7-day week: dream schools, sports day and my first school trip

So all the fun I had on holiday last week was repaid to the bureau this week with 7 straight days of work. This began on Saturday, the day after I got home from Hangzhou. As a result, my lesson plan was rushed and fell apart in the first few minutes of the first lesson, and so I pretended I had just planned a ‘games lesson’ as it was the weekend. I didn’t mind as I felt sorry for them anyway; I walked into class with pretty much the full front row asleep on their desks.  My worst class on a Tuesday morning was much worse than usual. Tuesday mornings usually consist of me getting bullied by 43 teenagers for an hour. This was made worse by the fact a ‘teaching intern’ suddenly turned up to watch me get bullied for an hour. But she will become their regular teacher in a few weeks so at least now she knows to bring her gum shield. 

Walked into class to this on the first day back from holiday

Starting on Monday I was doing an activity with my classes where they had to design their dream school. I showed them a video from youtube of a reconstruction of a British school day. It involves a really irritating child called Jamie showing you through his day at school, and I had to watch it 11 times. There was an uproar in my classes when they realized that our schools finished at around 3.15pm. It was quite tragic to see that many of my students’ dream schools started at 9am and finished at 3.15pm. One group also wrote that at their dream school, they would have ‘only an hour of homework every day’. Yeah an hour of homework still seems a lot. But my students have 8 classes a day, and are given homework for each so you can see why an hour a day seems like a breeze to them. As their usual learning style doesn’t encourage much creativity, it is usually very difficult to get them to be imaginative but this lesson plan was a success. There were some really good ideas. There were a lot of ‘eat’ schools and ‘game’ schools, but my favourite was ‘life’ school. This is located in a big forest where you ‘learn how to life’.

I was invited to my second school’s sports day on Thursday and a school trip on Friday. This was great news as I honestly believed that 7 days of teaching was going to result in some sort of break down. I walked into school at 10am to roars of cheering around the sports field. Most Chinese school have an athletics type field, with basketball courts and a running track. The kids take their sports days very seriously and each class had made their own signs. When I first arrived I was asked to take part in a teacher’s activity. There are 5 boxes each with a certain amount of points. The teachers for each grade compete against each other and you have to stand behind a line and throw your bean bags into the boxes and they count the points. I only got 2 points but it was good fun. I sat with class 3 for the rest of the day and there was a great atmosphere. Whenever one of their class mates were competing they would wave the sign with ‘class 3’ painted on it (三班 san ban) and shout ‘san ban jia you!’. Jia you means to ‘refuel’ or ‘add extra effort’. They did the standard relay, 100m, 400m, long jump etc. There were also three-legged races and one where they link arms back to back with a balloon between them and race like that.

Teacher's game

Girls 400m relay

Cheering with class 8

A sign made and signed by class 3 to remember their sports day

Cheering with class 3

I usually only start at 2pm on a Friday, but as it was school trip day, I had to get up at 6.30 which I was obviously NOT bitter about. I walked into school at 8am to the Pirates of the Caribbean theme tune which is always exciting. This blasts from all of the school speakers to let the students know they need to line up. I got a lot of staring from the younger children. We went to a botanic garden in Suzhou along with 6 other schools, so I attracted lots of attention from the younger children there too. There was lots of 'hello!' and 'nice to meet you!', but ‘waiguoren’ was the main heckle, meaning ‘foreigner’. We all get this everywhere and just naturally respond to it now. We even use it ourselves when talking about other westerners we see in China. I had a wander around the domes with one of my mentors, which were full of tropical plants and parrots. For the rest of the day the teachers all just sat in the café eating and talking. I assume the students just did the same elsewhere. I enjoyed talking to the other teachers as I haven’t spent much time with them so far. Many of the Chinese English teachers tend to avoid speaking to me, either because they’re embarrassed by their English or simply can’t speak enough to have a conversation with me. I discovered that all of the children at this school, my second school, are not from Suzhou. They all come from different provinces in China for their parents to find work. I had recently read an article about China's 'gaokao' exam. This is allegedly the most difficult exam in the world and is taken by every student in China expecting to go to university. It is a controversial exam as poorer students are disadvantaged by the fact they cannot afford tuition and are ranked based on the student's position in the region. So I wanted to know if the students at this school are expecting to take the exam. My mentor said that some might, but it is likely that they will go back to their home towns to take the test, as it would be too difficult in Jiangsu. I assume by this she meant that the competition would be too difficult in Jiangsu (as exams across the provinces are the same, but the competition changes). I realised just how much pressure the students are under.

Botanic garden

There were REAL parrots!