Teaching is a difficult job. The effort involved in the act of retaining the interest of a classroom’s capacity of 17-year-old kids for a span of time sufficient for effectively conveying information, imparting knowledge and/or improving understanding in a fashion that is meaningful to those kids in absolutely any manifestation whatsoever is monumental in both scope and severity. The effort involved in the act of retaining the interest of and imparting knowledge to a classroom’s capacity of SIXTY-EIGHT 17-year-old Chinese kids with a barely functional comprehension of the English language and its tenets, on the other hand, is enough to send a man spiraling downward into a whirling, all-consuming vortex of frustration, despair and self-loathing until said man is altogether prepared to throw up his hands, shout “I just don’t know!” toward the heavens, and then collapse into a darkened corner of the room muttering incoherently to himself and clutching a bottle of scotch to his chest.
I don’t want the above paragraph to impress upon my reader that I am not enjoying my Pre-service Teaching experience here at Xi’an Middle School, because I do indeed enjoy every minute I spend here on campus. I’ve grown very fond of the children I teach here in China, which makes it all the more maddeningly depressing when a lesson of my design doesn’t work quite like I planned.
Last week, I taught my Senior 2 kids a lesson that worked maybe 35% of the time, while crashing and burning in a fiery maelstrom of unmitigated failure and disappointment the other 65% of the time. The activity I used during the faulty lesson in question is a game I unimaginatively called “The Telephone Game” which requires the students to improvise a telephone conversation that continually cycles through individual pairs of students in the class. I start the game off – telling a student a brief personal anecdote, asking the student a question relating to said anecdote, and then excusing myself from the conversation. The student then selects one of his/her classmates with whom to next share a conversation. He/she relates to the person he/she has chosen a summary of my anecdote, asks him/her a question relating to my anecdote, and then tells him/her a new anecdote dealing with him/herself. I keep a list of the game’s outlined procedures on the wall using the classroom’s projector (as a handy visual-aid just in case any student forgets how to correctly play the game) and listen closely to each pair’s conversation (offering guidance, suggestions and corrections when appropriate).
As I indicated above, some of my Senior 2 classes during the first few days of the week did very well with this lesson. They spoke to one another with confidence and purpose, fulfilling all the activity’s requisites while – it appeared to me, at any rate – thoroughly enjoying themselves. I foolishly thought I had struck gold with this lesson when I saw how successful my first few classes were with it. It wasn’t until I witnessed the thorough boredom, distaste and indifference exhibited toward the activity by the week’s later classes that I realized the inherent flaws in the lesson’s design.
First of all, the week’s latter classes WOULD NOT SHUT UP while the two students whose turn it was to speak were conducting their conversation. I was standing but a scant 3 feet away from the pairs who were speaking on any of the game’s given turns, and I couldn’t make out a single word that was being said because the rest of the class was being so noisy. I tried quieting the noisy students* on many occasions, but to no avail. They continued to converse and laugh amongst themselves as if I had said nothing to them at all.
Also, after the first 8 or 10 students had taken their turns and completed their conversations, any and all consideration for the activity’s guidelines was very quickly and very thoroughly discarded. During their turns, the kids just started regurgitating half a dozen or so words uttered by the preceding student, asking their partner “What do you think of this?”, and then having a seat and ending their turn without even waiting for an answer to their apathetic query. Upon seeing such behavior, I halted the game, reasserted the game’s conventions, and proceeded to see absolutely no change in the students’ performances. Finally, I decided that something was seriously amiss here and it was more than just lazy students.
As my final class last week dealing with this rotten lesson as its primary focus winded down, I reflected upon the poor student performance (not to mention manners!) that I had seen earlier and that I was still seeing at that moment. I began to think that perhaps the design of the activity itself was at least partially to blame for the lesson’s failure. I thought that too few students were actively engaged at any one time. Rather than only requiring one pair of students to speak and improvise at any given moment, I needed to devise a way to involve more of the class at once on a constant basis. In an effort to disprove or reinforce this hypothesis, I posed said hypothesis to my students during the closing moments of class. I apologized for the decidedly lame activity they had just been forced to endure, assured them that I’d have something better for them to do when we next meet, and then asked for any suggestions they may have to offer regarding how I could improve this lesson. Only two students came forward with ideas to offer, but I’m certainly glad they did because the suggestions they had to offer were the exact same ones I had been posing to myself only moments earlier.
