Teaching in China is the first time I've ever taught kids. Since it's been so long since I was around kids as well I had somewhat of a culture shock when faced with 10 smiling, snotty boys and girls.
I have now better acclimatised to the 'kid culture' and in fact it seems to be penetrating into my very being, I'm obsessed with buying kiddy-type merchandise, Minnie Mouse, Winnie the Pooh, you name it. I also like how easily kids laugh. It's nice. It's something we should try to remember as we grow older, to still find the ability to laugh easily because usually we take life to seriously and we forget that we don't actually know why we are on this planet in the first place.
Teaching kids these past few weeks has also seen my bravery levels shoot up. You see, when I first started I would monitor which kids had been digging at their noses and which hadn't. I would then select the kids that I thought had clean hands to use the smartboard pen, that I had to otherwise use throughout the class. Yesterday though, I did something extraordinary. I gave every class a high five. I did this when I was fully in the knowledge that a number of them had just been ramming their index fingers into their noses. But I high-fived them anyway. Ladies and gentlemen, if that isn't bravery then I don't know what is.
I also have a few kids who look almost identical to Giant Pandas. They are usually overweight, and their yes are heavily lidded. They look like they want to fall asleep constantly (maybe they do, students here are really really overworked at school), and they are very slow to move/respond. It used to annoy the bejesus out of me, since teaching these kids was often more painful than pulling teeth, but I've found coping mechanisms.
I think some kids have hearing difficulties and when I ask them to repeat a word, they end up saying something not remotely related to what I have just said. 'Apple' I'd say, 'Anana' they'd reply.
I have many classes but at the same time I have none. The way the system at this school runs is that kids have 3-hour English lessons. Two of those hours are taught by Chinese teachers, and the foreign teacher then teaches for the remaining hour, kind of like a 'guest appearance'. So none of the kids are my students and I have therefore decided against memorising their names.
OK, names are one thing, but how about gender. Surely I should know the gender of the children. But this is not so. There is one student I have who I keep forgetting what gender they are. Yesterday I had said student, so I decided to play the 'shopping basket' game, where we'd all go around and say what we wanted to put in our shopping basket, then remember what other people put in their baskets, using she/he. Thankfully the student after the student in question cleared up the problem when she called the other student 'she'. You see, usually this student will wear a pink or purple to, so I will assume that she is a girl, but when she comes in with a blue jacket, and I've forgotten what gender I assigned to her in the previous lesson, because the previous lesson was two weeks ago, then that's when my problems begin.
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Also, I used to get very frustrated at some of the words we have to teach our students. In one lesson I have to teach both 'humourous' and 'funny'. Personally, I have never said 'humourous' in a conversation, and so when I would teach the word to these 8-year olds, I would mumble it under my breath and move on as fast as possible.
Then I noticed something. The Chinese translations under each word was different. I then had the idea that maybe in Chinese there are two words that are very close in meaning, but for Chinese people they are used in two very different contexts. At that moment I realised that I was not teaching my students British English or American English. I was teaching them Chinese English. The students would be speaking English by directly translating from their native Chinese.
Now in some circles this would be preposterous. How could they translate from their own language? They should learn through immersion, as we did as babies. But actually, I've come to see that Chinese English is not any different from the different dialects of British English, with their different pronunciations and vocabulary. That is why I have stopped correcting pronunciation that does not detract from the meaning of the word. The sound 'th' for example in 'athlete', is said as an 's'. People in London say it like a 'f'. So what? The word is understood either way so in my opinion there's no need to be so pernickity.
Stickers here also have immense power. I had one class that was so rowdy I didn't know what to do. I tried shouting, clapping, standing in silence. I had almost exhausted all of my control methods when the Chinese teacher simply suggested I give the good students stickers. 'Pfff', like that'll work, I thought. But I took out the stickers all the same and a hushed silence descended immediately onto the room. I was speechless. Why would students respond better to being rewarded for good behaviour than punished for bad behaviour?
Later I found out the true meaning of the stickers. It is not the stickers themselves that are intrinsically worth alot, it is what students do once they have collected enough stickers. They can exchange them for various toys/ pieces of stationary in the magical display case in the reception area. In that way, at my school Stickers are the currency, the money, the dosh. That, is where their power lies. I started to go off on a thought tangent about how the school is like a microcosm of society. Students are the workers, teachers are the bosses, and stickers are the wages.
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