John & Patty Donohoe

The Donohoe's
Donohoe's are converts from New England, living most recently in Cape Cod. They have both been school teachers for their careers. Patty is a music teacher and John a PE teacher. Two of their sons live in Utah and one in Colorado. It really is a blessing to have them here with us!

John and Patty are the other BYU China Teach couple at our university. They are wonderful people and we depend on them heavily for friendship and to jointly navigate everything. The 4 of us are very mutually dependent (also very convenient to be each other’s home and visiting teachers – normally we have 1^st visits covered by the 1^st day of each month). It is a great thing BYU places more than one couple per university.  

John and Patty Donohoe at BYU; now in Xi'an, China

In the joint letter the 4 of us got from the university, we were told what groups of 4 throughout the BYU program are told: “ Wilson's are assigned to teach English majors; Donohoe's are assigned to teach non-English majors.” Little did we understand the difference between teaching majors and non-majors. Maybe it is because our training was such an overload, but it seems BYU did not highlight the huge differences.

At our university there has been a large difference in the way our department has welcomed us and helped us while the Donohoe's have been more isolated. You have read what we have experienced with Zhang Yi. So kind and so helpful. The Donohoe's, working for the College of Humanities teaching non-English majors have had little such contact or help. But even more interesting is the status of their teaching assignments.

With no contact from their college for the first week, their foreign office facilitator arranged for them to teach at a different university on Fridays. Then finally the second week we were here, they received a general schedule but not the specific one. From what Zhang Yi has told us, that makes sense. All the non-majors get tested in English once they arrive on campus. If they don’t score high enough for their level of education, they are then assigned to an English class. But the decisions are not made until after the semester starts. From a BYU China Teacher perspective, it is a long, long wait not knowing. We have had the luxury of lots of early information while Donohoe's have needed to patiently wait.

It is late fall; it is getting colder; the leaves are changing; and
it is still very attractive on campus

One constant difference is in course content. Our classes are similar in that they are each 1 hour and 40 minute long and only meet weekly. This is what we have generally heard from other teachers at other universities and cities as well. Typically non-majors teachers teach the same “Oral English” lesson during a week to all the different classes they have. The spouses might even share the exact same lesson plan. That is the case for Donohoe's and others in Xi’an. For our English majors, Ann has 4 separate subjects and Paul has 3. Besides the additional preparation, majors are expected to have much more corrected homework (constant essays, etc.). But majors have classes normally only have about 20-30 students (we average 22) and non-majors average around 50-60 students; we have heard of BYU teachers with 400 students this semester.

I was talking to a BYU English major teacher at another university here in Xi’an. He has 7 classes of sophomore oral English, so he just has one preparation and it is the same for his wife. They make no homework assignments so no correcting. BYU has told us not to compare anything because there is no baseline of “fairness” and everyone will be different. So very interesting. And I must add, constantly changing. Many BYU teachers are working with PhD candidates on thesis issues in English, and in the entirety of the 80 of us, there are so many “exceptions to the rules.”

Ann busy working in her office.

We also get asked to do lots of unusual things. For the last few weeks, John Donohoe has been mentoring the PE teachers in how to teach the foreign students (primarily Iran, Pakistan, and Africa). The common language is English but the communication is very difficult. Sunday Patty and John were interviewed for a couple of hours about the election and other American issues. Today Ann and I have interviewed 20 professors and 30 masters/PhD candidates to determine if their English is sufficient for the University to pay their way to various international conferences. China does not lack for variety. Not one day in China lacks for variety. It is amazing knowing something very new will be part of tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after, and…..

Zhang Yi just brought over this newspaper article with the photo of the Donohoes. I wonder what it says?