week 9
on Tina's Journal (China), 25/Apr/2009 03:34, 34 days ago
The past week I've been planning and doing my co-teaching lessons here in the college, planning some model lessons for demonstrations next week in four middle schools as part of a follow-up visit, and attending a meeting with college officials to discuss the way forward with our VSO agenda and keeping in line with VSO's Basic Education programme here in China. Basically, we have to work not only with English Teachers but with teachers from other departments e.g. Maths, Science, and Chinese language departments, to further develop the student-centred methods of teaching. So far the college hasn't given us any indication for us to expand the training into these areas, perhaps because of some reluctance, but now we hope that the head of the college will let us take things forward. On a different note, I did a lesson this week, as part of my co-teaching class, on body language and gestures and really got the students actively involved in performing. We did this activity outside on the grass so they could have more space to really get involved. It was quite successful as they truly got to grips with it, and as many of them will become teachers it was great to see that they recognise how important body language is for teaching. The photo shows some of them in action!Whilst I was having my lunch today with Jerry, a teacher from Ning'er, we were suddenly interrupted by a shout, and a beer bottle being thrown at a man's head who was about to enter the restaurant. We were sitting outside just by the door and a fight broke out between the woman who owns the restaurant, she was the one who threw the bottle, the man who was the target of her anger and another two men who were on the woman's side. I was completely shocked and a little frightened as we were almost in the middle of it. There was lots of shouting and eventually the police arrived. Jerry translated for me, his English is very good, he had an American teacher when he was a student and 'mother f***er' seemed to be the most common phrase in the conversation!!It turns out that the guy had turned up to see his son and the aunt refused to let him see him. Once the police arrived the boy appeared and was apparently asked if he wanted to go with his father. The poor kid was in tears as they were still shouting and arguing in front of him!! This was still going on when I left.