That sealed the deal: the lesson wasn’t inclusive enough. It only required the rapt attention of two students at any given time, so of course the rest are going to be bored most of the time and will inevitably busy themselves somehow! I like the idea of using improvisation to teach spoken-language skills, I really do. Improvisation requires the speaker to provide dialogue to a suggested scene without having the time to worry too much about things like grammar, pronunciation and so forth. That is, the speaker has a clear task to complete (creating a conversation with a partner that is appropriate to the established scene) and a restricted amount of time during which to complete it so he/she cannot be worried with grammatical conventions and other things that get in the way of expressing one’s thoughts and feelings. Improvisation forces the speaker to speak reactively – just like during an actual conversation during which a speaker must react to what the other individual says.
I think that the lesson has value, but I need to devise a more practical, inclusive method of implementing it.
*As a sidebar, I’d like to offer this bit of information – I’ve had trouble with noisy students since I arrived here at XMS almost 6 weeks ago. I wasn’t completely sure of the extent of my classroom authority when it came to discipline, so I did little to combat such behavior initially. I asked one of the head-teachers in my office for whatever guidance he could provide concerning how I might curtail unwanted classroom chatter. His advice was as follows: “Tell them to be quiet. They will quiet down for a few minutes. Then, tell them to be quiet again when they are noisy again”. Sagely advice, indeed.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
The great cloning experiment
I was pleased to see my students enthusiastically engage in an activity involving a formal debate last week. On the heels of a unit from the class textbook dealing with human cloning research (a topic whose ability to effortlessly spur heated discourse is anything but a secret), I decided to allow my students to utilize their knowledge of the English language and its tenets to assert and defend their opinions concerning the subject of human cloning.
I feared that this particular topic – with its highly-specialized jargon and confusing terminology – might prove to be too complicated an issue around which to base the in-class debate. My students proved such apprehension to be unfounded as they eagerly delved into the lesson and collaborated with one another in formulating and perfecting the arguments they would eventually put forth in the debate.
Following one class period devoted to group-work and preparation, we then conducted the debate itself. As expected, only a few students did the majority of the talking for their groups, but I was still able to hear from a great many students (even if they didn’t have much more to contribute to the proceedings than what had already been said). Overall, I was pleased with the debate’s execution.
What pleased me most about the entire endeavor, though, was seeing that some students were dissatisfied with the group with which they had been assigned. That is, some students who had been placed in the “In Favor Of” group resisted being in that group because they were not genuinely in favor of human cloning research. I was happy to see that this assignment was causing students to assess and analyze their own personal beliefs and apply them to the completion of this activity.
I feared that this particular topic – with its highly-specialized jargon and confusing terminology – might prove to be too complicated an issue around which to base the in-class debate. My students proved such apprehension to be unfounded as they eagerly delved into the lesson and collaborated with one another in formulating and perfecting the arguments they would eventually put forth in the debate.
Following one class period devoted to group-work and preparation, we then conducted the debate itself. As expected, only a few students did the majority of the talking for their groups, but I was still able to hear from a great many students (even if they didn’t have much more to contribute to the proceedings than what had already been said). Overall, I was pleased with the debate’s execution.
What pleased me most about the entire endeavor, though, was seeing that some students were dissatisfied with the group with which they had been assigned. That is, some students who had been placed in the “In Favor Of” group resisted being in that group because they were not genuinely in favor of human cloning research. I was happy to see that this assignment was causing students to assess and analyze their own personal beliefs and apply them to the completion of this activity.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
I am the Walrus
A very interesting turn of events occurred last week in one of my Senior 2 classes. We were engaging in an activity dealing with the tenets of procedural writing. I had assigned each student to create a brief work of procedural writing (3 or 4 instructional steps) in which they were to explain how to complete a specific task, and then I asked a few students to come to the front of the class and share their writing with the rest of us by writing the steps they had devised on the chalkboard and then explaining them orally. The students seemed excited about this assignment since they were able to incorporate topics of personal interest and share their interests with their classmates. The first two students who shared their writing with the rest of the class chose to explain how to complete the tasks of “caring for a pet dog” and “writing a composition”, and they both did an excellent job.
The third student who volunteered to share her procedural writing had something altogether different in mind for this assignment, however. The task she chose to explain was “how to sing to your students”. As soon as she wrote her topic on the chalkboard, I remembered that during my first meeting with this particular class (two weeks earlier), one of the students had asked me to sing a song for the class. In an effort to forestall such a task (or perhaps even avoid it altogether), I promised the class that I would sing to them during our following class-meeting. I had forgotten about that exchange entirely, but apparently the students had not.
The girl sharing the procedure that she had outlined for “singing to students” listed the following necessary steps on the chalkboard:
1.) Choose a musical style
2.) Choose an artist of that style
3.) Choose a song performed by that artist
4.) Sing the song as best you can
5.) Thank you for singing to us – you are a great singer!
Having been thoroughly reminded of the promise I had made two weeks prior and provided with such a helpful list of specific instructions, I had no choice but to oblige my students. ‘Twas a command performance, truly!
