Tales from the classroom

I have now been teaching for about six weeks, as you can imagine there have been many memorable moments - some funny, some sad, some gross and one or two that will stay with me for a long time. I will attempt to share a few with you here....

Let's start with a few phrases that I hear on a daily basis. One of the kids I have previously mentioned, Water is possibly the best English speaker in the grade, so much so he has picked up several phrases (possibly from American TV shows) that he likes shouting in the classroom. My particular favourite being when his team losses at a game, he says to me "oh man, come on!?!" in an American accent. He also likes to greet me by saying "hello baby", something a lot of his classmates are now mimicking as I discovered when sat in the canteen with my fellow teachers one day and that class all came in and said "hello baby" to me, one of the other teachers said "Dan, what are you teaching your kids?", highly embarrassing. Water did find himself stood at the back of the classroom recently however when he shouted "teacher" and on my turning around 'flipped the bird' (stuck his middle finger up at me), I said "get to the back of the room, you don't do that", he seemed very confused and said "but what have I done?".

Another phrase the kids say is "teacher, I'm okay", this comes after they have completed a written task, I usually reply "I am okay too". When giving the class a task some kids like to say "teacher, I know", I am considering asking these students to explain to the rest of the class who don't know (as I haven't finished explaining), would give me a chance to have a little rest. I am not sure if I have mentioned in previous posts within this blog but one particular phrase all Chinese children know is when you ask the question "how are you?" as they always reply "I'm fine thank you, and you?" it can be quite funny hearing 25-30 Chinese children all saying it in unison.

One thing that did take me by surprise was during my first or second week, I had split the class into two teams and asked one of the girls what her team should be called, expecting the usual reply of something along the lines of "Angry Birds", "Dragon" or "Hamburger", I was taken aback when she said "n*gger, n*gger". I replied "erm, well I think erm maybe someone else should suggest a team name". I was stunned, and shared my experience with some of the other teachers during a break. One of the teachers who has been here 18 months said, "yeah Chinese people say that a lot, its kind of their equivalent to 'erm, let me think' so don't worry, she wasn't being racist". He is right, I hear this particular phrase a lot, from people of all ages and the initial shock is no longer there but I do worry for their safety if they ever decide to visit a Western country....

Recently I was teaching one of my grade three classes and one of the girls just started vomiting all over the floor, I thought it was quite selfish of her as I was in the middle of explaining the rules to a game we were about to play, the class all pitched in though as one took her by the hand and they left the room (to go to the toilet I assume) whilst several others got a mop and paper towels to clean it up. Annoyingly though we ran out of time and we didn't get to play the game, her fault.

One of my grade three classes posing for the camera

One thing that is inevitable when you work with children is that at some point there will be tears, at first you think "oh no, what have I done?", with the language barrier its very hard for their classmates to explain what has happened. I imagine sometimes it is me, maybe telling them they have pronounced something wrong or having the audacity to declare the opposition team the winners of a game. It is hard to know what to do, part of you wants to give them a hug but considering the Chinese teachers ignore them in this situation, I feel its better to continue with the lesson and try to keep the other children's attention so the child can have their cry in peace and hopefully without ridicule.

One of the nicest moments came last week, when all the kids in one of lessons were being a bit rowdy so I said "Qing Zuo!" which means 'please sit down'. They all sat down and one kid proclaimed "teacher, you speak very good Chinese, I love you!". Truth is I speak terrible Chinese and I try to get by using about five different phrases! Don't tell him though.