How many teachers does it take to assemble a wardrobe?

To be totally fair, I assembled one of these myself for my room (a smaller one) and it took me about an hour. What amused me about this was that this became a social center, with about ten people sitting or standing around, handing around parts, and making various comments--only some of which I understood.

Sunsets!

This is pretty much the same view--from my room looking west-northwest--on three different days.

Butterfly

Last week I played Rajaton's recording of Mia Makaroff's Butterfly for by students. If you haven't heard it, take a listen. I told them the name of the song in English and Chinese (蝴蝶 hu2die2) and told them to think about what it might mean or how it made them feel. Then I told them to write or draw.

Although there were some students who didn't know what to write or draw, only one student didn't write or draw anything, and there were a lot of creative results. Here are some of my favorites:

Also the follow written comments:

"This song is very moving."

"I don't understand this song, but it sounds very hard to sing."

"This is the most beautiful song I've ever heard!"

"At first it sounds like there's no meaning, but then it makes sense. In the middle there's a lot of English, a lot of knowledge. Thank you."

"I think this English song sounds very good, I really want to learn, because since I was small I dreamed of learning English songs. Miss Nan can you give me pretty English songs to listen to?"

"This song makes me want to fly."

"This reminds me of when I was small and played with my older brother and sister."

P.S. If anyone has ideas for songs I should have them listen to, please comment below! I'd like to expose them to all sorts of different styles.

Happy Birthday Confucius!

I was already awake, but still in bed, when I got a call from my principal this morning inviting us to go eat. We made our winding way through the town to the other side, past a little temple, to an "Old People's Activity Center". We were fed a nice vegan meal--we were told in honor of Confucius' birthday.

Stone lion outside the back entrance to the center.

This cat was the most friendly cat I've met in China. She slunk under our stools and rubbed up against us asking to be pet.

We realized when we returned to school that the center was having a ceremony today in honor of Confucius' birthday, held at the school.

The school's marching band and drumming dancers also participated.

Bugles! We've been hearing them practice all week. We just didn't know what for!

Don't these uniforms make the girls look like army nurses?

Only girls do the dancing drums.

About 20 girls drum together, synchronized by one girl with a whistle and cymbals.

There was a lot of bowing three times.

The traditional Chinese equivalent of an orchestra--complete with drums, dulcimer, Pipa, Erhu, and flutes.

After their part of the ceremony was over, the girls wanted us to go back to the center with them to eat
(their payment for performing, I guess).

So we spent about an hour talking to these sweet, question-filled, exuberant girls. I haven't walked arm-in-arm with a whole row of girls in a very long time!

American Teacher?

Today as I walked across the large school courtyard on the way back to my room a little girl came up to me and said "老师好" or "Hello Teacher!"

"Hello!" I responded--I'm working on getting all the kids in the school to recognize this form of salutation--and then, since she looked pretty young and she wasn't one of my students, "你好".

Instead of continuing to walk past me, the way most of the students do, she stood there looking at me shyly. "Do you have a question?" I asked her in Chinese. She shook her head.

But then she asked, "Where are you from?"

"America", I told her.

"So you're an American teacher?"

"Yes! I teach third grade English and music."

She nodded thoughtfully, turned around and walked away. When she reached her friend, the friend slung her arm over the girl's shoulders, and was filled in on the American teacher.

Earthquake!

I've finally felt an earthquake! We had a 4.2 magnitude earthquake night before last (the epicenter was in Myanmar but pretty close to the border). I had already fallen asleep, so I awoke to my bed shaking. My cofellow on the first floor said he didn't feel it all, and a local teacher said she was walking home at the time and hadn't felt it at street level, but on the fifth floor it was very noticeable, though perfectly safe.

Teach for China then sent us information about how to survive an earthquake and the school gave us information about what to do (a multi-page packet the contents of which are still obscure to me). On the one hand, isn't it a little late? But on the other hand, it might have been a foreshock to a larger earthquake. The English translation of the TFC directions was laugh worthy though. Having first explained that it's important to get outside and away from buildings it then said: "The most important thing is, never going back into buildings even if the shaking stopped." Never. You can never go back inside!

