Tales From The Classroom 5

Its that time again, with the end of a semester comes yet another 'Tales from the classroom' and in this, the 5th instalment, you can expect to read all about the goings on in my lessons during my fourth semester in the classroom.

You may remember from the last 'tales from the classroom' that I taught Grade 5 for the second half of the school year after teaching Grade 3 in the first half. Well, Grade 5 (now Grade 6) would no longer have 'foreign teacher classes' due to a busier schedule for them in a year that sees them under more pressure as they prepare to move onto Middle School. As I was going to lose my students, I made a request to my boss to place me back as the Grade 3 (now Grade 4) teacher, to which she agreed. I was delighted as I would again have the opportunity to work with some of my old favourite students.

Classroom fun with some of my Grade 4 students

The first class of the semester is supposed to be an introduction class, in which you are encouraged to teach the kids about who you are and where you come from. Upon walking into each of the 14 classes for that first time, I was delighted to learn that they all remembered me and was welcomed on almost every occasion with big cheers and chants of my name, what a great feeling it was but to be honest, I was truly humbled by it all.

Anyway, as the kids already knew me, I chose not to do an introduction class about myself but instead ask them what they could remember about me. In one class, a kid put their hand up and said "are you from England or America?" to which I answered "England". He was taken aback, and shook his head, "I don't think so" he announced, "I am" I assured him. But he still shook his head, "Nah, I think you are too cool to be English, I think you're American!" I am still not sure if that was meant as a slight to America or England!

Kids really do say the funniest things, almost every day in the classroom something will be said that makes you chuckle, more often than not, you have to hold the laughter in. One thing that did make me laugh was during a lesson I did on the United Kingdom. Now I am sure China is not alone in this, but almost every time you see the Union Jack, it is often attributed to England and as such I took it upon myself teach all the classes about which countries make up the UK. This caused whole spread confusion but one student commented "I think England owns Scotland, like China owns Hong Kong". I had to chuckle to myself and as the bell went I sprinted to meet my fellow teachers, one of which being Scottish, for lunch and proceeded to retell the story, needless to say that she didn't find his comment half as amusing as I did!

One of my favourite students this semester was a girl in my intensive class called Bella. The intensive classes are very small, usually 6-12 students but they will spend four hours a week with their foreign teacher which probably doesn't sound all that much but when you consider we spend 16-18 hours a week teaching, four hours is a pretty sizeable period of time. So back to my favourite student, Bella. I have been amazed at what a great sense of humour she has, very much like a Westerner, whoa is that racist? Actually, I don't think it is, Chinese people have a different sense of humour to us. The Chinese appear to me to enjoy slapstick humour mostly and this is most evident, as you might expect, in children. Bella however loves wordplay in English.

I think Bella might actually be a young comic genius. Several times she had me in stitches and on some occasions I was just shocked at how creative and witty she is. For example, I am sure you are familiar with the old joke - 'Why was the number six scared? Because seven ate (eight) nine'. Well in one class she actually stumbled upon this joke all by herself, almost as if she was inventing it for the first time. She was counting and said "one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight... ate? eat? eating? seven is eating nine?" it was extraordinary to see as she simply shrugged it off and just carried on with what she was saying. As well as wordplay, she is a big fan of accents, which is surprising and I am not sure I have come across any other kids who do this but she likes to adopt a very posh English accent whilst reading amongst other silly voices.

My favourite student Bella, she may not look it but this girl is a comic genius

As well as Bella, there was another child in the Intensive class, who left an impression on me. In the first lesson, I was introduced to each of the students and told their names. One boy was called Peter, a name I was aware of and one I'd said many times, up until this moment however I have never doubted my ability to pronounce it. Now I admit, and I have written in previous blog posts that I will often change a name slightly for comedic effect, Dina becomes Dinner, Jacky becomes Jacket, Bob becomes Blob and James becomes Trousers, that sort of thing and as you can probably have guessed Peter would become Pizza. But these jokes are only reserved for children who I have built a good rapport with, certainly not something I'd use in the first class. So imagine my horror when every time I said 'Peter', all the kids (except Peter) started to laugh and chant "Pizza! Pizza!" this went on for a few classes and he did cry a couple of times, telling me that I was saying his name wrong, to which I of course asked for the correct pronunciation, being informed that apparently I'd been saying this name wrong all these years and its actually 'Pete Ar' almost like a pirate might say it... I adapted my terrible English way of saying this popular English name and instead tried to say it the correct way.

Three or four lessons into the semester, my Teaching Assistant told me prior to the class one day that Pete Ar's mother had complained saying I was calling her son 'Pizza'. I did everything I could to ensure I called him Pete Ar for the next two hours and when the bell went for home time, I led the students out to the main gate where their parents wait for them. I was stood chatting with the other teachers, and next thing I know there's a tap on my shoulder, I turned round to see the Teaching Assistant, Pete Ar and who I could only assume (at this point) was his Mum. "This is Pete Ar's Mum (I bloody knew it), she doesn't speak English. She told me that you called Pete Ar - 'Pizza' at least three times today." I couldn't believe it, "No I didn't" was the best reply I could muster in my total disbelief. "Can you say his name please, so she can hear?" the Teaching Assistant asked me, I was starting to feel as though I was on trial. "Peter" I said, reverting back to my original pronunciation that had served me so well for 20 plus years. "And again?" so I repeated, there was an exchange in Chinese between the disgruntled mother and my assistant, who then turned back to me to say, "His mother says it sounds like you're saying Pizza". I assured them all that I wasn't, one of the other teachers even leaned it to explain that this is how English people say the name and it sounds different to how an American or even a Chinese teacher might say it. I can only assume that Peter's previous English Language teachers were from somewhere other than the UK. Anyway, long story short, he's called John now.

While I am talking about names, I also learned during this semester that a boy I thought was called 'Gelanter' actually went by the name 'Green Lantern'. An original name no doubt, but a pain to write on the board especially given his classmates were called Sam, Amy, Jane, Tony and Eric.

Green Lantern - a Grade 2 student by day, superhero by night

One final thing I wanted to share with you, whilst working on the topic 'Days and Dates', I set a homework asking students to create their own calendar, they could choose any month in 2014 and fill in some important dates such as 'Christmas Day', 'New Year's Eve', 'Mum's Birthday' etc. One student picked the month of December. The following week when he handed in his home-made calendar, I noticed he had all the dates you might expect in December marked but also on the 1st December he had put World Aids Day, I found it encouraging to learn that this 8 year old Chinese boy is so concerned with the Aids pandemic, who knows maybe he will seek out a career in medical research, he certainly has the potential, smart kid.