math, I’ll also be helping to coach badminton this year. I don’t know the sport at all, and I was only a mediocre (at best) tennis player in high school, but I was promised that the school would arrange for a proper head coach so that I can be an assistant and learn as much as possible myself.

I’m also doing what I can with college counseling here. One of my personal goals in this job is to ensure that our students are aware of the full range of college and university types in the U.S. When I ask them about their plans for college applications, most of them list what amounts to the U.S. News college rankings: Harvard, Princeton, MIT, etc. More power to the students who get into those schools, but I want to help our kids cast a wider net and to find institutions that will best fit their circumstances and needs. I’ve been in touch with some people at places where I have taught, and I hope to arrange some visits from staff at a variety of American colleges and universities to keep our students fully informed of their options.

Right now, though, my focus is mainly on figuring out how to adapt to a high-school setting. I meet with both of my classes every day, which is quite a bit different from the twice-or-three-times-a-week university classes that I’m used to teaching. I decided quickly that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with grading if I give daily homework assignments, so today, I gave my students their first weekly homework to do. That’ll give me a bit of breathing room to prepare lessons before the homework gets turned in next Monday. It might also give me time to blog a bit more frequently, so I’ll check in soon with more updates.

Mid-Autumn Festival

Wednesday is our last day of class for the week as students and teachers will be packing their bags and heading home for Mid-Autumn Festival. The holiday is very much like Thanksgiving in the United States; throngs of people return to their hometowns for the chance to celebrate togetherness and admire the beautiful moon. When I was living in Taiwan I posted about how a very successful barbecue sauce commercial that originally aired around the holiday had resulted in the tradition of barbecuing under the moon. Families and friends gift one another with moon cakes filled with all kinds of goodies from red bean and chestnut to roasted pork and salted egg yolk. It's a beautiful holiday, and it often marks the beginning of deliciously cool and breezy weather that resembles Fall.

And now, a confession. Being in China has been complicated for me. Each time I traveled abroad before it was strictly the result of a very clear choice I had made to further my knowledge of Chinese language and culture. My time in Taiwan was so great and so unique because of the amazing opportunity that landed me there, that being back in China has set off this internal dialogue about what I am doing here now. I will always love any teaching position I have, and my greatest hope for this position is that I'm able to help students grow immensely in their their ability to use English while building self-confidence and developing their creativity. Long work days, frequent adjustments, figuring out how to develop critical thinking skills in ninth graders, and adapting to a Chinese school environment are tough. I often feel like I will never be fully prepared even though I'm nearly always working.

Mike and I worked very long hours in the U.S.; we had six part-time jobs between the two of us! But we also had semi-flexible schedules that would allow for weekends away, dinners with friends, and time to visit with family. Fall had always been my favorite season, but in the past couple of years, it was the very best part of the year. It meant trips to Bloomington, the pumpkin patch, spending Thanksgiving in Michigan, celebrating Aunt Jenny's birthday, and  just enjoying cozy meals and quiet nights at home with a pooch.

As the weeks go on and we adapt to our workload (and the weather finally cools down), I'm sure we'll find more time to relax. We'll have holidays to explore new parts of China and other countries on our list. But for now, as I'm trying to stay afloat and all my Chinese colleagues excitedly await their trips home, I  find myself feeling sad that I can't spend my favorite season with my favorite people back home. So this Mid-Autumn Festival, when I look up at the moon, I will remember those perfect Fall days.

We Made it Through the First Week!

The first, and hopefully hardest, week of teaching is over! What a week it was! We actually worked a six-day week instead of the usual five because students and their parents came to campus last Sunday for orientation. Mike and I had spent all of the previous week at school prepping, including Friday and Saturday, so when 4:30 rolled around yesterday afternoon, I immediately felt a wave of relief.

It's hard to explain what our school is like, but I will give it a try. North Cross, the American half of the partnership, is an independent school based in Roanoke, VA. It strives to cultivate curious, independent, hard-working students who understand the importance of community, good-citizenship and the global world we live in. Mike and I were impressed with the student counselors we worked with at North Cross this summer. They were intelligent, kind, patient, and incredibly hard-working. The North Cross staff are all incredibly excited about this partnership with China because they believe in the educational goals of North Cross, and building connections across cultures is a cornerstone of their global studies curriculum.

Xinhe, the Chinese half of the partnership, is a private middle school that has now opened a high school program exclusively with North Cross. This high school program is in its second year, but, already, we have students in grades 9-12. Middle school in China consists of grades 7-9, so many of our students have come from other programs and will receive an extra year of high school to accommodate the American-style curriculum. There are dorms on campus so that students from various provinces in China can attend. It is not uncommon for students to move away from home even in high school to attend the best schools and programs; in the public system, students have to take a high school entrance exam that dictates what schools they may go to based on their academic ability.

North Cross  has two faculty members from its Virginia campus who serve as academic and student life directors here at North Cross-Xinhe, and then a number of American staff who have been recruited from the U.S. and abroad. The Chinese faculty are all incredibly welcoming and very hard-working, and I am super happy to be a part of the English department. The Chinese teachers in our department have studied and lived abroad, and all of them are extremely bi-cultural. The management and administrative team also speaks English quite well and has been very welcoming, but as you can imagine, there is some debate about how "Chinese" or "American" our school should be.