With my students’ assistance, I carefully followed the steps outlined in the provided instructions: I chose a musical style: rock n’ roll. I chose an artist of that style: The Beatles. I chose one of my favorite songs performed by The Beatles: Let It Be, and I shamelessly belted out two verses and a two choruses of that song, much to the delight of the roughly 65 students on-hand. I received an enthusiastic round of applause afterward, and thanked the young lady who had composed my instructions for creating such a useful, easy-to-follow piece of procedural writing.
Judging from the level of active engagement in this procedural writing lesson that resulted from the involvement of popular music, I think that a similar inclusion would benefit other lessons dealing with poetry, creative writing, literature and so forth. I plan to devise at least one other lesson for my Senior 2 classes that includes some utilization of pop-music as an instructional instrument.
The third student who volunteered to share her procedural writing had something altogether different in mind for this assignment, however. The task she chose to explain was “how to sing to your students”. As soon as she wrote her topic on the chalkboard, I remembered that during my first meeting with this particular class (two weeks earlier), one of the students had asked me to sing a song for the class. In an effort to forestall such a task (or perhaps even avoid it altogether), I promised the class that I would sing to them during our following class-meeting. I had forgotten about that exchange entirely, but apparently the students had not.
The girl sharing the procedure that she had outlined for “singing to students” listed the following necessary steps on the chalkboard:
1.) Choose a musical style
2.) Choose an artist of that style
3.) Choose a song performed by that artist
4.) Sing the song as best you can
5.) Thank you for singing to us – you are a great singer!
Having been thoroughly reminded of the promise I had made two weeks prior and provided with such a helpful list of specific instructions, I had no choice but to oblige my students. ‘Twas a command performance, truly!
With my students’ assistance, I carefully followed the steps outlined in the provided instructions: I chose a musical style: rock n’ roll. I chose an artist of that style: The Beatles. I chose one of my favorite songs performed by The Beatles: Let It Be, and I shamelessly belted out two verses and a two choruses of that song, much to the delight of the roughly 65 students on-hand. I received an enthusiastic round of applause afterward, and thanked the young lady who had composed my instructions for creating such a useful, easy-to-follow piece of procedural writing.
Judging from the level of active engagement in this procedural writing lesson that resulted from the involvement of popular music, I think that a similar inclusion would benefit other lessons dealing with poetry, creative writing, literature and so forth. I plan to devise at least one other lesson for my Senior 2 classes that includes some utilization of pop-music as an instructional instrument.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
A welcomed change of pace…
Things took an interesting turn earlier this week here in the classrooms of Xi’an Middle School. Up until last Tuesday, I had been teaching my Senior 1 students using their Science-Society-Literature textbook in a very dry, straightforward manner. That is, I would typically read through the book’s passages with them, address the post-reading activities with them, and that’s about it. When preparing and executing these lessons, I knew that such a bland, unchallenging approach was not the most effective means by which to teach a student, but I thought that using such a style was what was expected of me; I thought that the students were used to such a style of teaching and learning and I was not to deviate too far from it.
I began to detect, however, an unmistakable sense of boredom and disinterest among my students during lessons taught in this style. Therefore, I made an executive decision to shake things up a bit and have my students focus their attention upon their own writing rather than their textbooks. The passage from their text was one outlining the steps necessary for the creation of a law in the United States legislature (the whole “how-a-bill-becomes-a-law” thing). After we read the passage, I drew focus away from the text by having my students compose their own works of procedural writing (writing that explains the steps involved in completing a specific task), and the class-wide increase in enthusiasm was downright palatable. The students were extremely eager to offer suggestions for specific tasks to be outlined (things in which they had a genuine interest), and were more than willing to explain how those tasks could be effectively completed. By granting my students a greater degree of responsibility in deciding what topics will be discussed during class and in which direction a class may go, I was able to engage my students in the classroom proceedings and make the topic much more meaningful to them. I will continue, of course, to cover the material deemed necessary by my school, but I’ll also do my best to temper the work of my students with activities that allow them to consider ideas and scenarios beyond what is printed in their textbooks.
I began to detect, however, an unmistakable sense of boredom and disinterest among my students during lessons taught in this style. Therefore, I made an executive decision to shake things up a bit and have my students focus their attention upon their own writing rather than their textbooks. The passage from their text was one outlining the steps necessary for the creation of a law in the United States legislature (the whole “how-a-bill-becomes-a-law” thing). After we read the passage, I drew focus away from the text by having my students compose their own works of procedural writing (writing that explains the steps involved in completing a specific task), and the class-wide increase in enthusiasm was downright palatable. The students were extremely eager to offer suggestions for specific tasks to be outlined (things in which they had a genuine interest), and were more than willing to explain how those tasks could be effectively completed. By granting my students a greater degree of responsibility in deciding what topics will be discussed during class and in which direction a class may go, I was able to engage my students in the classroom proceedings and make the topic much more meaningful to them. I will continue, of course, to cover the material deemed necessary by my school, but I’ll also do my best to temper the work of my students with activities that allow them to consider ideas and scenarios beyond what is printed in their textbooks.
