David's Big Adventure in China

I didn’t realize that teaching a few hours a week would be so much work! I have been very busy and didn’t get a chance to update the blog last week. Lesson planning takes a lot of time especially since I am new at this and the school has provided us zero guidance and support. I have two classes of freshmen majoring in business for a speaking class that meets twice a week. This is the only class for which the school has provided a textbook but after 1 week I have decided that the text is not much help. The oral English ability of most of the students is pretty low and most American 5 year olds can easily out talk them. On Monday of this past week I went in with a lesson plan but after asking some students about their weekends before class and getting blank stares because they didn’t understand my question I scrapped the lesson plan. I wrote a basic dialogue about weekend activities on the board and modeled it with one of the students then had the students practice it with each other. Then I randomly called students in 2’s to the front to demonstrate the dialogue. On Wednesday I gave the students the words to the song “Yesterday Once More” by the Carpenters since they told me the previous week that was once of their favorite songs. I had students take turns reading the words and we talked about the meanings and grammar features like the use of contractions then we sang it together. These two classes have about 40 students each.

I have 3 sessions of a class called “Practice”. I didn’t know until I had the first class that this would be 3 different groups of students and not 3 times a week with the same group. I had not been given a list of students so I didn’t know how many students I was supposed to have. I was not given a text, syllabus or any guidance about the expectations for this class. I had several students come up to me before the start of class of tell me they had trouble signing up for my class on the computer system and asked if they could join the class. Not knowing how the system works nor how many students I was supposed to have I said okay. Later, I talked to a couple of the other teachers and also my contact in administration I decided it was best not to allow any additional students to sit in. So in the second week of class I had to tell the students that if they were not officially registered they could not stay for the class. (I had obtained students lists by camping out in the admin office until they gave them to me.) The class size was limited to 20 and I had as many as 15 additional students wanting to sit in. Some of them were practically begging me to allow them to stay and it was tough to say no but the class is designed to be small for effective practice. All of these classes are in the evening and I was surprised to see that my Friday night class was 17 girls, 2 boys and 1 absent. I don’t know if the girls prefer having a male teacher or if the girls were more ambitious about getting signed up for their electives.

I also have a listening class that meets once a week and has 52 students. I was given no guidance about this class and at first was provided a classroom with no board but an AV system that couldn’t play a dvd and wouldn’t accept my USB portable drive. I managed to get this room changed to one that is much more functional. Actually, one of the students (the class monitor) managed to get it changed. For yesterday’s class I showed them an episode of “Friends” with English subtitles. Only about ¼ of the class was able to follow most of the dialogue and we stopped often to discuss the themes, aspects of American culture and words that were unfamiliar to them.

It seems the students in the practice classes are the most eager to learn since this class is an elective. In the Listening class and the Speaking classes many of the students are there only because it’s required and show little interest. There is a wide range of skill levels within the classes which makes lesson planning more difficult. The school makes no effort at determining students’ levels and putting students in classes with students at similar levels. In each class there is a student assigned as class monitor. I don’t fully understand yet the role of the monitors and how they are chosen but often they work as an intermediary between the students, teachers and administration. In one case the monitor gave me the student list for the class and told me I was supposed to submit my teaching plan to the administration.

At certain times of the day I see many students carrying big thermos bottles. They take them to a central place on campus where they can get hot drinking water. They like to drink their water hot and they also use it for making instant noodles. There are several cafeterias on campus and I now have my cafeteria card so I can eat in them. When I do, my meal costs from $.65 to $2.00. I do often eat simple meals in my apartment but I don’t do any real cooking. (PB&J, cereal, instant noodles, etc.) I can buy many western foods at a nearby Carrefour which is a French version of a more upscale Wal-mart. While I was there the other day I was browsing the meat department and saw a small animal that looked very much like a dog. I can’t imagine what else it was but will try to get a local to help me confirm what it was. The sights in the markets here are always interesting! There are all options for shopping……big department or chain stores (2 Wal-marts here), local small markets, and flea market style markets as well.

I have my passport now after having been without it for more than 2 weeks. It was being used by the local authorities to issue my resident permit and to get my Foreign Expert document (which looks like a passport). The resident permit allows me to live here in Kunming and the Foreign Expert document allows me to exchange Chinese currency into U.S. dollars. I can exchange up to 70% of my pay into dollars. I don’t expect to exchange much since I will most likely spend everything I earn.

