bighairylaowai.com

Time for another update I guesses, I would have sent one sooner, but the first month has been pretty draining, and any leisure time has seen me visit one of the ex-pat pubs, or retreat to fortress Lau-wai for a swift dvd from the knock off shop..

There’s been a little turmoil at the organisation, with one American dude leaving after a week, and an Aussie so p*ssed off at the behaviorial standard of the Middle School he’s been sent to that he can’t speak to the Chinese directors of the company without yelling at them but you lied to me! They respond by retreating into complete ignorance, spurious logic, pragmatic modification of reality (lying then), or even leaving the building, all reactions that the Aussie has compared to the temper tantrums of his young sister. Myself, I found out that I was getting ripped off a little in my contract, so I brought some of the famed Jonny B aggression to the negotiating table a couple weeks back, and threatened to leave that day… It sounds harsh and uncharacteristic but you realise that is the typical pattern of commerce over here, from a fruit and veg stall right up to contract negotiations for a job. Any attempt I made to use logic and describe my teaching qualifications were spuriously brushed aside, so I suggested that I would leave, which brought an immediate improved offer - no further bone of contention.

To the actual business of teaching - well I assumed I was to be teaching older age groups, but I was given the schedule, and found out I was teaching 6 - 11 year olds. Now this concerned me, as I have had absolutely no teaching experience with little kids, and standing in front of 40 of them 24 times a week sounded quite intimidating. Anyway, I turned up at the primary school that my organisation was farming me out to, and even the Chinese teachers there were whoa - what on earth is this? Its standard for English language primary teachers to be prim, non-intimidating females, but as our organisation only has one of those, then I was picked over the 68 year old Australian and strongly resistant 22 year old Australian to pick up the slack. Every class I walked into was prefaced by a rising wooooo….. Adrenalin borne of fear kicks in at that point. Before teaching, I bought an inflatable purple, rubber ball with soft little spikes on it - I christened it the gimp ball. Anyway, this was a nice ice-breaker, cos I’d wing it around the room and ask them all getting to know you questions varying according to their level. I think some sort of physical activity really enlivens them because the standard form of teaching in China seems to be by rote, repetitive. If I wanted them to repeat something, I’d make it a chant, banging the desk, performing a gesture, showing a picture - Again, pretty uncharacteristicaly expressive, but the whole notion of teaching so many kids makes me quite jittery so it converts quite nicely into nervous energy.

So anyway, I get them talking with the ball at the start of most lessons now, it gets them active and excited, and sometimes it spills over, but it seems to captivate them, gets them into a lesson, and shave a few minutes off too… They mostly go nuts, the higher grades always saying teacher! Let me try! which soon turns into Lemme try! Lemme try! as they sneakily leave their seats. The lower grades are less subtle about it - they jump on you grab for the ball, and pretty just make strange whining noises, as if having the ball in their hands and then throwing it back is the only objective in life, which I guess is how it might seem to a 6 year old. The immense popularity of basketball over here (Michael Jordan is a lot bigger than Beckham as an icon, and its the main playground sport) means the ball thing also has basketball associations, and when they come to throw it to me, they pivot and feint like a b-ball player. That is apart from the real young kids, who grab it, squat down and then jump up and launch the bal as high and hard as they can - the whole class shouts ahhhh! and then everyone scrambles for it. Welcome to the first 5 minutes of the lesson!

Then its a case of shutting them up, doing some actual language and chanting work, and then a game to finish, although its pretty difficult to think of a simple, engaging game that involves 40 kids - I have had to recourse to hangman too many times now, its every english language teacher’s sordid little secret, cheap, nasty, vulgar but fairly easy and satisfying.

All the while the lesson is happening, I am also acting as an object of fascination for the kids, and whereas I can comfortably shout and discipline the grades 3 - 6, I find myself unable to really shout at the grades 1 and 2, and even if i did they’d probably think it was another chanting game. So these kids hop on me, hang off my arms and legs, they grab my arms to see how big they are, tug at my sideburns and stroke my hair, prod my legs and ar*e (yes, who would want to), pinch my 2 day stubble, and the latest trend is to apply a length of sellotape to my forearm and see what hair you can get - I really am great novelty value at the moment. I made the huge error of picking up a kid who was crawling under the desk and putting him in his seat - then lots of kids ran up to me, arms in the air, inviting me to lift the up. The supervising Chinese teacher was looking on, and kinda smiling, although once it turned into a mass crowd, she stopped them. Now every time I walk down a corridor, at least 2 or 3 kids will want to be thrown in the air. Some of the lower grade kids also just run up and hug you and want to hold your hand - very odd coming from our culture, but thought differently of over here I suppose, and not too make any social commentary but this is a boarding school after all. The oddest day was last Wednesday afternoon when I was trying to leave, and I was walking past a 1st grade classroom - the moment I walked past it broke up, a couple kids came out and grabbed me, then the group instinct kicked in, and then some more, and then the lau wai chant came up. It was like wading through deep water.

The first quarter of the semester has been fun, but incredibly tiring, not helped by a monster St Patricks day weekend fuelled by cheap baijio (cheap chinese spirit) which has left me with the worlds longest hangover. Turns out our organisation is screwing us a bit on the hours too - I’m doing around 8 hours more per week than another Jersey teacher based in China, who is on better pay - eight hours doesnt sound like an awful lot, but if you run out of material one minute before the bell, then that one minute is excruciating.

I’m currently on my 3 hour lunch break, which is pretty nasty, cos I teach 4 lessons before it and 4 after, and while everyone has their bed to go to in the boarding school, Im stuck in the staffroom tapping at the net. Yawn. All your adrenalin goes, your tireder than ever. Might put my head down on the desk and have a snooze. I’ll write something more coherent over the weekend.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 15th, 2005 at 11:01 pm and is filed under Teaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.