first day of (teaching) class

Background: Professor Scott Rozelle, the Stanford prof who's with us in China now, is starting a program to bring volunteer teachers to migrant schools in Beijing, to help teach English. We are his guinea pigs.

Starting today, I'm teaching at this school in Haidian District (same district as Beida, but it's a big district, apparently) every Friday from about 1:30 to 3:30. The school is a 40 minute bus ride away, in a community that my teaching partner Adam described as "something between the countryside and the city." In terms of wealth/resources, it's pretty similar to a South African township, or those neighborhoods in Mexico that OCCEC goes to every year. But it's a little different because it's still pretty close to the heart of the city, so there are random shops with glass windows, and a good amount of cars/buses traveling the dirt roads. Anyway, the school has about 300+ students, preschool through sixth grade. We talked with the principal, and agreed to teach two classes: a sixth grade class, and a preschool class.

part of the schoolyard

I forgot to take pictures of the sixth grade class, but I'll do it next week. There are only 12 students in that class, and their ages range from 12 to 15. They were all pretty well-behaved, though some learn faster than others because the others don't seem to be very good at paying attention. I gave them all English names because none of them had one yet, and yes, I did name two boys Moses and Aaron 8-)

After that class was the preschool class. And the only word I have to describe that experience was AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

hahah jk, i have more words. But really, it was OUT OF CONTROL. First, some cute pictures:

cute boy who came up to me in the playground and said, "YOU'RE the English teacher!"

this is me writing "tiger" on the board, before i realized that 1) they can't read and 2) they have the attention spans of fleas.

At first, things seemed to be going okay. The kids were relatively well-behaved and paid a decent amount of attention, although I was constantly shushing them and asking them to sit back down.

"learning" animal names

asking this boy if he knew the English word for "cat." he was shy, so he didn't say anything

But VERY QUICKLY, the kids figured out that we didn't really know how to handle them, and after about five minutes, the classroom devolved into mayhem.

Adam and I were totally flustered. We just kept looking at each other and being like "Um...so...haha. What should we do?" And then about ten kids ran out the door to tell the principal, and then five more kids tried running out so I grabbed them and said, "Stay here!" And they all said, "We have to go to the bathroom!" So finally, at the advice of the little girl in green, I grabbed a stick that was lying on the table and said, "Whoever doesn't sit down is going to get hit with this stick!"

AND THAT WAS THE MAGIC PHRASE. They all sat down! It was amazing. And THEN the regular preschool teacher walked in with an even BIGGER stick and started herding them into their chairs, and if they didn't move right away, she would whack them on their arms (not hard, but harder than my tender heart would at first allow me to, haha). That got them really quiet, and it was seriously like a magic trick. All of the crazy little kids were sitting at their desks, being quiet, and then I told them to get their books out, and it was almost as if I'd been given a new class.

transformation

the woman in the pink is the regular teacher, and she stayed for the rest of the class period, keeping the kids in line! Adam and I asked her to please come back next time and stay throughout the whole class.

At the beginning and end of every class, the kids would stand up and yell, "LAOSHI HAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" (Hi, Teacher) and "ZAI JIAN LAOSHI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" haha it was so ridiculously loud. But as you can see, they are ADORABLE! So uh, hopefully next time will be less of a zoo and more of a classroom with humans in it.