Well that’s it for now. Tuesday is mid autumn day here (a big holiday) and next time I’ll tell you what it’s all about. Oh, a couple more things. I have been sitting in on a Chinese language class that meets four times a week with a bunch of French students and I’m still meeting with my tutor twice a week so hopefully my language skills will improve quickly. Also, the rainy season is over now and the weather has been beautiful, highs in the mid 70’s and lows in the low 50’s.

It has been a bit of a slow start to the school year. I only had 1 class all week and it was on Friday morning. The school staff did a terrible job of helping us get started. There has been no organized welcome or orientation process and it has been like pulling teeth to get any information out of them. Fortunately there are two returning foreign teachers to help us out. In my building where I live there are 6 foreign teachers including myself. There is a lady from Florida in her mid to late 20’s (returning teacher), a man in his 50’s from Australia, a man in his 30’s or 40’s from Canada (returning teacher) and two young ladies from the Midwest that recently graduated from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. The two young ladies were especially troubled by the lack of welcome and orientation since they had never been to Kunming before and nobody bothered to tell them that there were other foreigners here in the building. They were basically dumped at the apartment and left to their own devices. I didn’t run into them to meet them until after they had been here for 2 or 3 days and when I did meet them they were so excited to meet someone that spoke English and could answer some questions for them. There are some other foreigner teachers that are living on another part of campus or off campus but I don’t yet know how many.

Many of the classes don’t start until the second week because the freshman didn’t arrive until this week and some of the upperclassmen are assigned to assist the freshmen. The freshmen took their college entrance exams the week of July 22 and received their scores the week of August 12. Between August 12 and the end of August they find out to which university they have been accepted. The process is different here and they can only be accepted by 1 university and it is possible that they are assigned a major different from the one they wanted.

I still do not have my complete schedule but what I know so far is that I am teaching 2 classes of English Speaking, 1 English Listening, English Practice (either 1 class 3 times a week or 3 classes once a week – won’t know until I ask the students), and Business Communication. The only class for which the school has provided a textbook is the Speaking class. For the other classes the material and syllabus is entirely up to me. Even for the Speaking class I think we are free to teach whatever lessons we choose. The class I had on Friday was Listening and I arrived early to get familiar with the room and get set up. The room was locked and I couldn’t find anyone with a key. Class was scheduled to start at 8:00 a.m. and nobody came to unlock the room until about 8:20 so at 8:05 I started class in the hallway. The students in this class are sophomore International Accounting students. I am not teaching any Writing classes but the ladies from Drake are teaching some Writing classes. It seems strange to us that Speaking, Listening, Writing and Practice are taught in separate classes but we will coordinate amongst ourselves to try to give the students a rounded set of lessons without duplicating what each other is doing.

We have managed to find restaurants and food to give us a taste of home when we want it. We found a local place where we can get mashed potatoes and PBR (Pabst Blue Ribbon) beer. There are a few western restaurants in town owned by westerners so the food is authentic. There are also several western restaurants owned by Chinese but the food is usually not as authentic. We are allowed to eat at any of the cafeterias on campus but we need a campus debit card to pay and they have not allowed us to get cards yet as they are supposedly changing to a new system. Of course the students all have their cards already. One of the more popular cafeterias is a Muslim cafeteria. Today for lunch I “cooked” in my spacious kitchen…….I had the all American favorite of PB&J sandwich (found bread at the bakery) and Pringles…….yum, yum!

After talking to the others it seems I ended up in the best apartment. The other apartments are in worse shape than mine and have assorted issues with plumbing being the biggest issues. Apparently they had first planned to tear down this building then they were going to remodel it but in the end nothing was done. Everyone’s apartment was dirty when they moved in. Getting issues addressed is almost impossible as they seem to be deaf when it comes to requests for assistance. I have experienced great kindnesses from many Chinese people since I have been in this country but there seems to be great indifference when it comes to work duties.

Now for the usual odds and ends. I saw a news report on TV that said that the government here is now using pop up ads on the internet to remind users that their online activities may be monitored. I haven’t seen any of them I assume because my pop-up blocker is working well. I assume that my blog may be monitored and you should assume that if you send me an e-mail that it may monitored as well. Later today I will probably meet a friend from Nanning for dinner. She and about 30 of her co-workers are in town as part of a 5 day vacation organized by her employer. It is quite common here for employers to organize trips for the employees.