Yesterday evening, just as dinner was supposed to begin, the heavens opened in an epic thunderstorm. Gusts of wind overturned piles in the teachers' office, branches fell, the school banner broke, and students ran for cover. And then, just as I finished writing that much of my blog post, the power went out! Since I wanted to save my battery charge for today's music class in case we didn't get power back in the meantime, I took this as a sign for enforced rest. The problem is that even in dreams I seem to be either teaching or planning. It never ends!

The other challenge I'm facing right now is that it's really hard to know what success is. Clearly I could be doing things better. But it's also not a total failure. What parts of a lesson should I reuse? Which should I change? What's the right balance of strict and fun? What would a really good teacher teaching these kids in this classroom situation even look like? I have no idea.

See you later!

My students are used to a routine in which the teacher says "Class is over!" and they say "Thank you, teacher!" As sweet as them thanking me is, this routine is entirely in Chinese so I've introduced a new one: "See you later!" For see, you point to your eyes, for you I point to the class and they point to me, for later you point your thumbs back over your shoulders.*

I think this may be one of their favorite things they've learned so far. Today after class I was sitting in the teacher's office and heard kids outside saying back and forth "SEE YOU LATER!"

Success.

*I can't claim credit for this idea. It's commonly used among TFC fellows.

Holidays in China

I've been trying to figure out my semester teaching schedule. Not only would I like to make plans for National Holiday (国庆节，Guo2 qing4 jie2), I'd also like to plan my teaching to make sure I cover everything by the end of the semester and in the meantime spend the right amount of time on everything.

So far I think I've figured out the schedule through the first week of October. After that it's all a mystery. The official dates for National Holiday are October 1-7. A week holiday! But not really. It's actually a three-day holiday with each of the weekends on either side "moved" to form a single one-week holiday. Our school district is also giving teachers the 29th and 30th off, but in the meantime we have class every Saturday.

If you want some amusement--or a mental workout--take a look at the Wikipedia page for "Public Holidays in China". There's even a detailed, graphical example for the year 2010!

A few pictures of the campus...

The student dorms. 832 students live here.

They finally finished this grand staircase but are still working on the back wall to keep the kids from fall off the cliff.
(The rock is volcanic--grey with bubble pockets--presumably local.)

The school has its own chapter of the Communist Party and it meets in the same room as our faculty meetings.
So when I walked in for our second faculty meeting I was rather taken aback to find a large hammer and sickle on the wall.

The new student cafeteria is on the left. This gorgeous tree shades the area
between the back of the school building and the student dorms.

Saturday Classes

So it turned out everyone ended up teaching Monday's classes. We were just the first to ask.

My Monday schedule involves seeing every class, although half of them are supposed to be music and half of them are supposed to be English. Perfect, I thought. I'll see every class, so none of the classes will get off schedule.

The first class really had trouble not talking. If a thought occurs to them, they say it. Even if I've just said "Be quiet!" or "Don't talk! This is a test." The next two classes were much better. Sure they talked, but it wasn't quite so bad. Some people probably looked at each other's papers--it's hard to stop when 52 kids are packed into one room so you can't spread them out (if any of you have ideas to help me, I'd love to hear them)--but it wasn't too bad.

Then I went to my fourth class. The chairs were on the tables and most of the class was outside scrubbing. I checked my watch again. Only two minutes until class should start. The banzhuren (sort of like a homeroom teacher, but with more responsibility and power) was sitting in front, so I asked: "Don't we have class at 3:20?" Nope. The whole school is cleaning now.

Oh. Okay. Really, having all my classes in roughly the same place was just too much to hope for.

Just kidding...

Here's a compilation of conversations, in person and digitally, between Katherine, me, our Chinese cofellows, and local teachers yesterday evening.

Why are there still so many students here still?

Because there are classes tomorrow.

Really? What day's classes?

Yes. It hasn't been decided yet. There will probably be a meeting tonight.

At 6:42...All teachers please assemble on the fourth floor of the government building for a 6:45 meeting.

