Observations from first week in Rongchang, China

I wanted to share some quick observations from teaching my first week of “Oral English and American culture,” in Rongchang.  Many of my Chinese students are very shy and require a little positive reinforcement to help their confidence in the classroom.  In no such way does that mean that they are no less creative, inquisitive, or introspective in their thinking.  To the contrary, many of my students are budding with thoughts and questions regarding American culture once they start to open up in the classroom.  The trick for me has been to find activities that get my students to feel comfortable in their surroundings to share their thoughts in the classroom.  I have found that smaller “jigsaw” activities have been successful at piquing student interests, comfort, and confidence thus far.  I am continuing to look for more activities that will be both stimulating and elicit a sense of comfortability for my students in the classroom.

Many of my students have a certain set of lose “ideas” revolving mostly around their limited knowledge of what American culture really is.  I am starting to secretly believe that some of my students think that I am actually some kind of “American movie star” in disguise.  This is a strange thought for me to pounder; however, once one thinks about how American movies are the only major medium of American cultural exportation that kind of thought processing would make logical sense.  It also causes me to pause in what I feel are my real “American” values, goals, and actions.  I am especially interested in the reactions that my actions have on others.  Trying to see my actions through another culture’s perspective is a strange paradigm shift for me.  Do not fear that this is any way causing me to somehow try to actively act like I am not the person that I have always been.  It has actually reinforced some of my actions.  For instance, the other night we tried a wonderful Chinese barbecue.  Cory and I both decided that we would try a little pig’s brain.  We were told that it was a delicacy and something that we should at least try.  Back home in the States I would have passed on that no matter what; however, knowing that this action would be disrespectful to my hosts I acquiesced along with Cory to try a little.  Upon trying it I realized that I would not any more.  It was not disgusting, but I still had a mental wall built around eating anymore.  In this way, I was a little more daring than I would have been to be polite to my hosts; however, I held true to my morals “and stomach” by not eating any more of the pig’s brain!

My students are wonderful.  They follow my directions thoroughly and thoughtfully.  Our group work this week was awesome and I learned a lot from my students in only two days.  The students excelled at group work as well.  I have been told that group work is not a staple in Chinese education.  Therefore, my students are very interested in doing activities that are is groups.  I am hoping that some of my student’s confidence in expressing their thoughts will be improved in this manner.  My students are very clever and have great thoughts on a variety of topics!  I look forward on starting our next unit on “Growing up in America and China”.  In each of these activities I will try my best to have one English and both American and Chinese cultural themes.  In this way I will be able to learn a lot from my students as well.

On a side note, I am picking up a little bit of the language daily.  I cannot wait to start to do a variety of things all in Chinese!  At this point, Cory is the point man for a lot of my questions but I hope that I can find a Chinese student to help tutor me!  In accordance I plan on helping out any students outside of the classroom improve their English and answer questions regarding different American themes!