So just one week after getting back to classes for the fall, the Chinese independence day comes around and gives us another week off. I really didn’t know what to do with myself, and was kind of looking forward to leaning Mandarin again after being such a non-learner during the Olympics (hey I was busy making deals!).
What to do during the fall break?
My UT friend Georgia and a group of her new friends ended up going to Inner Mongolia, but I’ve already been (see Flickr photos). I also didn’t really make an effort to see what others were doing, since I just returned from Hangzhou and Hunan, which was a really empowering trip. I ended up being lucky enough to get a call from a friend I met at my previous school named Joyce, who works for an “educational products” company for high schoolers. She recruited me to teach during a week-long camp targeted at kids that were interested in Model United Nations, which I thought was a pretty cool idea. This was the same girl that got me the teaching job for 7 and 8 year olds during July.
Class
I stayed on location from September 27th-October 3rd to teach the English portion of the lessons. For 5 days and 3 teaching hours per day, I received 3000 + 500 rmb bonus for good reviews! This will pay for my apartment for 3.5 months! Some of my lessons and classes were better than others, both depending on my preparation and the student willingness to participate. Teaching is hard! The Chinese education system, as I found out, doesn’t encourage class involvement at all. The teacher is the lecturer, and the students listen, copy, and then memorize for up to 12 or more hours per day. Elementary students don’t get recess. They told me how important and competitive exams are to even get into the best middle schools. Everyone talked of having classmates that had committed suicide from the stress, 15 year olds.
The lessons were topical each day and were titled: Cultural Impact, Global Economic Development, Anti-Terrorism, Asia Regional Perspectives, and (get this) Human Rights. Aside from being difficult topics in general, the high school students were doing so with less than fluent English skills. It was tricky. Additionally, the nature of these topics brought up some really interested issues that I’m surprised made it through the censorship screening. We ended up talking about human rights and Tibet! The students told me that the Dali Llama is a terrorist!
Other people
The other people that work for this company seem to have a really tight bond, and I’m glad to have met them all. Most of them are university students around Beijing, so I hope to stay in touch with them in the future. The other English teachers were all great personalities and came from the US, Australia and Denmark.
The most interesting lady was a veteran ESL teacher originally from the US but who has traveled the Middle East, Africa, India, Europe, and China for 30+ years. She had some great stories about being in Russian aggression as well as Israel/Palestine conflict zones! She was also the most opinionated about telling the students what they should think about the issues, which caused some conflicts between us … she also wanted to have meetings all the time …
Free time
The camp was held at a conference center way down in southern Beijing, below the 5th ring road … I mean, it is rural. It is interesting though, because even up to the 6th ring road north is still pretty urban. I don’t know why city development has so much favored moving northward. This made for some really interesting exploring because I am super-pumped about my second marathon coming up on the 19th here in Beijing. We had a lot of free time, so I was able to get in 3 or 4 really good runs, my longest being around 17 miles. I’m a little worried that I haven’t trained as much as in Knoxville, but I know the race will be much flatter. I ran once with the Australian, Jesse, who is also signed up for the marathon! He also likes planes and stuff, it was crazy!
I brought my guitar (recently purchased), but didn’t get around to playing too much. I really like the hard case and skull shoulder strap though!
Lunch and dinner were buffets. I sure made them regret that decision!
One night we went out to the alley outside of the center and ate some north-western food, which is mostly grilled on a stick with dry spicy seasoning. I took a bite of donkey penis… it was chewy. The people here believe that whatever you eat benefits that part of your body, so…
Conclusion
It was a really rewarding experience, monetarily, socially and … emotionally? I learned a lot about the Chinese education system and that I really don’t want to teach any more unless I really need to.