Katherine and I throw on our shoes and trot down four flights of stairs, walk over to the government building, and then mount another three flights. It's after 6:45, but the meeting doesn't start for another five or so minutes. We sit down in the back, right behind our cofellows. But then a local teachers comes in and asks them to go supervise the students during the meeting. There goes our translation. It's not that I don't understand a single word, but that's just the problem, all I understand are single words.

After the meeting we ask: What classes are we teaching tomorrow?

One of the head teachers turns to the principal. What classes are the Teach for China teachers teaching tomorrow?

Answer: I guess they can teach Monday's classes. (Why just the Teach for China teachers? No idea.)

Phew. Glad we got that sorted out. So today I'm administering the English diagnostic test in all four classes and ignoring the fact that two of them are supposed to be music classes. I don't have a music lesson prepared yet! That's what the weekend was supposed to be for!

Using weekends to make up for holidays is common practice here. I just didn't know it was happening this week given that we only started teaching on Thursday. I thought we'd just start with a fresh week on Monday. Sigh.

Ready, Set, Go!

After lots of waiting--unsure of when classes would actually begin--I finally began teaching yesterday. It was a pretty simple class: going over the class rules and doing a survey.

I settled on four simple class rules: Look, Listen, Study, Speak. After teaching them to say each word in English and explaining the importance of each, as well as what behaviour does and doesn't constitute each rule, I asked them to write each rule in English and Chinese and draw a picture to represent each rule.

Here are some of my favorite specimens:

One of the my biggest takeaways from the first class is to not only give clear directions, but to specify everything. When I told them to write their name on the paper, several students asked "Where?" Anywhere, 都可以! (Dou keyi: this literally means "all okay". It's a very useful phrase.)

And at the risk of being boring, I will now make them repeat the directions back to me more fully. Having said (in Chinese and with pointing) "This paper has four portions--one, two, three, four--because we have four rules. In each part write down one rule and draw a picture" there were still some students who wrote them all together in one part of the paper, or jumbled up on one side of the paper, leaving the other side blank. I think following directions is going to be a new goal for my class this year. That being said, some of them seem overly concerned with following directions. I told them to number their paper 1-8 and one student was very concerned when she kept going and wrote 9 too! I assured her that it was fine.

Here are some statistics from my survey:
- 4 classes of 52 students each = 208 students (4 were absent, so 204 were surveyed).
- 5 students (2.4%) are from minority groups.
 - 4 students are Hui (回). The distinctive characteristic of the Hui are that they are Muslim (and therefore don't eat pork, the most commonly consumed meat in China). Unlike the other minorities, however, they aren't defined by a distinct language, so these students probably won't be behind in school as many other minority students are (since Mandarin is already their second language and English their third).
-1 student is LiSu (傈僳). Apparently the Lisu people are thought to have inhabited this area for thousands of years.
-83 students have had some limited exposure to English.

The rest of the data is taking some time to input since first I need to decipher the handwriting and look up all the characters I don't know. There are a lot of characters in names that aren't used much elsewhere and they didn't give me rosters--although I've found two classes' rosters in their classrooms, one nicely posted on the door, one under a pile of books, the others I will search for this evening. Rosters help me decipher the student's handwriting, but I still need to look up characters to type them into my computer.

71 down, 133 to go. I'm glad it's the weekend.

Happy Teacher's Day!

Happy Teacher's Day, 教师节日快乐! In China, September 10th is Teacher's Day. There was a nice ceremony for the students, teachers, and some parents. After several speeches, the parents, the teachers, and the students each took a pledge.

Students, led by a local teacher, pledging to study hard, etc.

The teacher pledge translates something like this:
Teachers, we who are engaged in this sacred occupation,

Teachers, we bear the weight of this mission all our lives.

Children need us to develop their ability, wisdom, and motivation.

The trust of the family heads is the starting point for our confidence.

