1300 Chinese Kids

Look through the pictures first, do you see how cute these kids are?!!? Man they're fun, I can't stay mad at them for long. I don't even think this kid can speak any English but he is literally the cutest child I have ever seen in my life and he just sits in the very front very calmly and quietly all class!

I am teaching 2nd, 3rd and 4th graders and their English level is definitely higher than I was expecting. Of course, there is a lot of variation in skill level within each class but for the most part all of the kids can form simple sentences. The education system is obviously very different here. From what I've seen, a lot of the English instruction is straight up memorization. We have these really silly British English books (for whatever reason they teach British English but they prefer American accents) that use simple dialogues and pictures to demonstrate concepts. The teachers make the kids memorize some of these dialogues by themselves! They could at least let them memorize it with a partner so that it is an actual dialogue. One of the funnier ones I heard went something like this

"Hello, welcome to the restaurant, what would you like?"
"Hi, I'd like a cola and a hot dog please"
"You'd like a cola and a dog?"
"No, not a dog, a hot dog!"

And it just went on and on like that! I am amazed that the kids are able to memorize it all, it must take a while. They also teach them to write our letters in this very stylized, impractical script. I will probably mention something about that to one of the Chinese English teachers, although I doubt anything will change. Some of the vocabulary is a little weird for me too since it's British English- naughty, crisps, Mum, clever, film star, etc. My friend told me that her kids say "Don't choose that boy, he's not clever!" Very weird and mean!

One great thing for me about the schools is that they have free lunch! The lunches are actually really good and nutritious, not like the junk we have at home. Most lunches consist of a meat (which is usually in a sauce with vegetables or peanuts), rice, bread, a green vegetable dish (which sometimes has meat too) and a tofu or soup dish. There's no desert ever and I've only had one dish that was fried- this yucky fish that was completely whole, and very bony.

Each class has about 50 kids in it and I have 26 classes so I have about 1300 students all together. Needless to say, I don't even know half of their names :( Today one of my students saw me outside of school and said hi but honestly I had never really seen him before, I felt bad. Considering how many kids there are in each class I think they are much better behaved than American kids. My 2nd graders are especially wonderful- I could hear a pin drop in most of my classes with them. Some of my students sit up very straight with their arms behind their backs and raise their hands very politely by propping up their right elbow on their left hand (it's sort of hard to explain but American kids don't do it). Other kids are not so well-behaved and they jump out of their chairs and shout "TEACHER, TEACHER, MEEE!". Some kids shout this at me with such urgency that I'm almost afraid not to call on them! The worst is when they yell laoshi at me, which means teacher in Chinese. I told them if you're going to shout teacher at me at least say it in English! Either way, the kids all stand up when I call on them which I actually really like because I think it focuses attention on the student speaking and allows the student to project their voice so that the other students can hear them better.

I have had a few discipline issues but the Chinese English teachers have helped me deal with them. I had one boy in the fourth grade bring 7 water guns to class and he was squirting the other students. At first I thought he only had one and I took it away from him but when I turned around I heard some giggling and a student told me that he had more. Since I had already taken one, I figured he knew what would happen if I saw the other ones so I didn't bother with it. However, later in class, he was punching some kids in the back. Keep in mind, this boy is in the 4th grade but he's bigger than I am so he was doing some serious damage to these little kids. That was the last straw for me so I talked to the teachers and they kicked him out of my class for the next 2 sessions. Now he is very serious in class. I don't blame him- some of the teachers here are downright scary. I'm honestly terrified of a few of them. The total mood of the class can change when I'm in there by myself and when the Chinese teacher is present! I've had classes go from perfectly well-behaved to absolutely bananas after the Chinese teacher left the room. Now, I definitely don't condone some of the discipline practices they use here in the schools (I have seen some of the teachers hit the kids) but these kids show some serious respect to their Chinese teachers. Most of them show me respect too, but it's not the same. I think this one student seriously thought I was going to clobber him one time though because he was being very bad and I was trying to pull him out of the classroom and he looked absolutely terrified.

