Lao Lao's Visit

Last week I had my first visitor of the year. My grandma came on a Tuesday afternoon and left from Xi'an this past weekend. She spent almost a week at the school, eating, sleeping, and learning with me and my students. As soon as she arrived, Principal Li and all the other Yongfeng staff began fussing over her, telling me that I should let her rest instead of dragging her around to all my classes. The truth was, my grandma—"lao lao" (meaning maternal grandmother, a distinction incredibly important to the Chinese)—wanted to get into the school's routine as soon as she arrived. She found that running around with the kids was an easy way to beat jet lag on her first day.

My grandma's visit helped me put my life at Yongfeng into perspective. Having been in China over three months already, most of the cultural differences that might shock anyone else go unnoticed by us teachers. My lao lao served as a constant reminder that the work we do here is entirely different from the work any American teacher might. When people back home ask me, "What's it like? How is China?" I'm never sure what to respond. I usually say something like, "The kids are great, and I'm very busy," summing up my life in rural China with a few short sentences. 

I thought I would devote this post to two of the many aspects of my life that lao lao noticed while she was here. That is, all the things she reminded me were extraordinary about Yongfeng and all the things that are hard to fit into a short "how is China" Skype or email conversation.

Parent Meetings

Last week, Yongfeng held it's first "家长会" (parent meeting), which usually happens once or twice throughout the year. My grandma poked her head in to see the parents, and she was surprised at the number of family members—especially fathers—who showed up. She worked at inner-city American schools for years, and told me she rarely saw fathers at school meetings. I was surprised too, to see so many parents concerned about their students' education, even in a rural school like Yongfeng. The content of the meetings revolved around recent regional tests in the core subjects (Chinese, math, and English). Each parent sat at his child's desk, with a pile of graded tests in front of him. As soon as they found their seats, the parents began comparing scores and answers with their neighbors, quickly learning where their child placed among his classmates.

As I spoke to my students' parents, I could see in their eyes that I was not giving them the kind of "Chinese" criticism they expected from a teacher. I found myself telling each parent about his child's potential in English, even as the two of us stared down at their low score. I felt naïve and very un-Chinese. This emphasis on criticism continued throughout the meeting, as a fellow teacher asked me to read the names of the highest and lowest performers on the test. I mumbled the names of the three best students, and refused to say the worst. It would have felt like I was ratting those students out. If they were scoring low, there was a good reason for it, possibly beyond that child's control. I think the other teachers forgave me for not following protocol, because I'm a foreigner who they assumed had no idea what was going on.

"Munchkin land"

Every morning my grandma woke up and was shocked to hear the children's voices even before sunrise. After each class we teachers usually have at least four kids trailing behind us helping us carry our things or just coming to see our rooms. Often we have students knocking on our doors just to say hi, or to ask silly questions like, "What are you doing?" or "What are we doing today in class?" Sometimes they serve as messengers, bringing news from other teachers. Last week, I designated a homework helper to collect the homework for that day and note who didn't complete an assignment. So, each morning, my student Harry would knock quietly at the door to drop off the class homework folder. 

My grandma called it "munchkin land," because each time we left to wash a dish or brush our teeth, we would bump into some students hanging out in our hallway. Most days the munchkins don't go home until around dinner time, at 6pm, when a cheerful tune notifies the end of the school day. After the song plays, a recording of a child's voice says:  "Students, class is dismissed. Teachers, thanks for your hard work!" We're used to the kids being around, and often use the hang out time to review English or fool around, letting off steam with the kids after a long day.

The students still ask about my lao lao, and last Monday everyone was sad to hear she had gone back to the US. I'll definitely miss having her help in class, as well as her observations and feedback. Lao lao, thanks for your hard work! 

First time for everything --- Lin

Before arriving at Yongfeng, we all decided what grade and which elective we would like to teach (choosing from PE, Music and Art). Being an art minor at Hamilton College and also someone who’s terrible at singing and has no athleticism, I chose to teach art as an elective. Now I teach 3rd grade English, co-teach 2nd grade English with Rachel, and 3rd -6th grade Art.

3rd grade is the year where each student receives an English name for the first time. So the first day of class, I had a hat full of names prepared for them. Each student took turns telling me something they like and in return I allowed them pick out an english name from the hat. For their Homework, I had them write their own name 10 times. For the 3rd graders this was the first time they had to actually write in English and it was funny to watch how so many names transformed to something completely different, for example: Cam became Can, Maddie became Waddie, and Kenny became Keuuy. Teaching 3rd graders can be challenging at times because a lot of the teaching is foundational work but at the same time is very fun and rewarding.

I love to paint and draw but teaching Art was very different and scary for me especially for the first few weeks. First of all, I have never taught anyone how to draw or paint before and our Art class doesn’t really have a concrete curriculum like English. However there is an Art “textbook” for each grade, their textbooks are very much dull and doesn’t require or encourage any creativity. After speaking with previous fellow, Nina, about my concerns, I felt so much better. She told me that most of her Art lessons came from various Art teachers’ blogs. Ever since then Pinterest, among many other art lessons blogs, became my favorite sites to get ideas from for my lessons. So far, these are some of the projects we have done.

                                           6th grade oil pastel Kandinsky project

                                                 5th grade Kandinsky paintings 

                                                    3rd grade fish bowl project

                                                            5th grade Water Lilies project

3-6 grade Thank you card project for Teachers' Day

Observations -- Rachel

One concept that was emphasized extensively during our training with Teach For China was the importance of adapting our teaching to fit the context in which we live. In the broadest sense, this context is rural China. More specifically, my context is Yongfeng Elementary School: a small school of around 250 students and teachers, located one hour outside of Xi’an.

