The Semester So Far

So, it's almost midterms out here, and I've been doing some thinking about how this year has gone so far, and what I want to do the rest of this year.

This semester has been hard, but in a very different way from the first semester I had out here. First semester I had no idea what it was I was supposed to be doing, and didn't know how to budget my time, so I ended up spending a lot of time preparing the wrong things, and even when I was spending my time on the things that mattered, I still wasn't doing it in a way that my students could easily understand. When I think back to what I tried teaching during the first month--the lesson I planned and executed, the homework I gave, the classroom management policies....really just everything I did--I cringe. It was really rough. I was talking with some other first year fellows about this, and the phrase that kept coming up was "Can you believe I tried.....?" followed by laughter. Rough times.

Now, I know I don't have it all figured out, but I've got an idea of what I should be doing with my time, and ways to approach lessons that gives students who are trying a fair shot at understanding the material. Class goes more smoothly, and I'm not too worried about the upcoming midterms. (Well, that's a lie, but it really should be OK) The two things that have been making this semester really hard are homesickness, and worries that I'm not doing enough out here.

In terms of homesickness--I'm going home for the summer (which I'm incredibly excited about!) and missing home is just an avoidable cost of doing this. Going far away from home can have great advantages, but it's not free.

The main thing that's been bothering me is the concern that I'm not actually being that effective. My grades are good, students are decently interested in English, and are grasping the material (and some are doing fantastically--I'll try to upload some work from my students in the future) but I don't know that I'm going to have any impact on my students that will really last. Sure, they might be slightly more interested in English in the future, and they might later look back and think that having a goofy white dude be their teacher was a cool experience, but I don't think I'm being that effective at teaching general life and study skills: perseverance, goal setting, creating intrinsic motivation in students, good note-taking, study habits, and a general understanding of why education and hard work are important.

Right now, I'm not giving my students much of anything that they couldn't get from any other English teacher in the area other than a collection of funny things that their English teacher has said. I'm not discouraged, but that's something I've been trying to change this semester, and really want to focus on after the midterm. Anyways, focusing on trying to figure out ways to teach these skills (many of which I don't actually have.....) while also teaching the present progressive has me stressed out.

Last semester I had a great excuse--I was a new teacher, and I wasn't supposed to know what I was doing. I don't want to rely on that excuse for the first of the two years that I'm here. The basics of teaching are definitely easier than they were last semester, but I feel like expectations are a lot higher too.

So, I'm a bad blogger

But here's a link to an article about me and a couple other fellows on NFL China. It's all in Chinese, but there are a couple pictures!

http://www.nflchina.com/news/story/22693.html

I'm Still Alive!

Short version of this update--vacation was nice, coming back to school was tough, and I'm still alive. 

Last week was Tomb Sweeping, so we got time off. I think it also combined with some local holiday so my district got a little bit more time off than everybody else. We had 7 days off, so I headed to Guangdong to visit TFC fellows over there, and it was a lot of fun.. I went with a friend to Xiamen (a nice big city that's on the coast) ate delicious food, walked along the beach, and had an awesome time before heading back to Guangdong. The situation that TFC fellows are dealing with Guangdong is really different. There's a ton less class time, but insane testing pressures. It's a richer area, and the default job is working in a small factory, whereas here the default job seems to be farming. A lot of the kids work in the factories on the weekends, and a lot of them quit school early to start working full time. It's really different than Yunnan in a lot of ways, and because this is TFC's first year there isn't much support for the fellows there. 

Anyway, vacation was awesome, but coming back to school was rough. I had to cover some other teachers' classes, and switch classes, which ended up with me having a miserable schedule. I hadn't done enough over the break so I spent the entire time scrambling to stay on top of everything. But, I made it to the weekend, and we're having football and a potluck tonight, so I'm pretty excited. Whooo!

I am become death the destroyer of flies

For those among you who have no lived in a rural area where trash is disposed of in giant piles that are then burned, poop rests in troughs and slowly becomes a writhing mass of maggots, and livestock droppings litter the landscape, you have no idea how prolific and terrifying swarms of flies can become. They buzz around a lot normally, and there are always about ten or so that will sneak into my room over the course of the day, and having them hover around during meals become commonplace.

Today, in my haste to grab flags from my room for flag football, I made the rookie mistake of not completely closing my door, and the enemy took advantage of that thirty second lapse. When I returned to my room after football and dinner, things were dire. But, with the experience that I'd gained over the past few weeks, I wielded my blue flyswatter in defense of my room (and all that is good and just). The battle raged on and on, but after chasing down the last crafty survivors, I swept up all the corpses that hadn't fallen behind my desk, and took stock of the enemy strength. Sixty two dead flies. (Yes, I counted). Which means that the total number of dead was much higher. Victory was sweet.

tl;dr I just killed sixty plus flies, and I'll be picking flies out of the places they fell for a long time.

School Inspections

The school is getting inspected tomorrow, which means that every student spent the entire day cleaning their dorms, the campus, classrooms, and the bathrooms. They're normally responsible for cleaning everything anyways, but whenever there are education bureau officials swinging by, extra effort is made to make the school look immaculate. Over at the elementary school, in preparation for a similar inspection, about an entire week was dedicated to this cleaning process, and artwork was specially made by the students to hang on the walls. It's impressive how much effort goes into this cleaning, and right now my school is looking awesome.

Completely unrelated, but there's a speech contest happening on 4-20, so I'm pretty excited that one of the kids from my class is going to get the chance to show off their awesome English speaking ability and hopefully do well in the competition. I'm still not entirely clear on what the contest entails because all the instructions are in rather formal Chinese, and I've decided that rather than slogging through it I'm just going to ask a local teacher what I'm supposed to do.

Quick Update

Flag football has been awesome--we've tossed it around two times with groups of students, and they're getting into it. We'll have our first legit practice this Sunday, and I'll definitely have pictures to post up.

Class has been fine. There's a ton of content that these kids are responsible for, which means that some kids are definitely struggling, but I think it's going as well as can be expected given the circumstances.

In other good news, I'm hopefully going to help design part of the curriculum for a fun summer camp that a second year TFC fellow is putting together. It sounds awesome, so I'm really excited about that.

High School Kids and Saint Paddy's Day

So, we had a bunch of high school kids here, and it was cool, but strange seeing so many foreigners that I didn't know walking about town. I was in the supermarket while the group walked by, and the supermarket ladies thought it was the most fascinating thing ever. (To be fair, not much happens around here) It was great having a few kids come to my class. My students were really shy, but it was cool having them do self introductions that my students could understand. They were really excited to realize that  I hadn't been tricking them this entire time and that they could actually speak a little bit of English and understand what was happening. Earlier in the day we had done some ice breaking activities with the high schoolers and groups of students from all the TFC classes, and that was fun (especially for those of us who got to watch them try to build towers out of newspaper, mime things like going to the restroom and not having toilet paper, and doing the human know) and I think all the students (local and foreign) enjoyed it.

My favorite part of the trip, however, was definitely watching some of these high school girls confront the horrors of the restroom in nicest restaurant in town (which is really pretty comparatively clean). Ladies, if you somehow end up finding this blog post, I'm sorry, but I lost it when one of you walked out of the restroom with tears in your eyes. (I should really work on being a nicer person)

Also! St Paddy's went well! We had a bonfire with extra papers that had accumulated in our rooms, and roasted marshmallows (one of our amazing second year fellows brought them back from Beijing) and made s'mores. It was great to spend time with everyone--it's rare for all of our local TFCers to get together, so it's always a good time when it happens.

Now  I just need to crank out a ton of lesson plans, worksheets, and other stuff so I'll be ready for class tonight.....