We Survived Our First Day of Teaching!

We survived our first day of teaching!

Our first day of teaching went well and we both enjoyed it. While I absolutely signed on for this, I must admit I have carried around a load of dread and fear for several months knowing I would ultimately have to teach on a university level.  Those of you who are somewhat familiar with my temperament will immediately relate to this...Jenny has always been very good at getting to the heart of my stress and telling me to just breathe. Well Jenny, I am just sayin, it worked this time!

Left half of class. 

Right half of same class. Typical class of 22 English majors.

I think the one major fear I have had with coming here is knowing I will be a teacher on a university level and having students calling me a professor. Wait, Me?  I may teach seminary but college?  From what we learned at our training much of what is taught by thousands in China is more of a glorified primary/seminary class. I felt I could handle that, maybe.  But our first Saturday here we went to a department meeting with the head of the English department and the rest of the faculty. This little woman is about 5'2"and maybe 98 lbs. She has a little pixie haircut, is just as cute as a button and we have spent several enjoyable hours with her so far. But you get her in her element, talking about her department and her students, and she leaves no doubt about what her expectations are and how she wants her classes taught.

We have office hours, we have English free chat, we have finals, and grading and forms to fill out and we are not to move class times around and we are to make sure we teach so the sophomores and senior are able to pass their big national exams (because at our university, while nationally the percentage of students passing these exams is 45% after multiple tries, our school is normally 100% on the first try). Oh man, what am I going to do now? Oh and we are not teaching lots of hours because she expects extra hours of preparation and grading/correcting for every hour we teach.

All our classrooms are identical - and nice. Computer in the
podium; projector in the ceiling.

 That is how we ended up staying up until after 2am Monday night preparing for our first classes Tuesday. If it had not been for your amazing father I could never have pulled it off.  But we did! And we enjoyed it.  We actually taught the same kids in our own classes. We just traded classes. At 8:30 I taught Movies to a senior section in one building and Dad taught writing to sophomores. It ended at 10:10. At 10:30 Dad moved over to the classroom next to me (he got lost - another great story for another time) and taught the seniors Public Speaking while I taught the sophomores Oral English.

Only Sophomores & Seniors so Far; Freshmen Start After 3 Weeks of Military Training
The sophomore class was the most outgoing and fun to interact with.  Most everyone has an English name so it is possible to learn their names and remember them. There is a Jenny. She is pleased I have a daughter with that name. I had a PowerPoint for my Oral class with all of our family on it and it was a great success. (Did I mention all the instructions to run the computer, etc. are in Chinese?) Fortunately there is an official monitor for each class who is an IT specialist and if they aren't there is someone who is.

We have enjoyed buying Cherokee brands in Target here.

Oh wait. For sure this is Cherokee. For sure there is no Target.
Oh, that is right - we are in China!

Family PowerPoint for Content as the Basis for the English Learning and Talking
I had the students watch a PPT and then they had to each get up and make several statements about our family that they had learned.  They loved all the blue eyes, they think the red hair must have something to do with DNA, wow we are tall! Paul must be at least 2 meters tall, Mary lived in Hong Kong? Cool!, Professor Paul has young and active grandchildren. Will is so busy he goes to sleep on rocks. Laura has lovely yellow hair. Lisa is very pretty and they would like to meet her, Jenny is holding the cutest baby and they would like to hold her too, and it went on and on. They were really fun and happy kids. The seniors were a more quiet group and I had great success with them because I had a movie. We started Groundhog Day and they liked it. It was comforting to see them laugh at the right parts. I did get the feeling their English was not quite as good as the younger group.

Anyway, it was a fun but exhausting day and we are ready to go back and do it again. But right now we are headed to bed!