Teaching Chinese Students

In the past 2 weeks I have had many opportunities to work with Chinese students of all ages, from 2 to college level. Each experience has been interesting and unique and very different from teaching in America.
As some as you may know, after talking to Kay and Thom (our site directors) about my desire to pursue event planning as a career they appointed me the official event coordinator of this program and social committee chairperson. My first big event was working with a local health club to organize a trip to DuJiangYan, a city severely damaged by the earthquake. My role in the planning process was organizing activities for 100 high school students at a temporary school for two hours! YIKES! The rest of the day was planned by Health and Power club and in traditional Chinese fashion involved changing details until the last minute. I received the correct schedule the night before we left and since the departure time was 50 earlier than I had originally told I group I had to quickly spread the word around--not the first time this type of thing has happened, Chinese are not know for doing much planning ahead.

The day started out at 8:10am at East gate and our entire group was on time! (probably the first time ever!) We boarded joined the health club members on the bus and took off in a 5 vehicle caravan to Dujianyan. Our first stop was at one of the 200 temporary housing compounds in the city. The area was made up of rows and rows of temporary buildings where 11, 000 people currently reside. I was impressed to hear this compound had been erected on May 19th, only 7 days after the earthquake. The city was very quick to provide housing for all of their homeless. It was great to hear how well China took care of their residents but it also felt a little disrespectful to be walking through these peoples community to look at them and their homes. After the visit we went to see the ancient irrigation system DuJiangYan is famous for. The system was developed to route water to Chengdu, but provide for an outlet during the wet season so there is no need for the dam. This system has been successfully working to provide water for Chengdu for over 2000 and was very minimally affected by the earthquake. It is quite a phenomenon and a tourist attraction in Sichuan Province.

Next we had lunch at a local restaurant and like most every meal we have here all the dishes were spicy and full of prickly ash (or flower pepper--A special spice unique to Sichuan province that numbs your mouth). The restaurant was right across from the school so we headed there next.

When we arrived at the school we once again were surrounded by the temporary buildings we had seen at the housing compound. We wandered around to get familiar with the area and quickly discovered we only had a mini amphitheater, basketball court, and about 100 feet of cement road way. The first problem was there was no field or classrooms like we had we promised, but we quickly adapted to what we had. Suddenly there were over 100 students setting up in the amphitheater and I was told told to go up and explain our activities. The next problem was the students spoke very little English and I speak very little Chinese. Once again I adapted and recruited a translator from the health and power group. I went up and explained we would have 7 activities: friendship bracelet making, martial arts, song singing, capture the flag, Frisbee, basketball, and cards. I introduced a leader for each activity from my group and asked the students to divide themselves up evenly between the 7 leaders. To my astonishment they actually did an amazing job dividing up very evening. Each group went off and started there activities.

Erin and Ashley were surrounded by 20 female students all wanting to know how to make bracelets and handled it really well.

Tyler and Joey had 20 students who were all eager and ready to play an American card game and they did an amazing job of dividing them up and teaching go fish.

Anna and Andy's Frisbee activity didn't go over so well and they ended up writing letters to the students who all came prepared with their English notebooks.

Lexi and Colin made a great use of space and played capture the flag in mud between the classroom buildings. All the students loved learning this new American game.

Tiara took the main stage and taught songs to the students using her guitar and ipod and speakers. They sang "You are My Sunshine" and "It's been a hard days night" which radiated among all the activities. After they were done learning those songs the students requested to hear songs such as Averil Lavine "Girlfriend" and Britney Spears. It was hilarious.

Luke met his match teaching martial arts or perhaps it was the students doing the teaching, regardless they appeared to all have a good time.

Dylan, Raeder and John took over on the basketball court to form a 3 man team that competed against many teams of Chinese students.

Overall, everyone, our group and the students, seemed to enjoy themselves and get sometime from the experience. I spent alot of time talking to the students and they told me about the earthquake and they told me about their earthquake experiences. They had been in their classroom when it hit and they recalled hiding under the desks. Their school was actually not destroyed in the earthquake, but was damaged so badly that it had to be torn down. They are in a temporary school now, but they pointed to where there new school was being built. All the students really wanted was to practice their English and make American friends. They were all so nice and just wanted to be our friends.

We celebrated the end of the day with a group picture of our group, the health and power club members and a few of the students from the school. There were so many cameras everyone was looking a different direction.

We then had a picture with all the people who helped make our visit to DuJiangYan possible, including the leaders of the Health and Power club, a DuJiangYan city official, Teachers from the school, Thom and Kay (our site directors) and me! Everyone was happy the visit went so well and benefited everyone

Since this experience I have also had the opportunity to volunteer teaching English at a kindergarten. The kids are ages 2-5 and absolutely crazy. 30 of these little animals were brought into a room smaller than my bedroom, sat down and told to repeat what I said. Of course being 2-5 year olds this is not exactly what they did and they were constantly running back and forth across the room and their teacher was constantly grabbing one child and moving he or she to another seat so he or she would stop chatting. Besides all the chaos we all had a lot of fun and I was able to teach them words such as mommy, daddy, grandpa, grandma and bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen using silly bear paper dolls and a house drawn on the board. I look forward to visiting these crazy youngsters again this week.