Into the abyss...and out the other side!

The New District Experimental Primary School

I think we all sometimes have a "why am I here" moment, and no I'm not getting all deep and philosophical on you all, á la blog Henry. I mean the moment where you wonder what possessed you to put yourself in the position you find yourself and wonder whether it has all been a massive mistake. For me, my first day of teaching had many of these moments as well as a few "oh my god, I might actually be able to do this" moments too.

Turns out teaching is not just scary, it is terrifying.  Standing in front of a class of 45 kids who don't care what you are saying and don't even want to try to find out is disheartening to say the least. Thankfully it's not a 'this is so bad I'm going to cry' bad it's more of a 'I'm so out of control all I can do is laugh' kind of bad. When I came to China I imagined nice, disciplined, cute little asians. But no, they are just as badly behaved as any other kids, maybe even more so. On my first day one class thought it was hilarious to keep trying to flip my skirt up with a ruler, why?! They are now labelled as 'naughty' on my timetable.

I am teaching every single student in The New District Experimental Primary School (NDE, for short) and 3 classes at Jin Se Experimental Primary School. I have 22 classes in total, 12 at grade 1 and 10 at grade 2, and each class has 40+ students.

All 770(ish) of my students at NDE

 I feel like this is a hell of a lot of individual classes and it's definitely a hell of a lot of students to remember.  In fact, I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that I will never know all my student's names. That's just how it is apparently. It also doesn't help that most of the grade 1 can't write properly and none of them have notebooks so my making name cards idea went out the window almost immediately.

On the first day I taught two grade 1 classes and two grade 2 classes, all introduction classes and all with the same basic plan. I can tell you now, by the time I got to class 22 I was sick to death with the lesson.  But it does seem like every week I am going to be giving the same class over and over for the weeks duration. But although I'll have the same plans, the nice(?) thing is that each class is different. Each class has a different level of English and a different personality. Activities that will be a hit with some classes will completely bomb with others. This means that every plan has to have variations within it; different activities to pick and choose from and different levelled language just in case everything isn't as expected. There really is never a dull moment in a TEFL classroom.

As for what I teach, well one of the textbooks I've been given to work from is ridiculously retro and full of completely useless and outdated English. How essential can it really be that 7 year olds can say "Put on your blouse! Put it on!"?

To prevent killing myself out of boredom, I think I'm going to have to take the book as a vague outline rather that strict structure.  I honestly don't think anyone will mind because the primary objective is just to get the students talking. No exams, no specific targets, just general conversation. This is freeing but also means thinking of what to teach is an exercise in itself each week when planning. 

But although I truly struggled over the first two days and they were hands down my two unhappiest days in China so far, day 3 was an epiphany. I can't say what actually changed but something seemed to click.  My plan was better, I'd started to understand how to vaguely control the class and everything just seemed a little brighter.  I think it had something to do with having my first morning at Jin Se Primary School and meeting Mr Wang. Mr Wang is my new favourite person. Not only does he speak pretty good English but he seems genuinely interested in finding out about me. He told me all about the school, ate lunch with me and even put me on the right bus back to NDE. I love him and he saved me in that first week.

I am ANGRY

I also had a breakthrough at NDE when I realised that playing with kids over the 10 minute breaks between classes is so much less depressing than going to sit in an office where no one talks to you. To the kids you are a novelty, a new play thing in the playground.

  The are amazed by how tall I am and love jumping to try and touch my head or hand held up high, it's just like playing with puppies. Everywhere I go in school I am followed by "hello teacher!" and after one class a load of children attached themselves to my backpack in a massive group hug. These are the moments that make days good.
It is also a comfort to talk to other interns and realize that almost everyone has the same struggles, no one finds teaching easy and as they say, a problem shared is a problem halved. I feel lucky every day that I have such lovely friends at home and have made some amazing friends in China who I can trust will always pick me up when I'm feeling overwhelmed or low.

Nearly a month in teaching is definitely proving to be hard work but it's definitely doable. Every week I'm enjoying myself more and discovering what works and what really doesn't. I'm building better relationships with the students and although some days are still tough (I'm talking about you, Wednesdays) I'm enjoying myself. I've even made a friend at school in one of the Chinese teachers, Sophie. Sophie is an absolute star and is one of the smiliest people I've ever had the pleasure to meet. It's nice to have a friendly face to say hello to in the corridor and I think she is breaking down the Chinese-English barrier with some of the other teachers. But the main sign of acceptance Sophie has given me was naming me. She has given me the Chinese name sū kě xīn and seemed to have put a fair amount of thought into the name. She purposefully chose characters that were simple to write and to recognise, and said she wanted to pick a name that was "beautiful and sunny". If that's her impression of me who am I to question her!? But in all seriousness it was very sweet of her to put so much thought into a name and whenever she pops up saying "hi sū kě xīn!" it makes me smile.

The first character, 苏, is the shorted form of Suzhou and the second and third characters, 可心 , roughly translate as sweetheart. I am officially a Suzhou sweetheart! It's lovely to have been given a Chinese name, all I need to do now is learn to recognise, identify with and respond to it! For now I'll just practice “我的中文名字是苏可心” or in English "my Chinese name is Sū Kě Xīn". 

Here it's all about your frame of mind and a positive attitude, finding the little things in the day that make it bright. If I can manage to keep these up I know I will be okay here.