Ready for Rugao: July 8th-12th - Our First Week of Teaching

“Welcome, American Experts.” Yes, there it was again, projected on the screen at the front of the college's auditorium as we entered on Monday morning. Gulp! We’d had breakfast at the hotel (not the kind of spreads we’d grown accustomed to during the tour) after Bobby had stopped by each of our rooms to escort us down to the second floor and then walk us to school. He had returned our little introductions to us, having translated them last night. When we entered the auditorium, all of the students were already seated and waiting, and all eyes were upon us. Really upon us. Studying us from head to toe and back again. We were greeted with warm applause and then it became very quiet. Or perhaps that is just how it seemed in our state of extreme nervousness. Like the you-could-maybe-throw-up kind of nervousness. We were shuffled into our front row seats and the program began. After a brief introduction and welcome to the students and to us, Mr. Wong invited us to the stage (The American Experts!). So, there we stood, all rowed up, facing a roomful of expectant faces, many poised with cell phones ready for video taping. So, DeAnn began: “Hello and good morning. My name is DeAnn Pomatto…On behalf of my colleagues, we are so very pleased to be able to visit your beautiful city and school… We five all come from the state of Missouri, which is in the central part of the United States. Our home cities, St. Louis and Kansas City, are known for their jazz and blues music, baseball teams, and delicious barbeque food… We are looking forward to teaching you about our culture and our methods of instruction, as well as learning more about you, your culture, and education in China.” [We’d later learn that we’d erroneously written into DeAnn’s introduction that the Mississippi River is the longest river in the United States. Well, largest in volume, but not the longest. How did we ALL get that wrong?! - - American Experts…hmmm.] She paused every few sentences to allow Bobby to translate. We all stood there and smiled at the audience, and listened and watched. Thankfully, our moments on stage were few. The introduction was brief, and our individual introductions even more brief. DeAnn was an awesome ambassador for us all. We had only just begun and she’d endeared herself to her students already. It was a relief to have the assembly behind us, though, and to be heading to our classrooms. Heading to our classrooms…eek!

And there we were, experiencing that first day of school awkwardness that is so familiar with our students at home, but new to us with Chinese adults. Gosh, they were quiet. Sooooo quiet and watchful. And we can only wish that our students at home were as thoroughly polite. We were all awkwardly nervous. With us teachers literally sweating it out at the front of the room to get set up and get our students talking.

We would have ten days with our Chinese students. Lisa, Linda, DeAnn and Theresa (who was “on her own” with Nancy in Nanjing) had spent hours laying out plans, copying and cutting down to size (we were all pretty close to our luggage weight limit when we left the States) and organizing materials in order to cover days roughly according to the same themes (not all of us in the same order, so that we could share supplies):

Getting to Know You/Friendship Nursery Rhymes/Folktales

Weather and Seasons USA/MO (money and geography)

Animals Games

Food (a real crowd pleaser) Holidays

Plus two days at the end allotted for catch up, review, and good-byes.

All of these themes were interspersed with lessons on idioms (Boy, we hadn’t realized how many idioms the English language is packed with!); alliteration; rhyming; songs with body movements; poetry; parts of speech; similarities and differences (enter the Venn Diagram); opposites; reading (reading aloud and being read to); writing and drawing; small group work; partner think, pair, and shares, among other things.

Some of the biggest hits in terms of activities were polishing pennies, eating Ritz crackers with PBnJ, tasting and describing Cracker Jacks, writing and illustrating alliteration and alphabet books, creating a travel brochure for a favorite place in China, performing songs/dances for each other, some of the morning meeting mixers like “Have You Ever” and the Popcorn greeting, and performing Folktales or Fables.

When we compared notes at the end of the day, we all found much the same thing. Our Chinese students were SUPER quiet, infinitely compliant, and ridiculously hard working. Each of our classes seemed to have their own personality, just as our classes at home do, but many qualities they shared.

The next day we learned another Chinese student idiosyncrasy. We walked from the hotel and arrived in time to check in in our “office” and then head upstairs to our classrooms. We stepped inside our classrooms and assumed a sense of panic, because all of the seats were full. Students were there, seated and ready to go, as we scrambled to set up under each of their watchful gazes. Here we thought we’d be getting to our rooms early enough (at 9:00) to have a little alone time, set up, and get our bearings, and now it looked like we’d actually shown up late on our second day of class. Our assistants assured us that everything was fine, but it was an off-putting way to start our second day. At break time we came to learn that it is customary for students to arrive half an hour early to class to sit and read quietly, go over their lessons and notes, and prepare for class. Wow… By the end of the week, we’d all grown accustomed to having a bit of an audience. We watched the students a bit as we did our thing to set up for class, and they watched us a bit too. Overall, though, we’d learned that that half an hour before class was their inter and intra personal time and no cause for alarm.

DeAnn and her assistant, Lydia, on the first day of class.

DeAnn's students hard at work just 5 minutes into their first class. We had them fill out little information sheets about themselves: Name (both Chinese and English, they give themselves an English name while still in school), Email address (they do all have access to email), Age of students taught (English instruction begins in 3rd grade), Why taking our class (we learned they were all sent to our two week training session, there is no choice when it comes to teacher development opportunities in China), What do you hope to learn (confidence to speak English was the #1 response)