Teaching and my Crazy Schedule

It has been requested that I speak about my teaching experience so far, and so here I go!

Let me first explain to you my schedule, because it is a little bit confusing and kind of bizarre.  I teach 14 classes a week at the university, and all are 45 minutes long and freshmen, except for two which are 90 minutes each and sophomores.  Each class has about 50-60 students, and each class has a different group of   students, so if you do the math you will know that I have about 700 students altogether.  700 students with Chinese names I can’t pronounce and I have no chance of remembering.  Of those 700, only 4 are boys!  There is a joke at this school that the boys are like pandas because they are so few in number.  So I have 4 pandas and close to 700 girls.  

The good thing about this schedule is that I only have to make two lesson plans a week, one for freshmen and one for sophomores.  The bad thing is that I am repeating the same thing about 14 times! At least, that’s how it was this first week because I did introductions in all classes.  I hope that once I get a sense of the dynamics of each class I can do different things to make them unique.  This Thursday was especially exhausting because I had five classes, three of which were back to back. By the end, my fingers were covered in pink chalk dust, my voice hurt from talking, my feet hurt from standing, and I was going to go crazy from saying the same thing so much in one day!  The students are very nice and very excited to have a foreign teacher so that helps.

Their excitement is such that sometimes I already feel like I am a performing monkey!  At the request of my students, I have so far spoken Chinese and sang parts of some songs.  The other thing about teaching the same class over and over again is that I can see what gets them excited and then emphasize those points in the next class.  They are surprised when I tell them that I have three brothers, and even more surprised when I say that two are twins!  So you’re welcome, Tom and Chris- you’re celebrities in a country you’ve never even been to!  I’ve learned how to use dramatic pauses and emphasis with my students, and when I introduce my family, I say, “I have…THREE brothers…and the two older ones are TWINS!”  And they all clap and gasp collectively.  It’s pretty cute.

This first week went pretty well, all things considered.  I did come almost 45 minutes late to one class, because my schedule had said the class starts at 2:25 and it really starts at 1:30.  Luckily that was one of my 90-minute classes so I could still teach the second half, but I felt bad because it gave a bad impression.  The students understood that it was not my fault, but still.  Another time I went to what I thought was my classroom and wrote out everything on the board, and then I found out it was the wrong class, and when I got to the right classroom, I only had five minutes to rewrite it all.  That was because there is one building where they do not label the classrooms so I had to guess. Now I always show my schedule to a student when I get to a classroom to make sure it’s the right one!

 I enjoy teaching so far, and although it was overwhelming to have 50 pairs of eyes looking at me in each class, I think my experience with model school really helped me.  From that two weeks I learned how to maintain the flow of the class, how to be mindful of my presence as a teacher and try to appear calm and like I know what I’m doing, and what to expect from my students (for example, that they will not often volunteer to speak because that is not how they have learned. But if I call on someone, most of the time they are willing to give an answer).

Let me share some of the humorous things students have said to me in class so far.  At the end of class, I let the students ask me any questions so they could get to know me.  One girl asked, “What do you think of lesbians?”  Not expecting such a question, I said, “What?”  and she said, “ You know, when two girls like each other.”  I told her I didn’t think it was bad. So then her follow-up question was, “So will you have relations with a girl?”  Yes, that’s DEFINITELY the logical conclusion to my response! (sarcasm).   In the same class, I was asked, “In what situations is it appropriate to use a gun?”  I told her that not everybody has a gun, only some people, and it’s never ok to use it against another person. And then I quickly moved on!  Another funny thing that happened in one class was that there two girls and one pointed to the other and said, “She does not speak English very well, so can she speak Chinese in class?”  My question is, why would you come to an English class if you don’t speak it?  I can’t slow down my whole class to help one person.  I told them I don’t speak Chinese, and then I left to go to my next class.