In the few bad classes that I have, there are always a few students who sort of act as the stand-in Chinese teacher during my lesson. Chinese kids are NOT afraid of tattling on each other, in fact I think they love it! When I was having discipline issues with the big 4th grader I asked a student to write his Chinese name down for me and about 8 students gathered around her to make sure that she was writing down the correct name! I have one particularly awful class where one boy gets up in the front of the room with me and starts writing 'be quiet' and things like that in Chinese on the chalkboard and then he writes down the numbers associated with the kids who are being bad (I'm not sure if this is because the teachers only know their kids as numbers or what- I have heard some teachers beckon a student by just calling them 'haizi' which means child so who knows). In another class, I told the students that if they were not quiet that we wouldn't play the game. Well, they didn't quiet down much but I got to the point where I just wanted to move on and play. A little boy from the back came up to me and basically said "But teacher, you said if the class was loud that we wouldn't play. The class is loud, so we shouldn't play". I looked at him and I was like you know what, you're right! So I told the class we wouldn't play the game that day and we read silently instead. I don't really mind taking suggestions from them- another girl showed me how I could hit the desk really hard to silence everyone and it's pretty effective.


If you ever need a major confidence boost, you should definitely consider teaching Chinese kids. I get told almost on a daily basis by my kids that I am beautiful and very nice. When they see me in my sunglasses they tell me that I am very cool. Sometimes they make me so happy that I just start the class by telling them that they all look beautiful that day! Whenever I see them in the hallways they all scream "Ohh, Miss Church, Miss Church!!". I love it! They also will make little things for you, give you fruit/food, and little trinkets like erasers and charms. I have one little girl who speaks almost literally no English but she makes me all this origami and other paper goodies every class. One girl this week tried to give me a Disney princess notebook this week but I wouldn't let her- that is just way too much! I think I may have insulted her though, whoops.

The kids can be extremely funny too, sometimes I'm not sure if they even realize how funny they're being. Today in my 4th grade class we were talking about the past tense and I asked them what they did yesterday. This one boy raised his hand and said "Yesterday I bought some scotch-whiskey." I couldn't believe what I heard so I asked him to repeat it and he said it again. I just about died laughing, I asked him who taught him to say that but he couldn't understand what I was asking him. Often times when I show the kids a cool picture they scream "Oh my God!" which in the Chinese accent comes out as "Oh my Godduh!" I met with another American this week who runs a tutoring business where some of my students go and apparently they told him that I broke my arm by falling down the stairs at school. Hahah I can't believe they made that up to him!!!




For the most part the kids are very supportive of each other- they will help each other out if I call on someone and they don't understand me or know the answer. However, if there are stickers involved, then they definitely keep their mouths shut if they think they have the answer! If the kid trying to answer even hesitates for a second, the pounce on the opportunity to try to get my attention so I will move on to them, but I always let the kid think for a second. Today made me a little sad though because I started a new thing called 'The Student of the Day' to reward the student who was the most behaved, participated the most, gave the best answers, etc. So far it's worked out really well and I even had a boy writing down all the criteria to become the Student of the Day, haha! In some classes though I am grasping at straws to find the best student of the day, but in others I just have too many. Well in one of my very smart classes today I chose this one girl and this other girl started bawling. I was like crap...well I didn't feel bad for long because we had been talking about occupations that day so I asked the class what do you want to be when you grow up? I noticed that the girl who cried was thinking for a while and finally she raised her hand and said "I want to be a headmaster so that I can hit her (pointing at the girl who had won Student of the Day)." Wow, what a great answer for a 4th grade ESL student, but how terrible!!! I told her that she was very mean to say that and she looked down. The Student of the Day girl handled it very well, she told me that the other girl was just upset to have not won. After class I told the girl that was upset that it was just for fun, and that it could have easily been her or other students in the class. I think she understood. Then I talked to the Student of the Day outside and asked her if she and the other girl were competitive with each other and she said "No, we're friends!" Sounds like a strange friendship to me but whatever!

Last week I did a culture lesson with my students on the Beatles and I played "Good Day Sunshine" and we sang and danced to the song! Can you imagine 50 kids singing Good Day Sunshine? It was glorious! They didn't get all of the words but they were really good at singing the 'good day sunshine' part. They all kept singing that part afterwards :) This week, I am doing my culture lesson on Lady Gaga because they are always talking about her and whenever I'm playing a game and I ask for a team name I will inevitably have at least one Team Lady Gaga. I played "Telephone" for them and they love- they all clap along to it!

These are not even all my stories on my students and I'm sure that I will have more to come...