Under the banner of our solemn country, facing all the students and all the parents, we make this pledge:

"Devoted to the career of education the people, offer as a tribute our lifetime’s vigour, strictly abide by the moral standard of the teacher’s profession, pursue education to reach the most  virtuous, the utmost boundary. Use compassion to mould, use the truth to reform, use examples to encourage, use personality to nurture, pass on culture, awaken wisdom seeking truth; follow the law, ardently love the students; bravely bring new ideas, in time becoming the people’s teacher. Use wisdom to begin wisdom, use compassion to support compassion,  treat all students equally, construct the foundation for them to stride toward success!

Although I only understood bits and pieces at the time (it's honestly hard to understand 1200 students chanting in unison...louder is not always clearer...), it was a nice ceremony and interesting to participate in.

After the ceremony I went back to my room thinking I might take a nap, but I got a call saying to come down to the gate area to hang out with other teachers and eat. Again, there was quite a spread of fruit as well as sunflower seeds, candy, and these ridiculously sour fruit called 橄榄 (ganlan), also known as Chinese olives. I stayed for an hour or so before sneaking off for a nap. Also I needed to get away from all the smoke (Chinese men, by and large, smoke almost non-stop).

When dinnertime came around, I came down to hordes of guests--representatives of some of the families and government officials, apparently--and a feast.

So much food! We usually have just four or five (simpler) dishes and a cabbage or radish soup.

The food here is mostly sour (酸 suan) and hot (辣 la). These are their favorite flavours. Perhaps because I've therefore had a lot of hot and sour recently, my favorite dish yesterday was something sweet. They called it eight treasure rice cake, but I'm not sure what the eight treasures are. It clearly had sticky rice, red bean paste, small beans, candied melon, strips of sweet cake, and a candied cherry on top!

Eight treasure rice cake. So yummy!

Perhaps the best part of teacher's day for me, however, was finally obtaining my teaching schedule! Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday I have four classes a day, alternating between music and English. On Thursday I have three classes, and on Friday I have just one class in the afternoon. It's a pretty good schedule, allowing me to see my students almost every day. The mental switching between music and English may be more of a challenge, however. But hey, I'm getting better at switching between English and Chinese...slowly...

When I walked into my first class today they asked "Is this English class?" and when I said yes they cheered "Yay!" It was heartwarming (and confidence boosting--a nice way to start off), but not as heartwarming as the cards and other crafts that many students in that class made for me for Teacher's Day. They say things like "May you have good health", "May your work be smooth", and "May all hopes be fulfilled."

Cards from one of my third grade classes for Teacher's Day.

The first day of teaching went remarkably well...but more on that tomorrow. It was simultaneously invigorating and exhausting and now that the adrenaline has worn off, I'm tired!

More Surprises

Yesterday, as it turned out, was filled with more surprises. Before our principal left our room she invited us to dinner with her to celebrate the Midautumn festival. First of all, one of the dishes she served us was little, brown, textured, stick-shaped things. I was worried at first that they were stick bugs. But it turned out they actually were sticks! Did you know you can fry bamboo stalks and eat them? They were really good—sort of like chips. Then after dinner itself, she brought out nuts that looked like pistachios except round. She said they were gingko nuts. Then she brought fruit and urged us to eat some of everything. Eventually we convinced her that although it was all very good, we were very full and we returned to school.

After dinner I went to the teachers office to use the internet and write yesterday’s blog post. Somewhere around 9:30 a teacher came in with peaches, chestnuts, and large, red-bean-paste-filled mooncakes and urged me to try everything. So I did, thanking her profusely because she speaks fangyan with a strong accent so I can’t otherwise communicate very much with her.

Then, at 10:30, just as I was thinking about going back to my room, I got a call from Katherine saying that the local teacher who has been helping us with everything had invited us to her house. Tomorrow? No, now.

She had another Midautumn Festival spread: meat, red bean, and flower mooncakes; roasted gingko nuts and chestnuts; and piles of apples, peaches, oranges, and pomegranates. We met her husband and sat and nibbled at the food, sometimes chatting with her and sometimes turning to watch a TV show about the Japanese occupation.

