- I have to start with this one. It’s a personal favourite and happened just yesterday. So I have teams in some of my ESL classes and they gain points for speaking English and lose for being off task and speaking Chinese. I decided one day to have fun with the team names and asked for 4 adjectives. I then asked for 4 nouns starting with the same letters. Most came out fine and pretty funny (The Foolish Fish, The Rough Russians, The Comfortable Cats, The Ugly Umbrellas) but one team name came out as The Loose Ladies. Try saying that all class with a straight face!!!
- The classrooms have one of the greatest inventions I have ever seen; the chalkboards move up and down. I can write on the top of the board and keep moving it up until I reach the bottom. Pure genius.
- Sara and I wanted to buy a Frisbee and teach the kids how to use it as they don’t seem to have them here. She told one of the teachers at her school of this so they ordered one for us! I had it out for the first time yesterday and had it out again today and it’s a hit!! Most don’t know how to throw it but they go nuts for it. I wonder if I can manage to teach them how to play ultimate before I leave…?
- Yesterday during last class I was sitting in my office and one of the teachers came in and asked if I wanted to go to the table tennis room. My response: “ummmm…YES!!” It was so cool! There were about ten teachers GIVIN’ ‘ER in there. Two of them could have probably smoked our national champion. It was incredible to watch.
- All Phys Ed classes take place outside unless it’s raining which I think it super cool. Often during PE, some of the students will gather and play a game with skipping rope tied in a loop and put around 3 people’s ankles like a triangle. They have a series of games where you jump over and onto the rope on one foot, on two, etc. The rope moves higher and higher as the game progresses. So, the other day I decided to try and lo and behold, I did ok. Yesterday, I was walking by and they asked me to play again. Lo and behold, I was AWFUL. They were hyping me up too saying “ohhh! She’s so good!”. Apparently I can’t handle the pressure.
- Every second Wednesday someone in the school has an open class that all of the English teachers go to and we take notes. We then watch them teach THE SAME CLASS two weeks later and afterwards we go for a staff meeting. Now, staff meetings can be dry by nature (one teacher even put her head down and slept for the whole thing) but try sitting through an ENGLISH teacher’s meeting in Chinese for a few hours. In these few hours, they nit pick every single detail of the lesson and then spend at least an hour on the lesson plan itself. Once and a while they will ask me of the grammar of a certain line makes sense. I feel so so bad for the teacher who planned the lesson. Often, they plan these lessons for a full month in advance. Teachers here only teach a couple lessons a day and spend hours and hours planning. They can’t believe how many classes I have here (4-5 a day). One thing I can say about the staff meeting is the teacher who delivers the lesson usually brings a bunch of snacks.
- I’m competitive, I know that, but these students are COM-PET-I-TIVE. When they are unmotivated, all you have to do is make a competition out of it and BAM! you have them! Often, the easiest way is to break them into groups and deduct points for being off task (as mentioned above). It’s super funny, though, when you are writing something on the board and you hear Chinese and spin around to see who it was. It’s like the person had a magnet. It looks like this every time:
- In Grade 9, students write a set of exams that are scored out of 150 (they have 4 for a total of 600 possible points). If they do not get a certain score (400 something, I think), they will not go on to high school. It’s insanely stressful for them and there is lots of pressure. The pressure is so high on the school itself that because the Grade 9’s didn’t do so well on their midterms last month that they ALL (teachers, students, the works) have to come to school every Saturday for the rest of the year. Can you imagine trying to pull that one in Canada. There are 3 Grade 9 classes and two of them are “not very bright” (in the words of their teachers). Most are from out of province, moved here later and are playing catch-up. People have all but given up on them and lumped them into the same class. Needless to say, they are hard to motivate but I have a soft spot for them.
- I was frustrated with one of these groups one day and I spun around and told one of the goofballs to “zip it” (I’m able to joke around with them a bit and it actually works better for me when I do). The goofball looked at me sideways and was obviously confused. I tried to explain “zip” so I started to unzip my jacket (I’m still wearing my winter jacket in class most days). WELL! That wasn’t the right thing to do at all, I quickly learned. The ooohs and ahhhhs told me my message wasn’t working. OOPS!
- I have a “small school” at around 600 students. As such, we don’t have a big teaching staff (I’d guess 30-40). I’m baffled at the fact that we have TEN married couples on staff. The wives of both of my office-mates are teachers here. It’s kinda neat!
- Although I’m told I’m fat or “only kind of fat” once and a while (and here I am happy I lost a couple of pounds!), I am told I am beautiful very frequently. I was told one day that my “colour is very handsome” and I was asked if all Canadians have “beautiful golden hair.” I’ll miss China haha
- I had my Grade 6’s create bucket lists in one class which was a hit! I was heart-broken, though, when one girl wrote: I want to live in a warm home. While some of my students are doing just fine, most have parents who work in the factories or who farm (I’m on the outskirts of the city).
- Teachers are often asking me for help with grammar and vocabulary. I hope the Cape Breton accent doesn’t work against me! I already have a whole school of graduates saying “eraze the board”. Also, it’s making me learn grammar rules that I never knew were actual rules! I’m glad my education background has helped me learn to make things up on the spot!
- They have book fairs! I was pretty excited to see that. Do they even still have those in Canada? I used to love those Scholastic Book Fair flyers.
- The books that they use here are really really obscure in many ways and the units focus on the funniest things. For instance, in Grade 8 they have a unit on electricity. Most people can’t talk about that well in their native language but they are learning about electricity in English. Now, electricity can be complicated enough for some people but just to make it even more complicated, they refer to it as a servant. Servant is actually a vocabulary word for the electricity until. I think the unit is called Electricity – A Dangerous Servant. Call me old-fashioned, but I think sticking to the basics may be a little less…..obscure?
Most of my classes are great and I love where I have been placed. The tough classes are the ones who are from out of province (Grade 6, 8 and 9) and don’t know English but I’m getting more and more comfortable! I certainly am extremely lucky with my small school, AWESOME students (I’m treated like a rock star if I see them outside of class, I really am), friendly teachers and school bus that takes me directly to and from home! It’s hard to believe it’s been 6 weeks! 11 to go!
Some of the trees from school that I talked about yesterday: