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YONGSHUN, HUNAN — This part is less about the teaching, and more about the whole experience of the training gig.
First of all, getting there was a job in itself. This part of China is mountainous, a lot like the Appalachian region in the USA, so straight line distances on maps mean nothing. For example, I had passed through Yongshun 永顺 back in February, when I visited Jackie Li in Longshan, which is even further back in the hill country. On a map, Longshan 龙山 is only about 150-200 km away from Jishou; the trip took seven hours.
Yongshun, fortunately, is not at the end of a major road construction project. Even so, it took two hours to get there on twisty roads that rival New York City streets for potholes per linear meter.
Aside from topography, and the attendant isolation, there is not much else in common between Appalachia and this part of China. For one thing, Yongshun County has a population of almost 500,000; the city has about 70,000. That’s a pretty big “small town.” The city, like Jishou, is a big grubby, but also showing signs of steady improvement. In other words, it’s not Podunk, but you can see it from there.
After we arrived, we settled into our hotel (about a 2-star in my book, but the closest to the school where we’d be teaching) and then had dinner with, not the teachers, but the local and prefectural mucky-mucks who were all men ranging age from 30 to 50. Baijiu (Chinese “wine”) is a necessary part of such gatherings. Michael and I did our part to represent America in the Baijiu Drinking Cup, earning some respect from the local pros.
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YONGSHUN, HUNAN — I have participated in who-knows how many teacher workshops, training sessions and in-service days during 25 years of teaching. Last week, I approached the task from a new angle — as an in-service teacher — and it went better than I expected.
Several weeks ago, my foreign affairs officer, Cyril, asked me if I was going to be around during the summer. The Xiangxi Prefecture foreign experts bureau (the people who hand out our teaching licenses) was organizing a one-week oral English workshop for local middle school teachers. The job actually sounded like fun, although the pay was also decent, so I agreed to do it.
I was joined by Michael, an American teaching in the Foreign Language College in Zhangjiajie. Our duties were to teach pronunciation and intonation, useful expressions, and the differences between American and British English. Michael took the expressions assignment, and I did the nitty-gritty pronunciation/intonation tasks.
Our students were 37 teachers from Yongshun, Huayuan, Luxi, Baojing, Fenghuang and Jishou — all counties or cities in the Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture. Most were between the ages of 24 and 40 and, I am happy to report, had really good English speaking skills already.
Having sat through endless training sessions where the trainers read Powerpoint slides to us and talked in pointless generalities, and having enjoyed fruitful and well planned workshops where we actually learned shit, my aim as a leader was to focus on the practical side. After all, I am now an English teacher, too, and I know what I wish my students had learned before they come to university.
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JISHOU, HUNAN — Here’s my travel plans for the next few days.
Today – July 25: Yongshun, about two hours from here, co-leader of a teachers’ workshop for middle school English teachers
July 26: leave for Changsha, hang out a day or 2
July 27 or 28: leave for Beijing, hang out till Aug. 1
Aug. 1: Beijing to Tokyo to Los Angeles
Aug. 1 (local time): LA, hang out a couple of days
Aug. 5: Chicago, then W. Lafayette, Indiana
Aug. 6 – 13: ???
Aug. 13: Leave Chicago for Shanghai, arrive Aug. 14 local time
Aug. 14 – ??: Shanghai
I’ll blog when able.
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JISHOU, HUNAN — I’ve been up to my eyeballs in work these last two weeks, so I haven’t had time to post anything. Even this one will be short.
This term I had only three subjects to teach, Oral English, British Literature and Academic Writing, but the last two upped my workload significantly. The juniors in Business English take those courses, and altogether there are 90 students. Their term project for the writing class was to read a novel by a British author, and write an analytical paper of 1,000 to 2,000 words about it.
Given the average length was about 1,400 words, my ambitious assignment required me to read 126,000 words between the due date, June 16, and my self-imposed deadline of Friday (yesterday here). Most of that I did once classes ended a week ago. Meanwhile, I had already agreed to help out one of my Chinese teacher friends with her English school, so in the mornings I was teaching middle schoolers and the afternoons and evenings I was reading essays.
Phew.
As for the quality of the essays, they fit the standard distribution pretty closely: a few superb ones, a few truly awful ones, and the rest in the middle. Considering none of these students had ever done such a paper before, the results were better than I expected. As for the low end, some were bad because the students’ English skills are poor, or because they hadn’t actually read the book. A few were cribbed from the Internet, and I gave them zeroes as a result. The re-writes are due July 12, for a non-zero but substantially diminished passing grade.
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ZHANGJIAJIE, HUNAN — This week I learned that colleges in China have the same problem as colleges in the USA. They need to pull students in to stay viable.
Students in China choose their majors before entering university. So, each college in a uni (we call them “departments” in the States) would like to maximize the chances of getting sufficient enrollment. It’s not feasible to visit all the high schools in western Hunan on recruiting drives, but relatively easy to visit the preparatory college here in Zhangjiajie to attract some candidates.
That’s what ten of us teachers and students from Jishou U did. We did two hours of marketing to about 200 students midway between high school and university: first our vice dean, then me (with student interpreter), then a sophomore from our college, then a Q&A. There were also two Powerpoint presentations, one by Vice Dean Song Jie and the other by sophomore Helen Xiao.
Our greatest hits: our graduates’ 98% employment rate, the foreign teacher who can speak a little Chinese, the sophomore girl who has broadcast the weather on municipal TV, the dean who has met President Hu Jintao.
To be honest, I was surprised and just a little pleased to be asked to come along on this junket. Apparently, I am considered to be a big draw for the college. Besides, I could visit my friend and former colleague, Connie Hu, who was mostly responsible for me being here in the first place.
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JISHOU, HUNAN — So, here’s a more detailed travelogue to follow up on the post I sent from my cell phone last week.  Yalong Haijiao in Sanya, Hainan As I mentioned, students here in their next-to-last year take a class trip, so four groups of students were planning trips to Hainan 海南, a tropical island in the South China Sea, Beihai 北海, a tropical seaside southern resort city, Guilin 桂林, a picturesque city nestled among mountains and rivers in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region 广西, and Fenghuang 凤凰, the ancient city about two hours from Jishou 吉首. All four groups asked me to join them.
Oy, decisions, decisions!
The Beihai group asked first, but their trip was only four days long. With a half-day on the train each way, they really only had two days in Beihai. The Hainan group asked me, too. Their trip was seven days, with almost four spent in Hainan. The Guilin group asked, but later canceled their trip — some joined the Beihai tour, and the rest went to Fenghuang.
In all, about 100 students went to Fenghuang, primarily because it was much cheaper than the other trips, and required less bus travel. (I’ve noticed that a relatively higher number of Chinese than American students have motion sickness problems, at least from anecdotal evidence. This discourages a lot of them from traveling.)
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SANYA, HAINAN — University students here take a class trip — “practical experience” in local educationese — in their penultimate year. So here I am vacationing — facilitating their practical experience — with 23 juniors, and two other faculty.
So far, our practical experience has including visiting a botanical garden and three beaches, swimming, eating so-so food, and sitting through sales pitches (more about that later).
My own personal practical experience was to take my first scuba lesson. More about that later, too.
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