A Year of Teaching Primary in China
Here’s an intimidating request: Clark, we need you to interview every student and give them a grade (A, B, or C) depending on how good their English is. Remember that I have 800 students, so this is nearly impossible to do efficiently. Or fairly. Or even do with a smile on your face. Five months of teaching had to be summarized in just three questions:
1. What will you do tomorrow?
2. Mr. Nielsen is ________.
3. What floor is this? (first, second, or third)
Most of the Grade 3 students knew what they would do tomorrow, but some of them, when asked, only said, “Thursday.” Well, that’s at least better than the kids who would shake their heads and say, “No.” Clearly, I have not gotten through to you.
The intent of my second question was to solicit adjectives like clever or tall or quiet. The students who really pined for the better grade would try to butter me up with compliments like, “Mr. Nielsen is very, very, very cool… and he likes me very much!” That may be true, but you still didn’t know what you were going to do tomorrow. B.
It’s a little disheartening when you set very forgiving standards for what it takes to get an A and maybe only ten students in every class reach that level. You have to keep telling yourself, though, that you were only able to see each class for 40 minutes a week, if that, since the foreign teacher’s lessons were always the first to get canceled for special events. You didn’t have enough time to make a meaningful impact.
This does not mean I am ready to jump back into another Chinese primary school and try again. On reflection, I’ve actually liked teaching children. They are adorable and have no inhibitions about singing songs or playing games on the chalkboard. Your lessons also don’t need to be very elaborate; you can spend the entire class period focusing on one concept.
Now for the bad: Chinese kids are loud (way, way, way too loud) and don’t take foreigners seriously as teachers. You end up wasting a lot of time on classroom management. It’s not easy when the kids speak Chinese, and you speak English, and somehow you’re supposed to reason with them. All they learn in the end is to parrot, “Be quiet! Sit down! Don’t do that!” But maybe for you, that’s enough.
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Responses to “A Year of Teaching Primary in China”
Comments RSS Feed – All CommentsLola — 15 June 2009 @ 8:27 pm
When I taught English very briefly at a Chilean university I spent most of my time looking for my class. (they were remodeling and would forget to tell me where it was going to be held that day), chatting with one of the students who had no idea what I was saying, or arguing with the teacher about grammar. It usually went something like this,
foreign teacher, “we watch shows in T.V.”
Me, “no, we watch T.V. shows ON T.V.”
Her, “No, IN T.V.”…
Me, “Okay, fine, whatever you say…obviously you know English better than me.” Now, why was I there again???
Clark — 16 June 2009 @ 5:35 am
Older students are always trying to tell me they know English better than I do. You’re just there to tell them they are right!
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