First Week of School

Well, the first week of teaching at Xiaolan Ming de International School has come and gone. The kids are adorable rascals and will consistently greet me with a “Hallo, teacha!”, no matter how frustrated I got with them the day before or how poorly the lesson went.

A normal morning of English teaching consists of a 15 minute opening, five twenty-five minute rotations of different play stations, and a closing during which they count the tickets they earned that day and can buy prizes with their tickets. 

My play station is gym these first three weeks, so each day I try to put on a physical activity that incorporates the target language for that day. I know these first few weeks are difficult no matter what, but it’s incredibly frustrating trying to figure out how to explain an activity, corral the kids into participating, and extract a simple repetition of the English language from their five year old Chinese brains. 

The first day of school was mostly taken up by an interminable opening ceremony replete with students shouting their rehearsed speeches into microphones, adorable song and dance numbers, and an oh so patriotic raising of the Chinese flag. The flag raising was my first GGIIC (Good Golly, I’m in China) moment. I guess my mind envisions the spirit of Communist China as six small children solemnly marching their nation’s flag around a small schoolyard while their national anthem blares in the background and not a single student assembled pays a speck of attention. Or something like that. 

I think the most surprising part of teaching is how vividly their individual personalities shine through our language barrier. Even though I don’t know half of their names yet, and I can’t understand what they’re gibbering on about, their own personal spark is very palpable and I’m looking forward to becoming more acquainted with these tiny people in the coming months. 

ILP Teachers, Chinese Teachers, and goofy four and five year olds

ILP Teachers, Chinese Teachers, and five and six year olds

First day of school playing "Jump over the River"

Nicole, the other end of my first real conversation in Chinese.  Our  tete-a-tete involved sharing our favorite colors and family composition. It was deep.

The magnificent entrance to our classroom.

Partially uniformed children. There seem to be a lot of partial uniforms.