school troubles

some of my taoyuan kids being naughty.

as some of you may know, i am having significant troubles at one of my schools, taoyuan. behavior issues, support issues, communication issues...pretty much anything that could go wrong in a school has happened to me there. taoyuan is a school where children punch each other in the face and when you try to tell a teacher what has happened to resolve the situation they tell you that it doesn't matter. for a long time i felt really angry about it, and with good reason- i have half of my classes there each week. but as i've been getting deeper into the situation (which has involved fighting with every single person related to the situation possible...ugh) it actually has been quite a learning experience. in some ways, i feel like you can see many of china's current social problems embodied in this school.

the worst part of all of is that taoyuan is supposed to be the best primary school in the district. on the other hand, this also seems to be part of the problem. many families want their child to go here so there are too many students in this school for the faculty to properly handle. the teachers seem busy out of their minds because of all the students they have to take care of and all the papers they have to grade. this is the only school i've seen where the teachers make the kids grade papers (during their recess!). i've seen some of my private student's english tests and there were many, many grading errors. yes it's a very western idea, but the students here aren't receiving the individual attention that they need from a teacher. like most aspects of chinese life, each student is just like one in a sea millions.

problem #2 also relating to the reputation of this school, all of the rich families in dalian want to send their children to taoyuan. so you have a school filled with spoiled little chinese kids. i have had so many discipline problems there i can't even count. i have discipline problems at other schools as well but usually if i tell someone that i am having a problem, it will be resolved quickly and i am kept in the loop about how it was resolved. at taoyuan, this is not the case. if i have a discipline problem there, no one seems to care, no one wants to help me, and i never know how or if an issue is resolved. this was one of the things that made me the angriest about this school- how can i keep the kids in line when i have no support to do so? i talked to my manager about the issue, and i told her that if the teachers won't help me, i should be able to send the kids to the principal. she told me that one of the problems is that sometimes the principals can't even discipline the kids because their parents are too rich/powerful to mess with. many things get swept under the rug here. i don't fully understand what the parents could possibly do to the principal but i do know that the whole power structure thing here is a complete mess and a detriment to society. at taoyuan, it seems that people can't do their jobs correctly because of it, and this is having a negative effect on the school environment. i can’t even imagine what kind of problems could arise from a child thinking that her or she is immune to serious punishment.

another issue relating to the wealth of the families is that some of the kids here are able to pull really far ahead of the other kids because of the additional classes they attend after school. i've noticed that in every class at every school a few students' english levels will really stand out but at taoyuan the best of the best english students will just blow the other students out of the water. some of their english levels are HIGH for their age. i'm not sure how the chinese english teachers can deal with such a range in ability levels. sometimes, i think many students get left behind, like my little private student who 3 months ago could only speak about 10 words of english. i think in most places the rich have an unfair advantage but in china it seems like they especially do because this society doesn't really tolerate mediocrity- only the best of the best can succeed, and success here costs money.

yet another point relating to the wealth issue again is that for most of these students, having a foreign teacher in the classroom is not a big opportunity. like i said, many of their families send them to english classes after school so they have access to english speakers all of the time. therefore, my class is nothing special, and i'm sure that the chinese teachers don't try to make them think otherwise there. it's a shame because there are so many schools in dalian with out foreign english teachers and they are dying to have some. i think the american way would be to allocate some foreign teachers based on need, but in china, since power and reputation are so important, we get put in the schools that need us the least, and because of the way we're viewed there (as not important) we are also the least effective. in my opinion, many of the ideas and pressures that make chinese people do things the way they do often lead to the least effective and least efficient decisions.

not only do the teachers seem unhappy at taoyuan, but the children seem unhappy too. after all the fighting i've been doing (and using a power play by dropping one of my terrible 5th grade classes) the school is finally taking my issues seriously and had a meeting with all of the teachers. so today, my classes were much better than usual and i hadvery few behavior problems. the english leader there seems to think that open communication with me will kill her so in my last class i finally asked the kids what had happened. a boy told me that the teachers told them that if they didn't behave in the foreign teacher's classes that they would be cancelled. wow, major win for the foreign teachers! this class is not too bad, and some of their english levels are high, so i decided to bring up the issue with them. i didn't hold anything back. in the simplest speech i could muster, i told them that their class was okay but that some of the other classes at this school were horrendous. i told them that i have worked in 5 different elementary schools in dalian and that the students at this school were the worst behaved. i asked them WHY. at first, this was really just a rhetorical question, but then i realized that they actually had some answers for me. the response i got from them was incredible. there were about 5 of them (high level of course) that were dying to discuss the issue. as we discussed it together, i felt like they definitely gave me some insight into the issue that was missing. even if i knew some of the information before, it was important to hear it firsthand from the kids. shame on me, the united way education team taught me better, i should have talked to them sooner. they told me about how they had so much homework and no free time, how my class is one of the only times they have to play games, that their music and art classes are really short, that they aren’t happy, and they even went as far to tell me that their parents spoil them and let them do whatever they want. wow. i realized that the issues i’ve been having at taoyuan have had as little to do with my students as they have had to do with me. the problems are really china’s problems, and the kids are just inheriting them. the power and wealth issues, the pressure to succeed, an aging school system that hasn’t kept pace with the societal changes. for some of the kids, my class was just an outlet. this whole time i’ve felt very angry that i came all the way from america to teach these kids english and they are so bad that I can’t do my job but then again these kids didn’t have a choice whether to have a foreign english teacher or not. the adults chose it for them, and they are the ones who should be held accountable for it. i felt a lot better after talking to the kids about it though, and saw that they actually have a pretty good grasp on the problem. after class ended one of the girls who participated in the discussion came up to me and gave me this great bear hug and told me that she loved me. i think i'm going to try to have this discussion in all my classes at taoyuan next week- i didn't realize that they had so many things to say, and i need to let them know my side as well.

from my experience at taoyuan and just living in china in general, the chinese can be really poor planners. they like to do things last minute, they like to do things quickly, the communication is poor (probably because they think that people below them don't need to know what's going on, they just need to follow directions), and they don't always seem to fully think things through. it's like, let's just open up a 35 minute slot for each class in the day and throw that foreign teacher in there and see what happens. that's the farthest they got in their implementation process. now this may be over-extrapolating a little bit, but i feel like these same issues can be applied to their society right now. just take dalian for example, there are a ton of empty high rises here (that have apparently been empty for quite some time), and they're still building more. what are they doing?!?! they really need to slow things down and develop things at a normal pace that allows for thoughtful planning. quality over quantity people...

i feel like this has been the most negative post that i have put up about my life here, but the good things as well as the bad things need to be said. not everything is nearly so rosy here as i usually portray. many, many people want to leave china. at their top university in beijing, i heard that 60% of graduates go abroad to work. one day my manager was attending my classes at taoyuan and i was feeling a little spiteful i guess so i decided to ask the kids 'when you grow up do you want to live in china or do you want to live abroad?'. i was even surprised by the response- like 90% of each class said they wanted to leave china. everyone here tells me that it's almost impossible to implement change in china, but it seems like for the longevity of their country, something's gotta give!