She told us that she had been in the city visiting a student in the hospital. We mentioned that we had also gone with local teachers on Saturday to visit a student in the local hospital. She said yes, some students were in the local hospital and some in the city hospital. Why are so many students in the hospital? They ate some wild-growing fruit that was poisonous. How many students? She held up four fingers. Four? Forty.

They’re all okay, most of them are already out of the hospital, and the rest should be coming back soon. Thank goodness.

Surprises

Today I was startled awake by music playing from the town square. Is it Tuesday? Do we have school? Is this the wake-up music? (Yes, we have wake-up music played over the loud speakers on school days.)

Nope, this is apparently just one of many ways to celebrate Midautumn Festival (中秋节 Zhong Qiu Jie). At first I just try to keep sleeping, but eventually I give up. I'm still a little groggy though, so I wake myself up by finishing the book I was reading last night. And then I decide it's time to prepare for tomorrow.

What are my class rules going to be? How will I explain them? What will I have students do to engage with and demonstrate understanding of these rules? What questions should I ask on my introductory survey? How do I say these things in Chinese? These questions have been swirling around my mind for the last couple of weeks, but now it's time to make some decisions.

I pull out my computer and notebook and settle myself to work in bed. I make a little bit of progress before I hear a knock on the door. Katherine opens it and it's another American fellow visiting town. So we sit and chat for a while. 

Then comes another knock. It's our principal and another local teacher. They've brought us moon cakes and a few other goodies (including a yummy orange cake made from buckwheat flour) to celebrate Midautumn Festival. After we thank them as best we can, Katherine asks what classes we'll be teaching tomorrow. The answer: none!

None? What's happening tomorrow? The students have activities. When will we start teaching? Thursday. Thursday??? Thursday.

Covered wagons?

These are one of the common modes of transport in Jietou. Although primarily used for transporting goods for market or large objects, it's very common that people will also be sitting in the back. Don't they look like covered wagons? That is, until you see them from the front...then they look like farm equipment. It's sort of like horses have just been replaced with this external motor that pulls the rest along!

Where do I live?

All the other pictures of Jietou that I've posted so far have been taken from my room. But where is my room? Here's a picture taken from right outside the teacher's office on the first floor of the teaching building. All the way on the left you can see part of the four-story teaching building. The tall building to the right is a government building of some sort. This is where we had our faculty meeting since there's no where in the school itself that can seat all 60 of us comfortably. The next building over is ours. Our apartment is the rightmost on the top floor (fifth): from this angle you can see our balcony and Katherine's window. Mine is on the other side. The rightmost building has more brand-new teachers' dorms. The two shorter, old-fashioned buildings are the old teachers' dorms, to which the newly arrived teachers have been relegated.

For those of you who have been asking, my address is:

679107
云南省保山市腾冲县界头镇中心小学

南慧英 (电话号:15287535370)

You should probably accompany this with an English translation for the USPS:

Gitanjali Gnanadesikan

Jietou Central Elementary School

Tengchong County, Baoshan City, Yunnan Province

China, 679107

Interestingly, although American addresses go from small to big, Chinese addresses go from big to small, starting with the province, the city, the county, and then the specific place...

Also, thanks to everyone who has written me notes about the blog! I really appreciate the encouragement. And, of course, I love hearing from you!

Newsflash: Teaching Assignments!

***** I am officially teaching third grade English and music! *****

Our new teachers finally arrived yesterday! And with their arrival, decisions could finally be made about who should teach what. Sadly, however, the local English teacher has been reassigned to a nearby school. So while I'll be teaching third grade, my Chinese cofellow 文欢 (Wenhuan) will teach fourth grade, and Katherine will teach fifth and sixth grade.

There are four third-grade classes and they meet twice-a-week each for English and music. That means I'll be teaching each class four times a week for a total of 16 class periods per week. All of my classes also have only about 40 students! This is really exciting. Between that and the fact that I'll be teaching the same kids for both subjects, this means that I should be able to remember all their names! At least the English ones I give them--I'm still not very good at remember Chinese names. But hopefully I'll get better, especially since some of the students may not have English names for awhile since I'm planning on using these names as an incentive for good behavior. I should have 160 or so students in total which is totally manageable! Some fellows have three or four times as many if they only teach each class once a week.

