QiLinHe: "Coffee" Hours

What do I do with all this free time?

That was my first thought when I first got my schedule. Free time Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings. Free time Tuesday and Thursday afternoons... Compared to my past teaching experience, this was nothing.

So what could I do with it?

Let's work more! YEAH!

...well. I decided early on that I would give myself office hours - a set time each week when my students could come and talk to me outside of class. And since I don't have an office at the university, I made my own.

Yep. Brick by brick, lego piece by lego piece, I built four walls, a roof, and a desk for myself.

Then, when a baby-having-a-tantrum knocked it all over, I established myself at a local coffee shop on West Street (the street right outside my community that connects my home with the university).

QiLinHe.

It's a western-style coffee shop. I'm a little embarrassed to say that I come here almost everyday. They have American-style coffee, really good lattes, some teas, some attempts at western-style cakes, and egg tarts (蛋挞). Oh! It also has ice cream.

I like ice cream.

The best part? It has wifi. Wifi is very hard to find in this city. I have wireless internet at home, but I'm not very productive when I'm there. So it's good to have a place where I can go to get some work done. A lot of students come here too - more for the internet than the coffee, since internet access on campus is limited.

So... this is what my 'office' looks like:

And... my favorite part of this cafe? It's got an awesome poster picture thingy.

Welcome to the Party!

The... er... Party. The Communist Party, you see? It's.. the only Party here in China. I mean, there are technically other parties that are allowed to exist.. but.. eh... erm.. yeah. Ok.

First: That's... my man, Mao, setting the beat (coughs). Lenin's dancing with a party hat. Carl Marx is spinning around on the ground, break dancing. Castro and Stalin are sharing a drink: The Cuban's got a beer. Stalin's sipping on his martini.

So yeah. The Party.

Twice a week, two hours a day, I am here - sometimes just in time for the free egg tarts that comes with my coffee. Sometimes I miss it by a few minutes... but that's ok. A few of my students come every week... and we just chat. We talk about American culture and Chinese culture and current events and... whatever else we can think about. My really dedicated students have pen and paper out to write down whatever expressions I end up using that they don't understand.

It's laid back. It's fun. And I think, thanks to the proximity of our ages... it sometimes kinda blurs the line between teacher and friend. They don't think of me like they think of the other Chinese teachers, but they're also careful not to disrespect me.

Sometimes huge groups come at one time. Sometimes, only one or two students show up. I actually really enjoy it when only one student shows up - especially because then the student is much more willing to talk about things that the students, as a class, would shy away from talking. It's a chance to at least bring up more controversial topics. The topic that I have the hardest time with my students about concerns their views on Japan as a culture and a country.

...But yeah.

Those are my office hours.

In a coffee shop.

Thus... my "coffee" hours.

Clever, eh?

...Heh. I'm also there outside of coffee hours though. When I need to be productive... or when I want to just hang out with the other foreign teachers, or when I want some dessert after a meal... I come here.

The QiLinHe.

I also come here to write blog entries. And now that the place is open again after its week-long Chinese New Year holiday, I'll be here everyday too... updating... people on my adventures. Updating.. er.. anyone who reads this.

Or just.. updating... for..

...for...

Er. You. Whoever you are.

'Til next time.

The Classroom and Teaching

First semester, I had a sweet schedule. Yeah... sweet! I use that word sometimes.

Not really.. but.. um.. it fits here.

One class consists of a forty-five minute period, a ten minute break, and another forty-five minute period. I had two classes Monday, one on Tuesday, one on Wednesday, one on Thursday, and two on Friday. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, classes didn't start until 2:30pm.

And that means... sleeping in, right?

YEAH!

First day of class - Monday afternoon - I walked into my first classroom. I was a little nervous. My experiences from the previous year had me worrying about classroom management before classes even started... but a veteran teacher colleague of mine told me not to worry about it at all. The hard part isn't in stopping the students from chitchatting - it's in getting them to open their mouths.

They're learning English after all - and many students are, for the most part, too nervous to speak in class. I was warned that after their initial curiosity about the foreign teacher fades in the first week or two, student participation drops.

Other than that, I didn't really know what to expect.

Neither did my students. First off - all of their schedules said that their foreign English teacher would be named 'John.' My name isn't John. As a matter of fact, I don't look like a foreign teacher. I don't even look old enough to be a teacher.

So when I walked into class... all the students stared at me in confusion.

[i]What.. is she doing? Why is she walking up to the front of the classroom? Why is she looking at us? Why... why..[/i]

And then a collective "Ooooooh!" goes through the classroom when I open my mouth.

"Oh! We thought you were a student!"

"Wait. You're a teacher?"

"Where are you from?"

"You don't sound British. You must be American!"

"What? Why do you look Chinese?"

"Oh... wait... I don't understand."

"You're ABC!" (said one overenthusiastic student in one class).

"You're the first ABC I've ever met!"

American Born Chinese. ABC. And I'd nod, brows raised. Yes. Yes I am. This continued all week long with every one of my classes. In one of my classes, one of my students even tried to explain to me that I was lost and in the wrong classroom.

I had fun though.

And it is much much easier teaching the same lesson throughout the course of one week. I feel a little bad for my Monday students because they have the roughest version of my weekly lesson presented to them. Tuesday is pretty good. By Friday, I could give the lesson blindfolded.

Another thing I learned? Having time to think is amazing. Even my Monday lessons got better over time because I had time to stop and think about what was working and what wasn't working. I know this seems intuitive... but this was something that I couldn't do before - simply because I didn't have the time to rest.

Rest helps.

And... once again, thanks to my experiences last year and to all the teachers that I worked with, I found that I could suddenly explain things much better. Instructions and directions - something that I had trouble with before - was something that I could suddenly do without a hitch. Explaining things to Chinese students in their second language is difficult - mainly because I need to use language that they can understand.

Other interesting things about the classroom:

Students stand up when I call on them to speak. I've told them that they don't need to stand up in my classroom, mainly because I wanted to give them a sense of what an American classroom is like. Classes that have had other foreign teachers before stopped standing up almost immediately. Classes that didn't... it took them a couple weeks to stop completely. I think many of my students weren't sure how to behave around me - do they treat me like a foreign teacher? Or should they treat me like a Chinese teacher?

I had an in-depth discussion about this (standing up when talking) with my Chinese tutor. Standing up is a sign of respect, she said. If the teacher is standing at the front of the classroom, the student should stand to address her. If the teacher is walking among the students, standing is not as important. If the teacher is sitting - and usually only foreign teachers sit down, it seems (and WOAH! We sit down on top of desks! My students think that this is funny) - it's definitely ok to answer while sitting.

None of this is set in stone, of course. The student just uses their judgment and try and figure out how to address their teacher. Who I am - my age, my status as teacher, my ethnicity, and even my sex has an impact on the way that my students act around me. The fact that I am a foreigner makes my students nervous... but the fact that I am Chinese makes them more comfortable around me, I think, than they are at first with the other foreign teachers.

Anyway, that's it for now. I think I'm going to take a nap..

It's been a long time coming...

Sorry!

I am... very bad at keeping up with these things. But the semester is over now. My winter traveling is done. I can, at last, sit back and concentrate on letting you guys know what I've been up to these last few months.

So... er.. where did we leave off?

Um. Right. My first Friday night in China and... my first banquet experience.

Wow.

That's a lot to catch up on. Hm....

Here we go.