First follow-up visit
on Tina's Journal (China), 11/Apr/2009 12:35, 34 days ago
I have had an enlightening week. On Wednesday I set off with Lesley at 10am for Zhenyuan county to carry out a follow-up visit on two middle schools. We took a 2 hour bus journey to Gucheng where we were picked up by two leaders from the Education Bureau and then taken by car to the 1st middle school an hour away. The ride took us along winding roads, ascending and descending the hills, past rice paddies and tea plantations with the odd glimpse of water buffalo and oxen. We arrived at Tian Ban Middle School and we were greeted by the Head teachers and English teachers. We were there to do a follow-up visit on 2 teachers who had previously carried out training on a training course for communicative methods of teaching, run by Lesley. We were to monitor their progress, and do our own model lessons on their students. I met the kids I were to teach that evening. They were very shy and I realised their level of English wasn't too good. The lesson in the book I was to teach them seemed too difficult, however I thought I'd be able to modify it. The next morning after observing the 2 teachers it was then my turn to do the lesson. This was going to be my first lesson in a middle school in China, so I wasn't quite sure how it would go. WELL....To give you an idea there were 20 observers at the back of the class watching the 'Foreigner' teach. It didn't go as well as I wanted. Basically, just to give you an outline the kids weren't responding as I expected them to. The reserve, and shyness was causing me a lot of problems. I don't think the observers picked up too much on this but I wasn't happy and in the end I felt like I'd hit a brick wall..and didn't know how to get past it. Ten minutes to the end I had a terrible blank and wanted to walk out but Lesley saved the day and helped me. I felt awful and just wanted to run away and not face anyone but I had to carry on. None of the other teachers picked up on this but I was having a very BIG learning experience. It's hard to put into words and explain but such simple things that you expect kids to be able to do, some kids can't here. They basically repeat everything the teacher says, there's no REAL interaction and getting them to participate is no easy task. However, I did get past this and I knew that the following day I had to do another model lesson in another school so after this experience I had to deal with it completely differently. The teachers we observed that day were trying new methods, eg doing group work, having a clear plan to follow, but there's still so much for them to try and change and it isn't easy for them. It's all about Chinese culture and the way of doing things. These new methods are part of the new curriculum as the government recognises that change is necessary. So, after a terrible day I faced the next one fresh and with new knowledge. We went to a school in An ban where there are 7 English Teachers, 4 of whom we were to observe and again do model lessons. This time I knew what to expect and basically spent my model lesson teaching the children how to work in pairs, do actions with each other and so it became more a lesson of teaching them HOW to learn before I was able to teach them any new language. This lesson went much better and I felt very emotional after because I wanted to stay with the kids and carry on the work. They were coming up to me after the lesson to interact and communicate, which for me was the best feedback I could get. In the main feedback session we had at the end of all the observations, the teachers picked up on how patient we were with the children and the interaction. The teachers themselves had made some progress but so often revert back to this 'parrot' style teaching which achieves nothing..in fact I think it's quite damaging. The teachers were lovely though and made us very welcome and some of them genuinely want to change and do things differently. In the evening we spent time just talking to the children trying to get to know them. They work such long days. Classes start at 0730 and finish 9 or 10 pm. They get a long lunch break, about 2 hours, but the days are far too long and most of them are living away from home too. Spending time with them informally was lovely and they were asking me to sing songs and talk about my life (the ones that could speak English well enough that is!) I ended up singing a Carpenter's song for them, which I might add, I would normally be far too embarrassed to do..but hey, being a VSO volunteer you try anything!!