Getting Serious

[NOTE: Pictures throughout are from October Holiday]

The biggest difference between working in Suzhou and working with Aston in Yinchuan is the seriousness of the work we do.

In Suzhou, teaching was fun and almost a game. The CTs didn't care what we did; at best, they were mildly curious, and at worst were completely absent. In Suzhou, a class was considered a success if maybe 30% of the class of 50 remembered any significant part of what was being taught, and if chaos didn't reign in the classroom. What I taught was a mishmash of what I fancied, what I thought the class would enjoy, and some vague concept of continuity and progress at the back of my mind. And it was fun, it was a good introduction to teaching and a gentle easing in to China. But now we're in Yinchuan.

Spot the foreign teachers! : Aston FTs and CTs

Since we got back to work from the October Holiday break something has subtly changed with the attitudes towards teaching. Our first month here was an adjustment period to a new city and a new company, but now we're considered adjusted and teaching has become a lot more serious. It's still fun, since games and play still make up a large part of my teaching repertoire, but Aston is a well-established company and now we have clear aims and objectives to guide our teaching. The course books dictate what we teach – even when that means half an hour of teaching 'his' and 'her' to five year olds – and there's a very definite 'Aston teaching method' that we now have to fully and enthusiastically adopt. This is, in general, fine because the Aston method revolves around teaching in a fun and dynamic way, while including as many students as possible at one time. But because parents are paying good money to have their children taught English by foreign teachers (and that's the reality; they are paying money to be taught by a white face) we, as teachers, are accountable to our students' parents. Occasionally parents will pop their heads into a class just to check that their child's class actually has an acceptably foreign-looking teacher and parents expect to be kept fully up to date with their child's progress.

Erhu 二虎, our favourite 15 year old bar boy.

In my youngest PC level classes, the parents are even in the classroom with their children for the entire lesson. It makes sense from a logical perspective, 4 and 5 year old kids don't want to be left for an hour and a half in a classroom with some strange teachers, and when the inevitable happens and a child starts to cry or needs to go to the toilet it is helpful to have someone there to deal with the child while you carry on teaching the rest of the class. However, parents being present for the lesson also adds a sense of pressure to the classroom. If an activity doesn't go as planned, or the students just aren't grasping the target vocabulary and language for the lesson, then their parents are right there watching as your lesson goes slightly pear shaped. It means that in these PC classes you have to be particularly on your toes and enthusiastic, but sometimes all the enthusiasm in the world can't make a class go as you planned it. This can be incredibly frustrating for teacher, students and parents alike, and it's something that is hard to avoid. But when it does happen there is always the risk of a parent complaining, and that's scary.

A trip to Yinchuan Zoo.

I have one PC class that tends to rebel by the time I get to the class. Classes are split into three half hour portions with the foreign teacher teaching half an hour, and the CT teaching an hour. My portion for this particular class is the last portion, at half past 7 on a Friday evening, I'd call it the graveyard shift of teaching. Not only is it hard enough to get any enthusiasm out of a group of sleepy 5 year olds at 7:30 on a Friday evening, but this particular class seem unable to retain any information from the first hour of the class. This makes for a frustrating and slow moving lesson that can end in disaster, and lessons like this can make me doubt myself. A crisis of confidence is never a good thing, but it can be deadly for a teacher when enthusiasm and confidence can either make or break a class. But a crisis of confidence can also be turned around and make you strive to be better and do better next time. After my worst class so far, I wasn't sure what I was going to with them.

Pedalos with Jonas, almost like being back in Suzhou!

 I was deflated. This unease and worry, however, made me go online and research games and activities so that I wouldn't be make to feel the same way about any other classes, and honestly I had one of the best weekends of teaching since we got here. A little discomfort sometimes can be a good thing; it pushes you to better yourself and under pressure you can find out what you are really capable of. I always knew this wasn't an easy job (anyone who says teaching is an easy, cop-out job has obviously never tried it), but that's okay. It is the struggles and successes that make the journey worthwhile, and so long as there are more successes than struggles the contrast is okay by me. It's impossible to appreciate a really good class until you've had a really bad one!

Our beautiful local lake and pagoda.