The structure of the school schedule is quite Chinese. Students have morning study from 7:40-8:00 in which they read aloud from their vocabulary textbooks and teachers correct pronunciation and cadence. Classes then begin at 8:00 and last for 40 minutes; students have 10-minute breaks between each period except in two cases where they have longer 25-minute breaks. These 25-minute breaks are used for physical exercise among other things; it is quite a site to watch each student retrieve a rope from their cubby and run down to the athletic courts where they jump rope under the direction of a very stern teacher shouting commands.

Although classes end at 4:30, students must be back for night study at 6 pm. Every teacher has to supervise these nightly study sessions from 6-8:45 pm once a week. Mike and I both supervise on Monday, a day I also have morning classes, which makes for our longest day at school. Although it made for a very tiring first day of teaching, it was nice to get it over with early in the week. Teachers also supervise clubs and sports teams since Wednesday afternoon classes are reserved for participation in these activities. It seems Mike will be coaching badminton, and I will be editing the newspaper and possibly doing something else; the extracurriculars have yet to be pinned down.

I am teaching two ninth-grade English classes, so I have the students for anywhere from two to four periods a day. Whereas most teachers teach different grades and content within their department, I am teaching only ninth grade. I really enjoy working with the students so much because I know that I'll get to know them very well and we'll have ample time to really build a solid foundation of English skills. My first impressions of this bunch is that they're intelligent, well-traveled, creative, and a little intimidated. By the end of the first week, however, many of them were speaking louder and more frequently in class. Most of them have broken the habit of standing up to give an answer anytime they're called on. Students also like to correct one another if another student is working out the pronunciation of a word, so I've implemented a "help" and "pass" system. Unless the student I've called on asks for help or decides to pass, other students must remain quiet.

I pretty much dove right into literature with the students since this is what we'd do in an American classroom setting. I chose the poem "Human Family" by Maya Angelou and showed them the "shot on iPhone 6" commercial that aired during the Olympics. I walked students through the structure and meaning of the poem, and we talked about contrast, rhyme, parallelism, and repetition. I showed students how to quote from a poem, and we talked about forming a topic sentence and including evidence from the text when analyzing text. After a few days of discussion, they had to write a paragraph either explaining the meaning of the poem or analyzing some aspect of the poem that they felt was really important. I will be reviewing their assignments this weekend, and I'm really excited to see how they did. It will help me gauge how much more support and preparation they need for this kind of writing analysis activity.

One of the challenges I'm facing is knowing when to introduce key information to the students. I have constructed lists of literary genres, terms, and essay types, but I didn't want to overwhelm them within the first week. Instead, what I chose to do was get started right away with an authentic text, and then talk about some of these elements as they emerged in the text. Now that students have seen some of these devices, I think they'll have a better grasp what literary and rhetorical devices are when I do give them a more complete list of terms. This is my hope, anyway.

Throughout making theses lists, I've also realized that the definitions require some very abstract language, and students may not understand the terms based on the English definitions I've given them. I've included examples that should help, but if a student just doesn't understand, I realized that I wasn't prepared with the Chinese translations for many of these terms. Although my students are great about using only English when speaking to me, what we're tackling is tough, and vocabulary is an important part of being able to analyze literature. So, I've been looking up these terms in Chinese, and I'm going in armed with lists and worksheets galore!

Grammar has been a bit more difficult because our first lesson was a review, but again, much of the work requires understanding the English terms for everything. The textbooks have a lot of drills, but they're dry, and I find that they lack thorough introductions of topics. I've devised a new plan that will entail having a mini worksheet for a warm-up, followed by introductions, examples, and interactive/communicative practice as opposed to relying on textbook drills. The drills can be assigned for homework. Another thing about grammar? Some students live and breathe it because it has traditionally been the focus of tests. You really have to know your stuff and make sure you are accurate and deliberate with your language choice and explanations!

I have one more class that I now teach as of yesterday. The school decided students should have an extra hour of English practice on Friday afternoons, but in order to have homeroom teachers (some of whom don't speak English) lead the activities, the default option was to give vocabulary tests. The English department wasn't in favor of this idea, so I volunteered to teach a creative writing class. Our first session yesterday entailed reading the beginning of a story aloud and then having individual students write their own endings. The results were great! I was so shocked to learn that some students who typically seem apathetic in class LOVE writing. It lead to great individual conversations as I went around to talk with students who had completed their writing, and it helped me truly understand just how distinct narrative writing skills are from analytical writing skills. The class was an exceptionally great way to end the week.

It's now Saturday, September 10, which is Teacher's Day in China. Yesterday, students presented teachers with a single rose as we entered the school gate, and our principal and staff arranged for an elaborate banquet dinner after school. Of course, no Chinese gathering is complete without karaoke, so I gave my first performance since six years ago. I chose a well-known Chinese song, and I think I shocked many of the teachers. There was cheering and loud applause and the circling of various colleagues as they recorded my performance. I expect to go viral any minute now.

I slept in until 8:40 this morning, had a nice leisurely breakfast, and I'm still in my pjs. We plan to run to IKEA once more for a few things and treat ourselves to a nice meal out since weekends are the only days that we actually have the energy and time to travel beyond our immediate area for food. Tomorrow we're going to the Shanghai Circus with Emily and Ben; we've heard great things about it and are really looking forward to it! Next week is Mid-Autumn Festival, so we have Thursday and Friday off! The extra time for lesson prep will be great since we're starting Romeo and Juliet next week!

Enjoy your weekend!