It is pretty unusual for a rural, elementary school in Shaanxi province to have any foreign teachers. This is the fifth year of the Yongfeng Fellowship and word has definitely gotten around that not only does Yongfeng have multiple “外国人”, but that the fellowship program also provides substantial financial support to the school. These assets make Yongfeng standout in the area and as a result people are curious about how we do things here. Officials from the Xi’an Education Bureau and local teachers from other schools regularly visit Yongfeng to witness the teaching methods of the foreign teachers. In practice, this means that I often have anywhere from one to twenty people standing in the back of my classroom watching me teach. Some weeks there are no visitors, other weeks I am observed three days in a row.

As a new teacher, being observed is a pretty nerve-wracking experience. Usually when I know that I am going to be observed ahead of time, I remind myself that there is no need to change my lesson plan because I am already doing my best work. For the most part, this rational keeps me calm. It is especially useful when I am already five minutes into the start of a class and an observer (or twenty) walks into the room unexpectedly. In that situation, there is no opportunity to change your game plan and your best bet is to just smile and welcome him or her into your class.

The presence of observers in the classroom changes the learning environment and forces me to reexamine my place in the overall “context.” Suddenly I am more than a teacher trying to use student-centered pedagogy to motivate her students. When observers arrive in my classroom with the expectation that forty minutes later they will walk away with a more complete understanding of the American education system, my responsibility for that day becomes greater than simply educating my students. I become a symbol for these observers of a different, “Western” way of teaching.

I have been teaching for two months and am far from an expert on anything other than my own educational experiences.  Nevertheless, local teachers in the area often speak to me as though I do have answers to some of the toughest educational quandaries. I do my best to answer them in the moment and spend the rest of my time teaching my students to the best of my ability.  With each passing day at Yongfeng the complexity of education inequality in China becomes clearer. Discussions with local teachers have encouraged my belief that strengthening the Chinese education system does not mean replacing it with the American one. This goal will best be achieved by drawing on the strengths of both systems and then adapting them to create a system capable of addressing the unique and multi-faceted needs of a rapidly changing nation.

A Quick Blast from the Past – Annie

 For the past couple of weeks Lin and I (mostly Lin) have been organizing a visit from our study abroad alma mater, Associated Colleges in China (ACC). The plan, originally formulated by our former director Will, was for the students of ACC to get a taste of life in rural China and for Yong Feng to solicit (hopefully) a new lot of vassals to join our ranks in the upcoming years. Overall, the visit proved to be a success. Perhaps we’ll even see a few of these ACC caterpillars cocooning into beautiful Yong Feng butterflies in the future. 

 The 40 ACC students and their accompanying teachers comprised our largest visiting cohort to date. Yong Feng is a 示范学校 (demonstration school). As such, our classrooms are often occupied by local teachers and administrators wanting to listen-in on our classes and get a feel for our, somewhat unique, style of teaching. Therefore, it was essentially effortless welcoming the ACC students into our classrooms. Although I will say that speaking Chinese at the front of a classroom for former Chinese professors did call back some sickening memories of stumbling over the translation of “beriberi” and the like in the unforgiving classes of ACC.

Since Gabi had not yet returned from America (she went home for the National Holiday), Lin and I took over her first grade P.E. class. Hats off to Gabi for doing that every week. I believe I’ve officially graduated to adulthood, because never have I felt so empathetic to the statement “Kids have so much energy” as I did when I taught first grade P.E.. Luckily, the ACC students provided a much needed energy boost. One of the visiting students even taught a little Kong Fu to the first graders. From what I hear, in nearly every class the kids took very well to the ACCers jumping into the lessons. I think the boys of Yong Feng were especially excited to see other men at the school.

When it was coming time to leave I had a handful of students approach me expressing interest in the program. One student asked about the relevance of my experience at ACC to my experience at Yong Feng. Clearly the language foundation, especially the speaking foundation, has been essential to my ability to communicate in the classroom. More implicitly, and arguably more valuable, is something I experienced everyday of being abroad with ACC-- a concrete example of how an effective foreign language classroom is structured. The utilization of visuals (written and pictorial) as references, paired with repetitive questioning are both integral parts of the ACC classroom and, I would guess, most foreign language classrooms. The use of the two approaches in a classroom seems intuitive, and yet executing them, especially the incessant repetition part, can feel a bit odd. I believe that, because of my familiarity to the use of repetition and visuals in the classroom, the transference of these two strategies to my own classroom has been a bit more natural. I only hope that my fourth grade English students feel the same…. (at times my class in anything but smooth and natural).

So, thanks for a good time ACC! 

And the Journey Begins -- Rachel

Since this is the first blog post, I thought it would be appropriate to introduce myself. Last spring, I graduated from Middlebury College with a major in History and a minor in Chinese. I first heard about Yongfeng when Nina, last year’s fellow, visited Middlebury on a recruitment trip. I knew almost instantly that being a teaching fellow this year at Yongfeng was the right choice for me. Throughout the interview process it became more and more apparent that the Yongfeng team was really a family. Since being here, I have felt nothing but support. Teaching is a challenge, but I never thought that it was going to be easy. I’ve been in the classroom two weeks and I know that I am going to need every hour I have left with my students to teach them as much as I possibly can. This blog is intended to be a collection of my thoughts, observations, joys, successes, frustrations and anecdotes. I hope you will follow my journey this year and stay tuned! I expect every post to be radically different from the last, just as my days are here.