Monday, March 3, 2008
A very warm reception
Well, I’ve been living and working here at Xi’An Middle School for just a shade over two weeks now, and all I can say is that this place amazes me and continues to amaze me on almost a daily basis.
First of all, there’s the place itself: it’s a small city, almost! This place is titanic! This middle school is its own little bustling metropolis filled with classroom buildings, dormitories, dining halls, libraries, supermarkets, athletic facilities, and probably lots more that I haven’t even laid eyes upon.
Really, though, the physical layout of this place stands as but a distant second when I recount its impressive qualities. What truly impresses me about this school is the people I find here. The faculty here has been helpful to the point of it becoming embarrassing for me. Every teacher and administrator that has crossed my path within this establishment has bent over backwards to make me feel welcomed as is humanly possible and to make my transition into the life of an instructor in a Chinese boarding-school as smooth as can be. I’ve yet to meet any employee here who is not staggeringly considerate, accommodating and helpful (I can’t help but wonder if there might be some creepy “Stepford Wives” kind of thing going on here. I’ll keep you posted either way).
And then, there’s the students. The students I’ve met at Xi’An Middle School also rank highly on the list of “Nicest People I’ve Ever Met” right along with the teachers. The students here are polite, enthusiastic, eager, and – most of all – inquisitive. I am scarcely able to leave my apartment here on campus without being accosted by several curious students who want to chat me up with questions or tell me how much they enjoyed my class that morning (that’s not a complaint, mind you, I’m simply illustrating a point). It’s astounding, truly. The students are oftentimes very shy and I find it to be exceedingly difficult to get them to voluntarily practice their spoken English in class, but I also find that once I hit upon a topic of conversation that is of particular interest, it can be difficult for me to get a word in edgewise.
Meeting and living among the people I’ve encountered here in Xi’An (verily, in all parts of China) has been the highlight of this trip. My only concern is as to whether or not I am meriting such thoughtfulness and generosity; whether or not the quality of teaching that I am delivering is adequately expressing my appreciation for such attentive consideration and support. I will always think first of the individuals I’ve met during the past four weeks when I reminisce about my time spent in China, but, if nothing else, the kindness shown to me here will serve as practical motivation for me to assiduously hone my skills as a teacher and better serve the people who have done so much for me.
First of all, there’s the place itself: it’s a small city, almost! This place is titanic! This middle school is its own little bustling metropolis filled with classroom buildings, dormitories, dining halls, libraries, supermarkets, athletic facilities, and probably lots more that I haven’t even laid eyes upon.
Really, though, the physical layout of this place stands as but a distant second when I recount its impressive qualities. What truly impresses me about this school is the people I find here. The faculty here has been helpful to the point of it becoming embarrassing for me. Every teacher and administrator that has crossed my path within this establishment has bent over backwards to make me feel welcomed as is humanly possible and to make my transition into the life of an instructor in a Chinese boarding-school as smooth as can be. I’ve yet to meet any employee here who is not staggeringly considerate, accommodating and helpful (I can’t help but wonder if there might be some creepy “Stepford Wives” kind of thing going on here. I’ll keep you posted either way).
And then, there’s the students. The students I’ve met at Xi’An Middle School also rank highly on the list of “Nicest People I’ve Ever Met” right along with the teachers. The students here are polite, enthusiastic, eager, and – most of all – inquisitive. I am scarcely able to leave my apartment here on campus without being accosted by several curious students who want to chat me up with questions or tell me how much they enjoyed my class that morning (that’s not a complaint, mind you, I’m simply illustrating a point). It’s astounding, truly. The students are oftentimes very shy and I find it to be exceedingly difficult to get them to voluntarily practice their spoken English in class, but I also find that once I hit upon a topic of conversation that is of particular interest, it can be difficult for me to get a word in edgewise.
Meeting and living among the people I’ve encountered here in Xi’An (verily, in all parts of China) has been the highlight of this trip. My only concern is as to whether or not I am meriting such thoughtfulness and generosity; whether or not the quality of teaching that I am delivering is adequately expressing my appreciation for such attentive consideration and support. I will always think first of the individuals I’ve met during the past four weeks when I reminisce about my time spent in China, but, if nothing else, the kindness shown to me here will serve as practical motivation for me to assiduously hone my skills as a teacher and better serve the people who have done so much for me.
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