One Week In, 720 Students Taught!

One week of school finished and I've taught 12 classes each with about 60 students!

 

The actual school was probably the biggest culture shock I had since I've come from teaching in a Fijian Village school with 54 children in the whole school  to a Chinese school with a minimum of 59 in each class! And this school is apparently SMALL- I have friends in Sichuan who have 150 students in each class!!

 

When we first arrived at our placement last week, Nationalities Minorities High School or "MinZhong" as it's usually known, it was quite hard to settle in. It was very difficult for me as it was hard for students and teachers alike to not hide their disappointment at me being their new "foreign" teacher seeing as I am Chinese. I guess when you're expecting a blonde/blue eyed "English" girl, I must've been a huge shock to see! However, from Monday when I started teaching everything picked up. My first few lessons went swimmingly and I've had students come up and ask me to sign timetables/take photos with them/share food/invite me to their hometowns and have had "Hello English teacher!!" shouted more times than I can count over this week. It's made me feel really welcome and I feel so much happier now. Definitely happiest when I'm in the classroom, I really love teaching and I really missed it!

 

The students have been brilliant and we've been making friends :) The other night a couple of grade 3 (18/19 year old) students came by our flat. We don't teach their year group, but they still want to practice english and they stayed until 11pm just chatting about all sorts. We had them scribble our Chinese names out and in turn we turned their English names into signatures. We also run an English Corner every lunchtime where students can come and practice oral english with us. It's usually a bit slow at first but by the end of lunch time we tend to deteriorate into playing Australian Footie (AFL), teaching French instead of English or singing Lady Gaga!

 

More blogging to come... but I think the sheer enormity of the school and its typical day deserves its own post.

 

P.S I still can't speak Mandarin!! I've been too busy teaching english!