The new term begins!
on Tina's Journal (China), 04/Sep/2009 09:38, 34 days ago
The new term began on Monday. The college campus has been quiet for two months so I am getting used to having students around the place again. This week I have been making arrangements for a VSO workshop which I shall be running next week. The participants are college leaders, teachers and students so that they can assess how'inclusive' the college is. It is part of research which VSO has to do to see which segments of society they are reaching in the countries they work in. I have also been finishing off my report from the school visits I made last term. Lesley and I also feel like we may have made a break through with the college this week in a meeting with the Leader of Foreign Affairs and the College Vice President. We have been emphasising for some time now that if our work does not involve working with teachers from other departments in the college, then there may no longer be a possibility for VSO Volunteers to be based in the college. Basically, we have to expand the training into other departments so we are not only working with the English Department. We have felt there to be some resistance against this. However, this week we have been told that we are to move office to a more central location, and also be given a few things we asked for. This might sound like small steps but we called it'One small step for us but one giant leap for our Education Programme''. We felt it to be a positive start to the new term! We also discovered in the last few minutes that the College President announced to teachers that the TDC (Teacher Development Centre) is officially set up and we will be working with all departments. Interestingly, we had to hear this from a teacher rather than being told directly by the President that we have the authority to proceed in the direction we have been asking! Oh well, communication may be a problem but it sounds encouraging so far!We have also decided to dedicate one afternoon a week to our own recreation. One of the local hotels has a nice Swimming Pool and we have paid a subscription to use it. It was so nice to go swimming again this week. If you go at the right time, you'll find that the pool is empty so it is great to get the whole pool to yourself. An afternoon dedicated to swimming followed by an hour of reflexology is now part of our working week :-)Other news is that friends are back in Simao after spending time in Europe for the holidays. It is good to have Jayne and Andy back. Andy was a volunteer for a British organisation and worked as an English Teacher for two years in Number 1 Middle School here in Simao. He has now joined our college as a student to study Chinese. The good thing about that is that he has offered to help me with my Chinese as I am determined to improve over the next few months. The photo shows Lesley and I at work in our current office. We should be moving next week to our new one.