Teachering (Marcus)

I think slowly as time goes by I feel more and more comfortable teaching. Like everything here, it has its ups and downs, but I think overall I do like teaching. The longer I am with the students the more I feel I develop a sort of relationship with them. They are definitely more comfortable with me than they were, and of late I have really been starting to notice it. The senior students are still very shy, but I think a great deal of that shyness is towards themselves.

Now I can't speak from experience at that age with a mixed classroom(thanks mum & dad for sending me to a boys school), but it does feel like the boys and girls are very aware of each other. You can almost feel the pheromone vapour passing back and forth between them. I think when I get one up in front of the class to talk, they are more conscious of the opposite sex than the fact that they are speaking in another language.

At the same time, I think we have slowly climbed our way up what has been a definite learning curve. Sure we didn't expect it to be super easy(ok well admittedly maybe a little part of me did - ok im being dead honest now, i did think it would be pretty damned easy)), but I didn't think it would be as challenging as it has proved. I guess like any job you take on that you aren't familiar with, the first few months are always the hardest - then it kind of plateaus until it finally starts going down again - which is when you pretty much need to change jobs/roles.

So as we've gone along, I think we've picked up some good ways of tackling the different levels of kids. Simple things like starting each lesson with a conversation topic - it has brought them out of their shells a little, but many of them don't participate or just simply sit there speaking Chinese. When they don't talk here, I give them the choice - either speak comfortably with your desk mate and that's it - or sit there and piss around then i'll drag you in front of the class. Today I dragged multiple rows in front of the class. I think the more I have done this, the more respect I've gained as they know I am not afraid to drag them up and embarass them...in a positive way!

Another good tactic I have found is rather than just pick individuals to talk, I pick entire rows. I choose someone at the front them have them reel off their answers in a row. This not only covers large numbers of students; making it harder for them to evade work as they know they stand a very good chance at being picked, but they also know what to expect and aren't entirely on the spot. Removing the 'oh my god i'm suddenly in the spotlight' syndrome is effectively winning half the battle.

Another thing I have been doing is slowly encouraging their answers to get bigger and bigger. I have been writing on the board things like, "My favourite animal is a ________, because . . ." and then prompting them to answer in sentence. On top of that I will ban any simple answers like, "My favourite animal is a pig, because they are lovely(which is like 90% of the responses)," and force them to actually think about it. Anyone who stands up like a stunned mullet still I come back to until I am satisfied they have answered at length.

We're going to start mixing some games into the older students classes - something we have perhaps overdone with the kids. We've had some really fun classes with the junior students - particularly gifted, but they are also under the expectation that almost every lesson now will involve a large game - wrong! This week we taught the younger students new animal vocabulary - different animals and things about them, horns, tusks, paws, claws, trunk, antlers etc etc basic stuff, but little gaps of info they didn't know - but the class was mainly about vocab and no games, so it was pretty boring. Not TOO bad, but a definite downer from the past 4-5 lessons.

The older students on the other hand haven't really had any fun stuff in our classes. We have tried to mix it up, using songs, visual stuff and the like, but no actual games. We're going to do a body drawing game next week involving throwing some huge cardboard dice that Courtney made. Just the novelty of rolling dice is a big hit with the Chinese - I think this is extremely popular as they all oooh and aaah when we show them.

If we turn up to any of the junior classes with a bag or anything other than our normal school style bags they have absolutely NO hesitation looking inside in a very very childlike way - it's very cute when they do this. Keeping things interesting for them not only makes it more enjoyable for them, but it makes it a lot easier for us. Every time we introduce a new game or fun thing to their learning, we basically harvest their kudos. I think their Chinese classes on the whole are very structured and uninteresting. I heard some of my gifted kids today comment how they didn't want to do any more dication - and yeah, I can imagine it fills up a huge part of their week.

So all in all I find the role enjoyable. The only thing I really don't like doing; and find it very difficult in a completely writers block kind of way, is lesson planning. Here I have really dropped the ball lately, though Courtney has put together some really good lessons.

I don't know if it would be any easier working from out of a book and in fact when I think of it, it sounds like it might have it's own share of difficulties - such as being bound to material that's potentially crap(a common complaint from other teachers that I have read about on the net).

So yeah, up and down. On return to Australia, I don't know if I would look into something like this as a job. But who knows, I am not ruling anything out. I think if I had a choice of student age to teach that now I am completely unsure. The teens can be more rewarding as they definitely interact with you on a higher level - but the kids can also really surprise. The problem with the kids though is exactly that - they are kids. While some days they are fantastic, on other days they can be right royal little shits. Today my gifted class is great..other than one little dick who sits at the front. He tries to preempt everything I say(in which case i purposely mix it up), never shuts up, is always asking to play a game, is always turning around talking to the kid behind him. I gave him a few sharp words(again) today and yeah, he pisses me off.

But such is life!