I have just recently begun teaching all the 1st graders at YangYuan Primary school. There is a total of 6 classes that I teach twice a week, with 40 students in each class. I am the 1st foreigner to attend this school. The teachers at this school treat me so well. They make sure I have a spoon to eat my soup at lunch, talk to me, and help me with anything I might need.
The students love to see me in the halls. They follow me saying “hello, hello”. I look up from my desk and see faces staring through the window of my office. I go to the bathroom and hear children laughing and yelling “teacher”. As I exit the stall they are all pointing and screaming at me. I just smile and say “yes, teacher has to pee too”.
Most of the students are quite cute, but like in any class there are a few terrors. I made 1 boy cry last week (it actually felt pretty good) when I took away all his school supplies after poking his neighbors repeatedly with a handful of sharp pencils. He just assumed after class he could collect his supplies off my desk, but that wasn’t the case at all. I would not give them to him, as I was determined to find his Chinese teacher and let her discipline him. I haven’t quite figured out what a punishment consist of, but the children don’t fool around with the Chinese teachers. He cried and screamed to me and the teacher assistant in my class, who did nothing while this poking was going on. She felt so bad for him. I told her he will not get them back because that behavior is unacceptable in my English class. I will find out this week if that whole ordeal even makes a difference.
Despite the few terrors, I do a pretty good job entertaining myself and the students in class. I have to since I am teaching the same lesson 6 times and singing and running around with a bunch of 6 and 7 year olds. The students have been given English names by their Chinese/ English teachers (who speak very broken English). They never used their names, so I try to say them often so they can get familiar with the pronunciation. “Hello Dick. How are you Dick? Nice to meet you DIck. Come on up Dick. Good job Dick!” Poor child. Then I have Mary and Jane sitting right next to each other. In other classes girls, named Joe and Dave, are confused why I switch their names with boys who are named Anne and Lucy.
My 4th graders in the more private classes are just adorable, sweet, and speak very good English. I have 16 of them in the afternoons, 3 times a week. I had them right my students from last year letters and hope to send those off to America soon. They will be so excited to get letters back. They are very competitive and love to do word searches, crosswords, and games like jeopardy.
Chinese children are very crazy outside of class. During breaks teachers disappear and the students run wild. Screaming, yelling, wrestling, sliding across floors. This is all new to me as I break up fights in the hallways and remove chairs from students hands as they are about to release them onto another child, but when class begins most of them are ready to learn.