Today I reviewed colours with a third grade class that I was asked to cover. I had just taught them red, blue, yellow, green, pink, and white on Tuesday so we reviewed these, and learned orange and purple. Then we learned the first two lines of the Disney spectrum song: "Red, yellow, green, red, blue, blue, blue/ Red, purple, green, yellow, orange, red, red." Although the song was hard for them in some ways they thought it was funny and it definitely helped some of them say some of the colours. There was one lonely voice who had the whole thing down pat while the rest struggled.

Then I pulled out a calendar with fancy flowers on it and we named the colours of the flowers. I thought this would be good practice, but I didn't expect them to be so enthralled by the flower themselves. Some combination of the fact that I told them they were "American" flowers and the fact that they were extremely decorative specimens truly impressed them. There was oohing and ahhing.

Day Two

I taught three more classes of Goodnight Moon and colours today. One fifth grade class and two third grade classes. The difference between the fifth graders and third graders was noticeable. For example, the fifth graders quickly learned my afternoon greeting: "Good afternoon class!" followed by "Good afternoon Miss Nan". The third graders, however, struggled not only with saying it, but with the routine. They would say it back after me, and then I'd say "Good afternoon class" and get really blank looks. But eventually they got it, saying "Good afternoon Miss Nan" with a sheepish look on their face.

Most of the students in the last class today didn't leave when the bell rang and we formally ended class, even though it was dinner time. So I asked them if they wanted to take a picture. The reaction was fascinating. About half of them crowded around me so close that it was hard to take a picture. The other half stood at the back of the class watching.

They're a pretty happy bunch!

Day One

This morning we--the four Teach for China fellows--were introduced to the students. All 1200 or so of them. School assemblies here mean that the students all stand in the courtyard: two lines per class, four classes per grade, each grade grouped as a section. That means that a lot of students in the back can't actually see the front. Usually I'm sure they don't mind, but today they wanted to see the new teachers. This meant lots of little faces popping up over their classmates as students in the back jumped up to see us.

For the rest of the day most of the students have said hello to me as I walk around campus. This involves not only "老师好" (laoshi hao), or hello teacher, but also throwing their hand into the air in a motion that seems to be a hybrid of a wave and a salute. I usually respond with a smile and "你好" (ni hao) if it's a single student or "你们好" (nimen hao) if it's a group. I'll often nod or wave too. I'm not really sure what the respected response. It seems like the saying is more important to them than the response. Some of them are quite eager and some of them seem to be storing up the courage to speak.

Although we were told that we would not be teaching today, all the other teachers were responsible for supervising classes all day so we offered to give them a break by teaching a class. But it wasn't really a normal class, so I couldn't start with rules and expectations. I couldn't give them a survey. I couldn't give them the diagnostic test. So I read them Goodnight Moon (the simplest of the picture books I brought with me), taught them a few colours, and practiced saying and identifying them. Twice: one third grade class and one fourth grade class. The classes themselves could have been better--after all, it's hard to have a well run class when there are no rules or expectation in place--but now I have some idea of what I'm up against.

One of the students in the very back of the fourth grade class fell asleep sometime during the lesson. I walked to the back and laid a hand on his back, expecting that would wake him up. But he wouldn't wake up. I shook him slightly. He wouldn't wake up. The classmates sitting in front of him started shaking him too. He still wouldn't wake up and I was worried. Was he sick? Who should I talk to? Then, with a lot of shaking from his classmates, he finally woke up groggily. Several students told me he always sleeps in class.

The strongest students are always put in the front of the class and the poor students in the back. This is just how things are done. But I've already found that this makes it difficult to get the poorer students involved. Or hear if they're saying things at all. With 35-45 students per class, the back is pretty far back there. The front row always drowns them out. Then, when I walk to the back, the front starts to chatter. Hopefully between rules, lesson plans, and the expectation of real class, it will get better in the days and weeks to come!